Wal-Mart: The Fifth Horseman Of The Apocalypse

Wal-Mart: The Fifth Horseman Of The Apocalypse, originally uploaded by ⓅⒶⓎⓅⒶⓊⓁ.

It's been a year since Jdimytai Damour was killed by Black Friday Shoppers at the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, NY. With the US still in the grip of it's worst recession in decades are the maddening crowds going to be worse or better. What has Wal-Mart done to prevent this from happening again? Who in their right mind would stampede a store for mundane material possesions like a 42 inch plasma screen TV?
The economists don't want to use the D word. Yes, that's right . Depression. If they ever dared to use that one maybe the governments of the world would have to be serious about doing something for the people rather than heaping billions of bailout money on the Corporations. The corporations continue to lay off millions of hard working human beings while lining the pockets of fat, rich executive higher ups. This has got to stop!
Meanwhile we have bread and circus events like Black Friday that turn people into animals because they're so desparate to have what their rich neighbors have for half the price. Wal-Mart encourages this animal behavior. I'll never forget the crazy lines that snaked around and outside of the Pottstown, PA Walmart when I worked there about 5 years ago. Most of those lines were for the Lay-Away windows. Wal-Mart apparently enjoys not only the attention that Black Friday crowds bring to its stores but the substantial boost in profits. They could care less about the welfare and safety of their employees. Wal-Mart goes out of its way to cheat and rob their associates of their dignity and their rights.
Who was the person who dealt the final blow to Mr. Damour? We've never found that out. But in the end it is Wal-Marts responsibility to bring a more civilized atmosphere to their Black Friday events. But I doubt this will happen as it is in the company's best financial interest to keep it crazy and keep people coming in with such hyperbolic expectations.

Snapfish Has Snapped Up Flickr

Snapfish Has Snapped Up Flickr, originally uploaded by ⓅⒶⓎⓅⒶⓊⓁ.

Flickr, a so called "Photo Sharing Site" has now introduced an exclusive "service" to flickr members. Formerly, flickr Pro members could opt out of printing services and were not subject to advertising. Now we have it staring at us on all our pages. We have the stupid little shopping cart right next to our flickr mailbox. One of these days I'm going to click on that accidentally and "buy" a few of my photos.

Flickr has increasingly put forth so called features that only answer to a revenue generation goal. They have introduced such "sparkly goodness" as the App Garden, the Big Blue Button and now this horrible printing service from Snapfish. The Powers That Be (Petaybees, with attribution to Anne McCaffrey) have ignored flickr members requests for a lot of things. Flickr HQ has sought to demean flickr members by calling our work "items", "things" and "stuff".

Flickr does not allow its members to sell their photos prominently from their photo pages. I've been fortunate in having a few works considered by buyers but that's a hit or miss scenario. Yet, Flickr will allow service providers and commercial interests to invade flickr with subliminal advertising, drop down ads and other gimmickry. It has become another internet store where the members are nothing more than consumers and hobbyists to feed the maw of the big corporate "Fish".