Mole People!

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For anyone who remembers the unlamented Mr. Amazon's Bookshop sequence from the beginning of this year.

Every year amazon.com searches for over 1,000 smart, friendly and dedicated people with a strong work ethic.  Amazon's focus is on “working hard, having fun and making history as Earth’s Most Customer Centric Company.”…

…must be able to stand on feet for 8-10 hours, walk 10-15 miles a day, must be able to repetitively lift, bend, stoop, and squat while selecting items.

via www.sekjobs.com and, of all things, http://popwatch.ew.com.

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Pirate’s Dilemma Review Remixed

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My better half had some suggestions to improve this essay, so I’m taking a second pass at it here because I liked the original myself and I don't do this kind of writing often so I might as well get it right. The style and content are much the same, it just gets going more quickly.

The lives of many idealistic left-wing youth become enmeshed in compromise as they get older and stoke the fires of capitalism during the day while trying to throw a little water on those same fires at night well I understand how this happens because like many middle-aged people I wrestle with these contradictions myself and admire tremendously those who have stuck to their principles even at a real cost to their careers and personal lives which is why the few people who really piss me off and whom I actively scorn and who get my blood boiling are those like The Pirate’s Dilemma author Matt Mason who dons the mantle of rebellion and anti-corporate politics while consulting for Disney and Pepsi and P&G and who babbles about the benefits of sharing because "it's not all about the money any more" while giving … Continue reading

The Pirate’s Dilemma by Matt Mason: A Review

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[Shinier and better version here.]

In The Pirate's Dilemma Matt Mason claims to speak from the perspective of rebellious and subversive youth culture while he promotes the worst kind of corporate astroturfing which is too bad because his message that many new ideas emerge from outside the mainstream and from outside the market is important and his message that pirates who skirt the edges of the law to bring culture to new audiences have done much to improve our society also matters, but when an author wants us to believe he is anti-establishment while he praises the vitamin water company Glacéau for "keeping it real" in its advertising campaigns with 50 Cent while telling us that it was sold to Coca Cola for $4.1 billion in 2007, praises Procter & Gamble for its viral video campaign, is entranced by the way that Nike's Air Force One sneaker owes its success to the "remix" well where do you start? Mason loves the idea that youth culture, existing in spaces outside the mainstream and outside the commercial world, has had a huge impact on our modern world and I am with him 100% but the lives of many idealistic, left-wing youth … Continue reading

Price of a Bargain: Review in Literary Review of Canada

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My review of The Price of a Bargain: The Quest for Cheap and the Death of Globalization, by journalist Gordon Laird, is now out in the Literary Review of Canada. LRC makes some of its essays available online, but not all. Mine is not available, but some of the other contributions to the November 2009 issue are here.

I strongly recommend the lead essay by Charles Wright, Too Much Health Care; Janice Gross Stein is always worth reading whether you agree with her or not, even when she’s writing out of her usual field, and her take on the financial crisis (Between Euphoria and Fear) is a useful overview of a lot of points of view. Personally I’m not that interested in Pierre Trudeau, but apparently a lot of other people are, and Paul Wells of Macleans reviews the latest biography by John English called We’re Still Watching and there’s a lot more. I feel pretty good at being in that company.

One of the nice things about LRC is that you get over 2000 words, so you can do an essay not just a summary of the book’s contents. Here are some excerpts from … Continue reading