Final Lessons from Zellers

Target is moving in to Canada, by buying up Zellers stores.  They're going about it a weird way: closing stores, selling everything down to the shelves, letting all the workers go, only to reopen the stores under the new brand.  Wal-mart also entered the Canadian marked by buying existing stores (of Woolco) but they kept them open and just gradually changed the stores over to their way of doing things.  You'd think that if any store chain considered itself so culturally unique that they would feel the need to shut stores down and start afresh, free of the unprofitableness cooties, it would be Wal-mart.  The idea that Target is even more controlling makes me a little uneasy.

Anyway, many of the Zellers that are being re-branded are now having everything-must-go clearance sales.  After going to a couple of these, here's what I've learned:

• Zellers employees are/were really nice.  Everyone I had to interact with was very polite and patient, in spite of the situation.  You earn a tiny salary, to begin with, your job has now been arbitrarily eliminated by a foreign company, and you're expected stay at work for a few weeks to sell off everything around you.
• We have an obesity problem.  When you have to sell men's size-small t-shirts at $1.49 and still can't get rid of them, we have a problem.  Small was the only size they had left, or I would have bought the "More people have read this shirt than your blog" shirt.
• Speaking of which, why do big-and-tall stores exist?  Surely anyone who has an unusual sized/shaped body just has to wait until the end of a sale and they'll find entire racks of clothing just for them.
• A clearance sale is a time to rethink security.  You've got expensive and easily concealable MP3 players just hanging on the racks, but you're going to make me call an employee over to unlock the video game cabinets just to get a $10 copy of Gran Turismo for the Play Station 2.
• Zellers stores are more organised in a desperate clearance than ever before.  Normally you have trouble finding a price on half the items, now everything has a big sign on it telling you how much it is.  And most of the time you find merchandise just lying around in aisles yet to be sorted on to shelves, so having it arranged on haphazard clearance racks is hardly different.
• I was right not to bother collecting Club Z points.  I'd still only be halfway to that toaster oven I wanted.

Taking the Bait

That little symbolic fish you see on the backs of cars is actually a symbol of Christianity.  In Greek, the phrase (pause while he looks it up) "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Saviour" spells Fish, and thus the fish became an early symbol of the religion.  That's why the fish often has "Jesus" or "ΙΧΘΥΣ" in it.

But as with anything attached to the back of cars, people can't leave well enough alone.  Your truck has Calvin peeing on Jeff Gordon's car, so my truck has him peeing on Tony Stewart.  Similarly, smart-assed atheists added legs to the fish and put "Darwin" in the middle. 

What's weird is just how few people notice these affirmations of belief going on around them.  Once I was walking through a parking lot and I saw a Christian's car with a fish marked "Truth" eating the "Darwin" evolved fish.  I pointed it out to a friend, who had no idea about any of this, so I had to explain the entire backstory, thus looking like a freak for following this slow-motion debate that most people don't notice.

Generally that's how it goes.  Whenever I have had reason to point out these emblems, Christian and Atheist alike usually have no idea what they are for.  I think it has something to do with Toyota, Hyundai, Ford, and other car makers that have oval-shaped logos.  The fish, salamanders and others just blend in.  So I wonder if anyone goes the other way and mistakes the company logo for a religious statement.  Especially Toyota, who's logo looks vaguely devilish.

Anyway, what triggered all this is that today, I saw a fish with the Star of David in it.  Okay, now even I'm confused.  Is it Jews for Jesus?  Even smarter-assed Atheists just trying to confuse people?  Jews who just like fish?

Penny For Your Doubts

At McDonald's, I always put my change in the box of donations for Ronald McDonald House.  Partly I would of course, like to help others, but it's also because I am overloaded with small change.  It's a weird warping of economics: quarters don't seem very valuable to me, because I have so many, so four quarters seems less valuable to me than a dollar.

Anyway, a few time when I've done this around friends, they claim that the boxes are bogus, and the change just goes into McDonald's profits.  That seems like an odd thing to believe.  For one thing, it's the height of cynicism, and I think of myself as quite a cynic.  I'm no fan of McDonald's - I paid full price to see Super Size Me in the theatre - but even I wouldn't believe their execs have their hands in the charity boxes.  It's not so much faith in humanity as the bad publicity if it ever got out - and the sheer number of people involved would guarantee it would get out, with or without Morgan Spurlock's help.  Besides, if McDonald's wants to scam us, I'm sure they can do it more than a dime at a time.

Which brings up the next problem I have with this cynical conspiracy theory:  You're in a McDonald's, presumably you're about to eat some of their food.  Doesn't that worry you?  Again, I'm not one to believe that their beef has dirt or worms or plastic or whatever in it.  But I certainly find that much easier to believe than the idea that they steal from Ronald McDonald House.

That's the problem with cynics these days.  (I'll now pause to let you digest all the layers in that statement.)  They have a weird unfocused cynicism where they talk as though they believe the worst, but act as though they're totally naive.  So unless you've bought that cabin in the woods to go full Unabomber, forgive me for not taking you seriously.

The Nerds have the Screen Printer

I've been really amazed at just how many geeky t-shirts are for sale on the Internet, such as at TeeFury or Qwertee.

So who is buying all these t-shirts?  I know, geeks.  But living in a high-tech mecca, you would expect that I'd occasionally see one.  A few weeks ago, I saw someone with a "Han Shot First" shirt, but that's pretty old-hat when it comes to geek self-expression.

But it's more than just lightweight geekery that any dedicated Big Bang Theory viewer would get. Now I see that the shirts are getting to new levels of obscurity.  Take a look at this "The Angels Have the Delorean" shirt.  To bring the uninitiated up to speed: in one of the more memorable Doctor Who episodes, a character mentions having a T-shirt that reads, "The Angels have the Phonebooth" (trust me, it made sense at the time.)  Of course, someone actually started selling such shirts.  It's hard to believe that alone makes economic sense.  But then someone else said, never mind T-shirts referencing a single line from Doctor Who; that's not esoteric enough.  Let's cross that with a Back To the Future reference. 

Why stop there?  They had a phonebooth in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, can you work that into it?  Oh, you can.  Well how about Superman?  Ah.

I think the real question is: why am I the only geek who can draw yet is not designing T-shirts?

Beeb Fever

For the last couple of weeks, BBC World News have been showing programs (I'm sorry, "programmes") about Canada.  Like any Canadian, I'm fascinated with knowing how (if at all) the rest of the world regards us.  It was interesting that their view of us seems to be primarily Vancouver, Montreal, the Atlantic provinces, plus Calgary and the Tar Sands.  That seems to reflect what I've seen from other foreign journalists that are familiar with the country.  So it's more bad news for a certain Ontario metropolis that continues to have less global mindshare than they expect.

But even if I do appreciate the channel, I am aware of it's many, um, "quirks."  So what better time to critique them, than a time when they've chosen to observe us:

The Weather
Doing a planetary forecast in under two minutes is a pretty silly idea to begin with.  But it's made worse by the fact that British meteorologists have rather limited climactic experience, and may not know that, say, telling us it's going to rain in Vancouver may not be useful.

Programs
For the most part, BBC World has a simple schedule: every hour on the hour, there's a half-hour of news.  Then the second half of the hour is a more specialised program, often something business related.  But I've noticed that those news programs often have different names.  They have programs called, The Hub, Impact, Newsnight, Newsday, and GMT.  But each time, it's just someone reading the news.

Commercials
It's kind of odd that they very seldom have ads, then suddenly have really long, well-produced spots.  There are some interesting travel commercials, and occasionally ads for places you've never heard of and probably blew their budget producing.  But mostly they fall into two categories, neither of which fit with their programming:

• Fixing our image.  Big companies show ads trying to sound like the good guys.  Shell in particular does a lot of these spots about how nice they are to the environment.  Actually, I notice they do that on CNN a lot too.  I still don't understand why they're trying to spin the best-informed viewers on the dial.  Why not run those Clean Coal ads on TLC?
• Luxury ads.  Not just Mercedes ads, or products that might be used by someone you might know someday, but obscenely expensive things that really clash with their programming.  (More on the African famine after this word from the Emirate of Dubai.)  The same goes for the occasional program that's an obvious cop to their wealthier viewers.  In between in-depth reporting on the world's trouble spots, you have shows like Equestrian World.

Sports
A global sportscast is difficult just to prioritise.  Obviously you cover soccer first, but then what?  You can argue for Cricket to get next priority largely on its South-Asian popularity.  But Rugby?  I think the British might be alarmed if they did the math on how many people around the world follow it.  Oh, and slightly off topic, they might be surprised just how small a segment of humanity gives a damn about the Eurovision Song Contest.

Still, they do try to cover the whole world's sports.  Most notably in this part of the world, they've figured out that they can't just put Hockey write-ups on the Teleprompter and trust their anchors to phonetically pronounce Eastern European names.

That brings up another problem: Some sports just can't be described with an English accent.  Just try imagining the Queen saying "first and ten on the fifteen" and you get the picture

Phrases
And speaking of, well, speaking: When reporting on the U.S. they seem to be unaware that their British phrases are often entirely inappropriate.  An anarchic, bullet-riddled housing project in an American inner city gets described as a "block of flats."  A burly trucker with a Toby Keith tattoo, Dale Jr. T-shirt and a Confederate belt-buckle is described as a "lorry driver."

Infotainment
Of course, I appreciate the fact that they largely avoid the Tanning-Mom style meaningless distraction news. It's a big part of my proud pop-cultural ignorance that I spoke of earlier.  And when they do make a reference to such a story, it's usually with an antiseptic distance that's reassuring; the awkward British accents and phrases ridiculed above come in handy.

The problem is, sometimes they seem to forget who they are and plunge into a pop-cultural story with complete enthusiasm.  I don't know, maybe they delude themselves into thinking they can win the hearts of America.  But they're just so bad at entertainment news.  After watching them do a solid hour on the latest celebrity death, even the shallowest viewer is left wishing they'd go back to analysing the latest Euro bailout plan.

Just One Shade of Grey

Today I was driving on a two-lane road, and some guy in a grey Corolla is stuck in my blind spot, trying to pass me, but barely going any faster.  Meanwhile, there's a parked car up ahead, so I'm going to have to pull into the left lane, but this guy is taking an hour to get past me.  So I'm stuck trying to slow down and let him past, hoping the guy behind won't pass me too.  Because if that happens, then I'll be stuck in that cyclical hell of getting passed for going slow but not being able to get into the fast lane because I'm going too slow.

A few minutes later, in heavy traffic, I see a car trying to pull into my lane, and they're not having any luck because it's a solid line of traffic.  Normally I'd let him out, but then I realise: it's a grey Corolla.  So my next reaction is, screw you, learn to drive.  Of course, it quickly occurred to me that there are about 10,000 grey Corollas in town, this is surely not the same one.  So that's just something to think about when you're considering a popular car in a popular colour: not only will you never be able to find it in a crowded parking lot, you'll also get blamed for the crimes of everyone else with the same car.  Instead, buy a purple Mitsubishi and everyone will love you.

But that brings up another question:  What ever happened to car colours?  Insurance penalises you for red, and everyone knows how hard it is to keep black or white clean.  On top of that, car manufacturers are charging a few hundred extra for "metallic" or "pearl" colours, thus ensuring they can charge extra for any non-boring shade.  Whatever money they make from charging for paint probably goes into hiring poets to come up with new names for shades of grey ("platinum graphite," really?)

Free Advice for Hollywood

As an addition to my earlier rant against What to Expect When You're Expecting, here are some more non-fiction, non-story books that should be made into movies.

Guns, Germs and Steel - assuming they don't actually use anything except the title, this could be a great sci-fi action movie.

Freakonomics - Robin Williams as an odd-ball economist who saves the world from the housing crisis

Plato's Republic - remember, The Matrix was loosely based on the Cave Analogy

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - They never did make a sequel to Gladiator

The Guinness Book of Records - and you thought the Jackass movies were great for laughing at people endangering their lives.

The Secret - a great supernatural thriller.  How do you stop someone who can make things happen with their mind just by being positive?

The Origin of Species - again, great horror possibilities.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - that's a more sophisticated premise than most Adam Sandler movies

Dianetics - no idea how easy it will be to spin a story about it, but it won't be hard to find people to act in it.

any Malcolm Gladwell book - is it just me, or is he a pair of glasses from being the Literati's Napoleon Dynamite?

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves - who wouldn't want to see a movie about vigilante grammarian Pandas?