Walmartian chronicles

A friend of mine sent me an email with photos of Wal-Mart shoppers, which got me started on a quest for the tasteless and the tacky. Because right now I’m in need of a laugh at someone else’s expense, for a change.

This is what I found. And also this.

I feel a little bit better.

A question of beauty

We live in a strange, strange world, when such icons of drop-dead beauty as Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington aren’t “pretty enough” for the cosmetics company they represent in advertising. No, the photos for L’Oréal’s campaigns for Lancôme (Roberts) and Mabelline (Turlington) apparently required air-brushing and Photoshopping to “perfect” the women’s faces.

I know this because Britain’s Advertising Standards Agency (and isn’t that a concept all on its lonesome?) has banned the adverts in question at the behest of an MP for precisely that reason.

Now, here’s the thing: the products being advertised were foundations—you know, the stuff women are supposed to glop onto their faces to even out skin tone and provide the backdrop for the rest of the crap they’re supposed to apply, like blush, eye shadow and whatnot. (Look, I had a traumatic experience with greasepaint as a child; I’ve never liked gunk on my face since.) 

I.e., the agency geniuses not only thought that Roberts’ and Turlington’s mugs needed a boost; but also that Roberts and Turlington wearing L’Oréal’s products needed work.

Think about that.

If the Pretty Woman herself and a supermodel aren’t “beautiful” enough to be presented without digital alteration, what the hell kind of standards of beauty are we supposed to be held to?

And what the hell hope do ordinary women have of getting within the same time zone as those standards?

Oh, and BTW—who the hell is setting those standards?

More of our tax dollars not at work

Here’s an interesting chart, out of the NY Times by way of The Atlantic, regarding the fine mess we’re currently in.

Not that anyone in Congress cares, because they’re too busy posturing, spouting rhetoric and playing chicken with the nation’s future.

Actually, I don’t believe any Congressmoron has a clue about the concept of “future”, since for them long-term means “the next election”.

Scroll down to the bottom of the story for a chart depicting the effects of Shrub’s tax cuts on the fine mess we’re in.

It's enough to make a donkey weep.

All aboard for Milwaukee

The product management group I’m part of had its weekly “team” meeting yesterday morning. (And why are corporations so keen to use the word “team” when what they actually mean is “a bunch of people working for their own advancement, at cross purposes and without communicating with each other”?)

And one of the group, a part-time PM who’s evidently also part of the engineering group in Bangalore, informed the rest of us—including our manager—that a portion of the software operates in a particular fashion entirely unanticipated by us. Meaning, the developers decided to build the interfaces in this precise way, even though this is not how it was specified in the product requirements document. Meaning also that yesterday, three weeks before the entire highly-complex software-hardware-services product solution is supposed to be ready for what they call “first customer ship”, product management discovered this functionality for the first time.

For those of you unfamiliar with the world of product development (especially software products), this is like the Pullman porters deciding to steer a moving train to Milwaukee instead of Chicago, and bugger the whole concept following the actual rails.

But, as if that’s not whacked enough, our manager did not go ballistic. That’s like the train’s engineer just sitting back and filing his fingernails; maybe thinking about bratwurst, instead of throwing on the brakes and opening up a can of whup-ass on those porters.

The thing that worries me a lot is this: I’m responsible for collecting and prioritizing the feature requests, as well as writing the PRD, for the next couple of versions of this product. & not only do I feel as though I’m still going to be chasing a runaway train that’s already pulling out of the station—even though these people will have gone through two releases by mid-August and; should thus know better—I have no confidence at all in my manager’s capacity or will to grab the damned controls and be a bloody product manager.

Aside from which, we all look like groupers, flapping our mouths open and shut at meetings, discovering that the product we were supposed to have conceived, specified and driven is actually going to Milwaukee.

Old Spice & old Nazis

Interesting news day.

If you’re big on 80s retro & romance novel covers, your pulse may go up to learn that Fabio is back. He’s the new face (& chest) of Old Spice.

I suppose it’s a lateral move for a man who last made bread by starring in commercials for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.

Meanwhile, the earthly remains of Rudolf Hess have been exhumed & his gravestone removed to stop neo-Nazis from using it as a focal point for rallies. He was cremated & his ashes scattered at sea.

It’s a strange old world we live in.

Manassas I

Today is the 150^th anniversary of the first battle of Manassas, the first major land engagement of the War Between the States.

In the summer of 1861, politicians and journalists were rabid about crushing the rebels; “On to Richmond!” was repeated frequently and fervently. Lincoln was under tremendous pressure to make a show of force and, of course, end the war at a single stroke. Forget “over by Christmas”; the expectation was pretty much “over by Independence Day”.

Keep in mind that the two enemy capital cities were about 100 miles apart. It’s like Miami being only 90 miles from Cuba, only with the armies being roughly the same and no Atlantic Ocean to act as a barrier. The perception on both sides was that if you took the other’s capital you’d basically win the war.

So on 21 July, Union forces under Brigadier General Irvin McDowell faced off against Confederates commanded by Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, about 30 miles southwest of Washington, D.C. (Yes, he’s known as P.G.T Beauregard; but I’ve got to get that full name in somewhere.)

Washington society were so certain that their troops would lick the Rebs that they drove out in carriages, ladies and gentlemen with picnic baskets and opera glasses, expecting an afternoon’s entertainment.

If you’ve never experienced a D.C. summer, you can’t imagine the kind of heat and humidity that struck the forces on both sides. Soldiers in those days wore wool uniforms & carried maybe 60 pounds of kit. On the march out towards the town of Manassas, many Union troops drank all their water just getting there.

The mostly inexperienced soldiers on both sides went back and forth, basically holding their own. At one point the Confederate line faltered & Brigadier General Barnard Bee urged his troops, “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer. Rally behind the Virginians!”

The Jackson he referred to was Colonel Thomas J. Jackson, a rather strange former instructor of philosophy at the Virginia Military Institute; his students called him “Tom Fool”. But that day his unit held.

(Although there is some thought that Bee was pissed off by the fact that Jackson was holding his position instead of moving forward to support him, and that what he actually said was, “There stands Jackson like a damned stone wall!” We’ll never know exactly because Bee was mortally wounded that day.)

Anyhow, as the afternoon wore on, Federal lines began to break, first in small units and then en masse. The soldiers threw away their rifles and equipment and began running to the rear. The society crowd was engulfed and had to fight for road space for their carriages against the retreating troops.

There was tremendous fear that the Confederates would chase everyone all the way back to D.C., but Beauregard wasn’t the pursuing kind of commander. The loss was a tremendous shock to people all over the North. And in both North and South, folks began to realize that the war was not going to be a short, victorious one.

McDowell was the scapegoat for the loss, although he’d been pressured heavily to go into battle with very green troops. He was replaced by Major General George B. McClellan, a commander who was much better at dressing up and drilling armies than using them in actual, you know, warfare. (Jackson, who was thereafter known as Stonewall, went on to wage a brilliant campaign against a variety of Union armies in the Shenandoah Valley. Beauregard was eventually replaced by General Robert E. Lee, of whom you may have heard.)

So we were seriously in for the long haul. A long, bloody, costly haul that we're still paying for.

And, in 13 months, the two armies would be back at Manassas.

News of the (Murdoch) world

You may have heard there’s a hoo-ha in Britain regarding Rupert Murdoch and the way his publications go about gathering (as opposed to manufacturing, which they also do well) information. Executives of News International are falling like old-growth timber under a Republican administration. They’re either being arrested or they’re “helping police with their inquiries.”

But the gendarmes themselves are not immune from the clear-cutting: two top cops in the Metropolitan Police have resigned under a cloud, as they say. (and both current and past Prime Ministers are backpedaling furiously trying to pretend they never heard of Murdoch or any of his minions, and never had them over to 10 Downing Street for cocktails and baksheesh.)

Murdoch and his son James, a senior satrap in the empire, haven’t been collared yet, but they did appear before a committee of Parliament yesterday afternoon, spinning like tops. But all the concentration was broken when some bloke in a plaid flannel shirt appeared and shoved a paper plate of foam in the Dark Lord’s face.

After Murdoch cleaned up, they resumed; but no one’s heart was in it. Better not to know the answers to the questions, anyhow.

What I’m wondering is: shouldn’t someone be investigating the Met’s ability to provide security for Parliament? How did this guy get through police checks—the shirt alone should have set off any number of alarm bells. Is anyone serious about this?

And how long will it be before TSA starts screening passengers for shaving cream foam?

Give me a bottle & a straw

Dunno about you, but this week is starting out to be really rough. And, what with moving house on Friday and realizing that I’m never going to get an actual, you know, answer out of anyone about anything at my current place of employment—well, the idea of retreating into the adult-world equivalent of a spiked watermelon is just really attractive right now.

Carpocalypse diem

As with pretty much everything to do with Los Angeles, Carmageddon was hyped to the max. Shutting down the 405 (’scuse me, Interstate 405) over the weekend to demolish the Mulholland Drive overpass was supposed to bring about The End of Civilization As We Know It.

You have to understand, the 405 is one of the arteries of LA traffic; and to Angelenos, traffic is life. It doesn’t occur to anyone in the county that you could do anything—grocery shop, go to school, consult your aromatherapist—without getting in your car. In the run-up to this weekend hundreds of thousands of people were doubling up on their Prozac, stocking the pantry with emergency rations of Grey Goose and kvetching that it was going to be the mother of all nightmares if they closed the 405.

I’m betting that local news teams have been fanning the pre-closure terror for weeks, predicting gridlock and offering a gazillion ways to cope. (Like, get your liposuctioned bum out of your BMW and take a freaking walk?) Jet Blue offered flights from Van Nuys to Long Beach for $5, although why anyone would want to go to either place I don’t know.


There was even the obligatory re-subtitling of Hitler ranting about Carmageddon:

Well, turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. The streets of Westwood, Inglewood, Brentwood, etc., did not run with blood, and  there were no reports of increased numbers of murders. (Bank robberies might have been down, though; no quick getaway.)

Same thing happened during the 1984 Olympics. There were dire predictions that the city would shut down on account of all the extra traffic—between the Olympians, the visitors and all the limos. But for once the city and county governments actually conceived and executed a cogent plan,and for two weeks, it was actually easier to get around town.

Of course, it went back to hell as soon as the Closing Ceremony wrapped.

As for Carmageddon, the contractor actually finished the work early, and traffic has resumed on the 405. I fully expect that hell followed immediately thereafter.  

My deepest apologies

I was in Target this morning, picking up drawer liners and cleaning stuff. I was whining to myself about the new place I’m moving to—the property manager didn’t paint it as he’d said he would, and his idea of “the place is clean” is certainly not mine (ergo the Lysol). I was also fretting over how I’m supposed to fit all my stuff into the new flat and thinking, rather pitifully, that I’m just going to have to learn to live with less.

I chose a checkout lane where a couple’s purchases had just been rung up; didn’t want to wait at the other lanes where the cashiers were still scanning. And then I realized that there was some hang-up with the transaction.

And being the utterly impatient person I am, I was beginning to fume. Then the nature of the hold-up became clear: the customers didn’t have enough money for all the merchandise. They were choosing what items to put back.

A box of cereal was first; but that wasn’t enough. So a package of chicken wings or thighs went. And then they had enough.

They were in their fifties, maybe, and the woman’s cotton knit top was torn at the armhole. All their purchases, a full cart totaling around $75, were food,and there was cat kibble among them. They chose to return their food, not the cat’s.

As she collected a couple of dollars in change, the woman apologized to the cashier and to me; “We didn’t realize we’d gone so wild.” I said nothing because I didn’t know what to say; and I was ramping down from toe tapping to embarrassment. I paid for my drawer liners and Lysol and went on to the next errand.

But I couldn’t let it go. It pisses me off that people have to choose between feeding their pet and feeding themselves.

But mostly I’m pissed off at myself. I'd been so full of self-pity about fitting all my stuff (including whatever food I choose to have) into my new flat; and here was a situation that was really worth spending some sympathy on. But I screwed the pooch completely. 

It would have been the easiest thing in the world for me to buy that couple’s chicken and cereal and then just hand a bag to them in the parking lot. Might have been $10, maybe $12. I can afford it, even though I whinge about the miserable pay I'm getting. But I didn’t come up with that right response until I was miles away. Way too late.

I was so busy getting from impatience to shock that I never made it to compassionate action. And that’s an opportunity I’ll never get back.

So to the couple with a happy cat but maybe not such a great supper: I apologize for being slow and stupid. I’m truly ashamed of myself. I can’t help you now, but I’ll try my best to be quicker to catch on in future.