Buying from locally owned merchants keeps 45% of expenditures within the community while buying from a chain store results in 87% of the dollars spent leaving the community. And with the downturn in the economy the national retailers have been hit harder than the mom-and-pop shops and are trying to figure out how to capitalize on the ‘buy local’ phenomena – this effort is called ‘localwashing’ whereby ‘buying local’ comes to mean any store in your community – be it mom-and-pop or big-box – you name it.
Big companies have to be much more creative in how they articulate ‘local’. It’s a different way of thinking about local that is not quite literal – Michaelle Bary – SVP – The Hautman Group
In other words lie, or as the re-branders would have it – don’t think literarily (but make the suckers thing that you are).
On a visual level, humans don’t know the difference between the real thing and a simulation – Robert Aunger – The Electric Meme: a new theory of how we think, 2002 p102
To give meaning to these
Colors
That these patterns expressed
In color have substance
Beyond pure perception
If these forms patterned in
Tints and hues
Segregate themselves
It is not because they
Have meaning
For that more than sight
Is needed
Nothing merely seen has
Any weight
It [the television screen] grants sensation without demanding responsibility, and it involves us in a spectacle without engaging us in the complexity of its reality – Kevin Robins – Into the Image: culture and politics in the field of vision, 1996 p80
Factoid: There are patents on 20% of human genes
College football is a multibillion dollars spectacle of unpaid labor and unhinged fandom – Dave Zirin
Cindi says that she dropped her CD player “It doesn’t work”. She says that she wants me to tell why it doesn’tb work . “Because you dropped it” I told her. She says “I dropped it before and it didn’t work. Then I waited for a couple of months; then it worked again” “Well that’s one way to fix it” I tell her “but probably not a very reliable way. “I have to buy a more durable CD Player” she informs me.Then she left.
We cannot wish – it seems – hear confessions / That teach innocence; we are not possessed / Of mercy enough to pardon those whom evil / Has not fattened – Kenneth Patachen – Collected Poems, 1967 p216
I go to Stacey’s Bookstore on Market for a noon reading by author Stephen Johnson - “Brain Wide Open”. He had written “Emergence: Connective Life of Ants, Brains and Computers”. I knew of him from having read it. Then I hotfoot it over to the San Francisco Brewery for my weekly burger and a beer. I had not gotten any new requests at work today. I forwarded some materials to New York. I replied to a previous request from Dallas. I set an appointment for a pulse check interview for tomorrow afternoon. Then I got out of there.
I maintain that the apparently independent and autonomous system of industrialism has transgressed its logic and boundaries and has thereby begun a process of self-dissolution – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p213
“Paddy, where is the Oufty [Oufty Goofty Barley wine], the owner asks as he heads towards the taps behind the bar. Paddy motions to a closed cabinet.. Paddy greets two new customers and returns to his cell phone call. He doesn’t hear the cook’s ring. My burger is getting cold. It doesn’t get too cold. This is a lazy afternoon at the bar. There are two men in the back room having lunch. Otherwise it’s Paddy, the cook and I. Ring. Paddy picks up “San Francisco Brewery. Alan (the owner), Phone call!” The brewer has just come and changed out the barley wine and has added a third - an Alexander Gunn that has been aged for nine years. Paddy goes downstairs. The cook returns to the kitchen after drawing a soda from behind the bar. Now it’s just me. A fire truck goes by with its siren blasting and its horn honking. The #12 Jackson is waiting to cross Columbus. Three customers enter noisily. They interrupt my solitude.
Just as there are useless self-sacrifices in unjust wars, so too is there an ignoble heroics of whole societies [such as] the plain debasing and silly heroics of the acquisition and display of consumer goods, the piling up of money and privileges that now characterizes whole ways of life – Ernest Becker – The Denial of Death, 1973 p7
“So what do you think about gay marriage” Paddy asks? “Well” I tell him “I was not planning on getting one. But it’s the first time that I have every heard a governor encouraging people to riot in the streets” “Big deal about nothing” Paddy says.
One has the right to, or may feel compelled to, give voice to one’s own pain – which is, in any case, one’s own property. One volunteers to seek out the pain of others – Susan Sontag – On Photography, 1977 p40
Men with dominate mothers and submissive fathers have increased risk of getting duodenal ulcers early in life
Essentially the camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own – Susan Sontag – On Photography, 1977 p57
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