June 28, 2004

• Oh man, am I glad I brought that titanuim spork with me on our camping trip, or we would have been screwed, lost out there in the woods....

  
  

  ...With! Nothing! To! Repeatedly! Jab! in My Eye! Socket! Auuugh!

  
  

  Well.  Maybe I could have used a stick. But there's nothing quite like a spork in your eye. Snort.

  
  

  I spent most of friday doodling on my wacom tablet, waiting for the Most Beloved Hedgehog to get home so we could head for the wilderness.  Suffice to say, hours later, we didn't pull into camp until after dark, and we were both cranky and wet and hungry and feeling uncooperative towards one another. I basically hated his runny hedgehog guts.

  
  

  Despite this adversity, we managed to get the tent staked, haul out the pointless coleman stove, collect plenty of damp and useless firewood, and have angry peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner.  And then go to bed.

  
  

  (The six year old in me was happy and excited to be sleeping in the woods with my best pal, eating crunchy peanut butter on wheat bread, and pretending that we had run away from home. The twenty four year old sourpuss that I actually am was deeply pissed off that my boyfriend was being a dink.)

  
  

  The morning was much better. We woke up to a cacophany of raindrops on the roof of our tent, feeling secure and dry and marveling at the noise. I stepped out to wrestle with the stove, and listened to the ruckus of the early morning shower rustling the leaves and thrumming the ground. We decided to abandon camp in search of breakfast in the little town nearby, and settled in at a townie cafe which served cheap eggs and local gossip.

  
  

  We wandered into a milltown up the road called Orange, a town I've visited more than a few times in my childhood. Most of it was grey and brick and closed up on a wet morning. There were bric a brac shops and tanning salons, used car lots with faded signs, odd characters lingering on rainy sidewalks, but nowhere to buy firewood or food or any other basic necessities. We turned up the main street and headed out the other side of town. And there we found the reason Orange was empty.

  
  

  Like a horrible zoning mishap, or an alien behemoth taking a squat on the rural roadside, sucking the life out of everything around it, there was Wal-f'cking-Mart. Bastards.

  
  

  I will take you on a tangent, because most of the rest of our trip turned out to be lovely, and we later forgave each other and are plenty in love once again. We don't need to hear about all that. But here goes my rant on Walmart. This is where i really could have used a titanium death-spork.

  
  

  We drove by. At first our idealism kept us going. We then considered our options, and our impending need for materials and supplies. We looked back up the road.  And realizing that this is exactly what Walmart does, we felt the evil take a death grip on our humanity. Because there was bug spray and matches and granola bars to be had, and we knew where we could certainly get it.

  
  

  Now, I am not one to spread the hater-ation, but there are certain things that I despise like none other. Someday I will make a list for your benefit. And at the top of that list is Walmart.  I hate em. More than Comcast, or Starbucks. Die, Walmart. Die.

  
  

  Some of you will argue that this evil morasse of corporate vampires actually benefits the communities it inhabits, doing nice things like employing people in wheelchairs or building playgrounds or revitalizing trailer park towns, just like they show you in the commercials. What a sham. By forcing suppliers to cut their prices, they have driven out american companies whose factory jobs employed  the very same people who buy from them. In turn, the factories overseas which produce Wal-Mart goods barely provide a subsistence wage, all so some frugal american consumer can buy TP on the cheap to wipe their fat ass. Their store employees are paid such a low wage they can barely afford to pay for the company health insurance, and  the company has threatened to sack employees who attempt to form  unions to protect themselves.  And in a stanktastic right wing effort to hold some sort of moral standing, they have refused to carry the morning after pill, and censor which recording artists they carry in their stores. But most of us do not mind this or remain ignorant, because what could be wrong with a nice, clean well-stocked business that gives us what we want. Do I really have to answer that again?

  
  

  One mile back up the road, a town with great people and history and character is dying, being sucked dry and boarded up. And that is the least of the casualties. Because consumption is relentless, and monsters like Walmart propegate and fulfill that need.

  
  

  Bryon was harping on me earlier for not generally having any sort of serious, concrete opinion on most things, and in fact, i rarely do. There is too much I do not know about, too many sides to take. But i think i just like to choose my battles. So.

  
  

  We ended up at the walmart anyway. If I have sounded at all Holier-Than-Thou in this post, forgive me, and allow me to relent, because I've sunk lower than low. But i went into that place, and there was thoughtless consumption everywhere. I watched the citizens of Orange buying their boxes of cereal and polo shirts, contemplating the cheaper brands and filling their carts. Do they realize/ Do they care? Or are they in the same position as me, looking for the stuff they need, and conveniently, walmart was there? But the worst, the worst,  was a row of television sets blazing the american flag and advertising Walmart's support of the war in Iraq, something about freedom, and low prices. Sickening.

  
  

  It felt good to go back to the woods and cook over a fire we had made ourselves, and to walk down to the lake and catch orange salamanders in the moss. To be aware of the world at its simplest, and best, and forgive each other. I don't know if that is an adequate or redeeming ending for this, but it is what it was.

  • 12:44 pm
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