Moving day

I probably should have mentioned this before, but the blog moved to www.pauldailing.com a few weeks ago. Oh, well.

On toys

One problem with writing a blog on anticonsumerism is that there are certain non-essential consumer items that I couldn’t imagine life without.

I’m not talking about iPhones or about Starbucks coffee or designer clothes (Blain’s Farm and Fleet is designer, right?). I’m talking about toys.

As a child, I was the proud owner of, if I remember correctly, 27 zillion Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. So there was a part of me that was sort of happy that Mattel, the maker of both Hot Wheels and Matchbox, had a very good fiscal year. Here’s a Los Angeles Business Journal article on it and here’s one from SmartMoney.com.

Net sales were $2.19 billion in the last quarter, according to the LA article. Unfortunately, however, some of those sales were due to Barbie, American Girl and Polly Pocket products. You know, icky girl stuff.

So here’s an interesting question: Can a person be against rampant consumerism when his fond childhood memories include Legos, Matchbox cars, infinite plastic dinosaurs and other toys? Alternately, why are adult toys such as the iPhone seen as consumer hooey (as in this cartoon) but kid toys given a pass?

Toys are perceived need (“Mommy, I’ve got to have it”), media hype (“Coming up at 10: What are the new, hot toys this Christmas”), planned obsolescence (“Ooh, this Batman has a new cape”) and all sorts of other consumerist horror, but it doesn’t bother me that much. I wonder why.

I’ll be thinking about that as I call my parents to apologize for all the money they ended up spending on Transformers.

Oh no, I’m only an 87.9

How confident are you as a consumer?

It’s 87.9. That’s it. That’s the answer, at least according to the Conference Board, the group that compiles the Consumer Confidence Index cited in articles like this Associated Press article to tell us, the consumers, how confident we feel.

So we’re at an 87.9. That’s down from the 90.6 we felt in December.

What does that mean? Well, consumer confidence equalled 100 in 1985, at least according to this sample the Conference Board offers from 2000. So we’re down 12.1 confidence units since the era of “We Are The World,” “Back to the Future” and the pro debut of a young Mike Tyson.

I’ve been told I might be offering too much commentary, for example, when I told the state of Kansas to screw itself. So here’s an open call to readers. How do you feel about the Consumer Confidence Index? Is it valuable? Is it a reasonable means of making economic decisions – either for businesses or for the consumer? What does this 87.9 number mean to you?

I’m really looking forward to hearing from you.

Lolcats, Heath Ledger, WWE

Sorry about the misleading headline – just trying to get more hits. But that does lead us into a discussion of the Internet and misleading information.

The Internet is an amazing tool for communication, research and buying lots and lots of crap. Although I am quite proud of some of my Internet purchases (Filipino bootleg of “Alyas Batman en Robin,” anyone?) it’s rarely needed. It’s just taking off all geographic limits on my taste for junk. And Filipino musicals.

According to Shop.org, online retail is expected to reach $258 billion this year and $316 billion by 2010. That’s if you trust those – seven minutes of trying to think of acceptable euphemism - people. I don’t trust them. They’re the folks who made up Cyber Monday.

That link above is to a National Retail Federation press release. Keep in mind that Shop.org is the online arm of the NRF.

I’m sure we’ve all seen the stories about Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the supposed busiest shopping day of the year. A nice little story, an easy post-Thanksgiving space filler for lazy newspaper editors and sort of fun in a “Miracle on 34th Street” sort of way. And the good old NRF has glommed onto that in press releases like this one here.

Granted, back in real life, the International Council of Shopping Centers routinely reports that the busiest shopping day of the year is actually the Saturday before Christmas.

In 2005, the NRF and Shop.org decided it wasn’t enough just to have one made-up day of massive sales, so they made up Cyber Monday, promoting it as a magic day when people all go online, using their faster work computers to go online and shop their little consumer hearts out.

News coverage was mixed back in 2005. The writer of this San Francisco Chronicle article was fooled that year, writing a glorious story about the e-commerce history marketers spun for him. Also fooled was Al Tompkins, columnist for Poynter Online, a publication of the Poynter Institute. The Poynter Institute is a continuing education group for journalists, editors and teachers of journalism.

The group, whose motto is “everything you need to be a better journalist,” should have taken a lesson from BusinessWeek, which released this article two days after Tompkins put out Cyber Monday in his “Al’s Morning Meeting” column. That column, by the by, purports to give newspaper editors across the nation solid ideas for news stories.

Just listen to this quote from the BusinessWeek story of Nov. 29, 2005:

“Do a Google search on ‘Cyber Monday,’ and you get as many as 779,000 results. Not a bad haul for a term that was created just a week and a half ago to describe the jump in online shopping activity following the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.”

I don’t say this enough, BusinessWeek, but I love you.

Coverage since that bounty year of 2005 has deviated toward a weird middle. An article about Cyber Monday that appeared in USA Today just last year talked about how Cyber Monday was sort of made up, but they put off mentioning that fact until the fifth paragraph. In the sixth paragraph, they had a quote about how it was really just “symbolic.”

You know, symbolism. Like how a “skull” can mean death, an “eight-spoked wheel” can mean Buddha’s noble eight-fold path and how “not the busiest online shopping day of the year” can mean the busiest online shopping day of the year.

Perhaps the most disturbing recent article about Cyber Monday came from Poynter’s Tompkins. In that article, headlined “Cyber Monday Hoax Coming True,” Tompkins wrote about the BusinessWeek article and the general scammy nature of Cyber Monday. Then, in the interest of balance and alternate point of views, he quoted a source talking about how Cyber Monday was actually picking up momentum.

That source was the National Retail Federation, the people who made up the lie in the first place.

Just to remind you, Tompkins’ column goes to news editors looking for story ideas across the nation.

Good luck, America. You’re going to need it.

The rest of the world

America is big and bad in terms of the junk we buy and the amount we go into debt to get that junk. But what’s going on in the rest of the world?

Showing the colonies that they can still beat us at something, British personal credit card debt is even higher than Americans, according to this article from Taipan Financial News. The article states the British owe $2.7 trillion on credit cards. I’m comparing that to the $2.5 trillion American debt Money-Zine calculated and I discussed in this blog entry.

However, not being sure about any difference in calculation methods TFN and Money-Zine used (for example, is the American number just credit cards or does it include store credit, lines of credit, etc.), I’m a little skittish about making that comparison.

But here’s a comparison TFN made: “Debt per capita is at a higher level than even for U.S. households. The Brits’ household debt equals 166% of [gross domestic product], as compared with 127% in the U.S.”

The South Korean government actually started encouraging credit card use in 2002 as a way to fight an economic slowdown, according to this article available at Entrepeneur.com. Its from 2004, so look to it more for history than for the latest update. Huge surges in consumer debt followed, naturally. There were also huge surges in consumer debt in 2005, according to this International Herald Tribune article.

In 2006, CBC News did a special report on the rising level of consumer debt among Canadians. My favorite, or as they would say, favourite tidbit was that there are three credit cards for every Canadian over the age of 18.

Compare that to the eight credit cards per American family that Frontline discussed in its absolutely stunning report on the credit industry, and that’s not so bad, but it aint good. Also, according to the CBC, Canadian debt is rising.

As for my final link, I found several connections to this report on the ecological footprints of nations by the Earth Council, which I heard described as an organization set up to monitor the recommendations made by the 1992 Rio summit. I would love to tell you more about the group and the report, but I can’t read Spanish. Maybe you’ll have better luck with that.

Robble robble

I woke up yesterday craving cheeseburgers. But not big gourmet cheeseburgers or homemade, fresh-off-the-grill cheeseburgers. I’m talking greasy, lard-infused fast food cheeseburgers.

Don’t worry. I’m going somewhere with this. 

I went to McDonald’s and got one of those value menu double cheeseburger things which, at 440 calories (210 from fat), disturbingly did not sate my burgerlust. So, a few hours later I hit a Wendy’s for another cheeseburger and a small Sprite.

First of all, there’s no way that a 20-ounce drink should ever be called “small.” Secondly, let’s take a look at fast food.

Fast food is a big industry with some big issues. So big, in fact, the New York Times Web site has given fast food a whole topic category in their archives. Take a scroll through that link – after you’re done reading my ramblings, of course.

In 2006, there were more than 3 million Americans employed as fast food and counter workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number is expected to go up to more than 3.5 million by 2016. That’s a 17 percent jump, buddy boy.

Now the BLS estimates for the category of “Combined Food Preparation and Serving Workers, Including Fast Food” show that, averaged out, these folks made $15,930 a year in 2006. Now, according to the 2006 federal poverty guidelines, that person wasn’t poor – provided they lived alone. If that was the income for a family of three, however, they were living in poverty back in 06.

The $15,930 number is misleading, though. That category of workers includes waiters at fancy restaurants, lunch ladies, bartenders, bar backs, folks working at food kiosks, etc. The highest-paid workers in that category can make nearly $14 an hour.

Most fast food workers make minimum wage. The federal level is $5.85 an hour, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Luckily, fast food workers – at least fast food workers who work for businesses that make at least $500,000 a year – fall under the Fair Labor Standards Act. If not for this, they would be subject to the minimum wage each state sets. These can vary. For example, Kansas’ minimum wage is the lowest in the nation. I checked this out at like four different places because I couldn’t believe it. Kansas’ minimum wage is $2.65 an hour. Don’t believe those U.S. stats? Let’s hear it from Kansas itself.

Screw you, Kansas.

But even though they have to make at least $5.85 an hour, at an average of $6.81 an hour, fast food cooks were the lowest paid profession in Kansas, Kansas reports.

So in a state with a minimum hourly wage that wouldn’t even buy a gallon of gas, fast food cooks are the lowest of the low.

OK, so working for a fast food joint is a crappy job. Who didn’t know that?

Either way, here’s the point. McDonald’s 2006 annual report state that the company took in $21.6 billion in revenues that year, returning $4.9 billion to shareholders. Poor little Wendy’s only took in $2.4 billion, according to their 2006 annual report. Burger King barely broke $2 billion.

That’s a lot of moolah that’s not going back to the workers who made it. Think of that next time you’ve got a burgerlust.

I like Spam

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.

Yeah, that’s four links to the same thing. Who cares? It’s awesome.

The links are to BigBoxReuse.com, a project documenting what becomes of those megastore and big box companies that swore, swore, swore to municipal planning officials that the stores would be bringing in jobs and sales tax revenues forever and ever and ever. A couple are churches now. Some are schools. One’s an indoor racetrack. One’s a Spam Museum.

Now this appeals to me personally for a couple reasons. Mainly, it’s because I’m from Rockford, Illinois – home of Cheap Trick, the replacement Destiny’s Child and the Sock Monkey. At one point it was a major factory town, sometimes called “Screw City” because it was a major producer of nuts, bolts and other fasteners. Now that’s the name of a local roller derby team.

If you go to that link, click on Teams and Players to see the Screw City Slammers.

Most of the industry died away and my hometown became a hole. It was the worst place in the country to live, according to Money Magazine. We beat Flint, Michigan. In fact, Michael Moore came to visit us for his film The Big One just because we beat Flint. He interviewed my boss.

Now, Rockford has come a long way since I was in high school in the 90s, but there are still problems. The nearby Chrysler plant in Belvidere is planning massive layoffs. The industrial center is very well demolished, but boy can we flip burgers for each other! My hometown became a massive sprawl-monster of big box stores and burger joints. We can no longer make things, but we sure can buy them.

As for me, college in Missouri. Sprawl. A job in the Chicago suburbs. Sprawl. Aside from a few years spent in Chicago itself (which has its own mess of problems), I’ve always been around sprawl, sprawl, sprawl.

One thing I noticed from my constant, Midwestern exposure to sprawl is that it doesn’t last. In Rockford, the booming sprawl areas of my youth are now the older, seedier areas with second-tier stores, vacant megastore fronts and strip clubs. As Rockford keeps expanding eastward, the big, profitable stores keep moving east. It’s easier to move to where the business is rather than bring the business to you, it seems.

Or, to put it another way, when the need a store fills is perceived, not real, it’s easier for people to ignore it when something perceived as better comes along.

So I was happy when I saw BigBoxReuse.com. I’m happy that someone is getting use out of the empty husks large corporations leave behind when they find an area no longer profitable. As a kid who grew up among those coprolites, I gotta say, I wish they were never there, but I’m glad they’re being used.

Changing Joneses

I seem to have a knack for coming across interesting information years after a lot of other people did.

Take for example, this article from 1999 by Juliet Schor.

It’s a bit long and a bit academic, but there’s a lot of meat to chew on there, even if it’s almost nine years later. One thing I found particularly interesting is her idea that Americans are spending more and consuming more in part because “keeping up with the Joneses” no longer means the Joneses down the block. It means the Joneses on TV, the Joneses in the workplace.

But as married women entered the workforce in larger numbers-particularly in white collar jobs-they were exposed to a more economically diverse group of people, and became more likely to gaze upward. Neighborhood contacts correspondingly declined, and the workplace became a more prominent point of reference. Moreover, as people spent less time with neighbors and friends, and more time on the family-room couch, television became more important as a source of consumer cues and information. Because television shows are so heavily skewed to the “lifestyles of the rich and upper middle class,” they inflate the viewer’s perceptions of what others have, and by extension what is worth acquiring-what one must have in order to avoid being “out of it.”

Neat, huh? As for me, I’m inclined to believe that the downfall of social interaction is contributing to a lot of ills in society, so I’m probably not the best judge of Juliet Schor’s arguments. She’s saying what I already feel, so I’ll leave it up to you to chew on that. I’m biased.

While you’re chewing, also consider this comment from James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly.

Norm Abrams is totally punk

They say that by the time a spirit is named, it’s dead. And by “they,” I mean that guy who wrote that in a comic book I remember reading once.

For some reason, that line sprung to mind when I read this article about the band Gruk. I’ve never heard of Gruk before, but that’s the only thing that comes up when you type “anticonsumerist” into Google news. (Sorry if I’ve given away some of my blogging secrets.) I’ve listened to them since. They rock.

But it seems it’s not enough just to have tight guitar-work, solid bass lines and some real old-school, 90s-punk screaming. In the article, writer Christine G.K. LaPado describes the band as “fiercly DIY” and describes DIY as “Do It Yerself, an anticonsumerist political stance focusing on self-reliance.”

Being a former green-haired, tattoo-wielding, wishy-washy little punk poseur, I had heard the term DIY before, but never as an anticonsumerist political stance focusing on self-reliance. I had heard it in terms of “they’re really DIY,” while I nodded my spinach-coiffed head as if I knew what they were talking about.

Now, Wikipedia – that source of information for and by the uninformed – has three separate articles on DIY: DIY, DIY ethic and DIY culture.

Cut-and-pasted directly from the DIY culture article:

“Some commentators have criticised DIY culture as a form of laissez-faire libertarianism only available to those who already have access to resources and leisure in this society.”

Cut-and-pasted from the DIY ethic article:

“The term can indicate “doing” anything from home improvements and repairs to healthcare, from publication to electronics.”

Thoughts on the first quote: Who are these commentators? Who is getting paid to call things “laissez-faire libertarianism” and how do I get that job? Most of the jobs I’ve had involved either bookstores or lifting and hauling things.

Thoughts on the second quote: Health care? Health care?

Now taking it all together: What the hell? I don’t want to mock people who have decided that we don’t need all the services and products available through one simple swipe of the credit card, but do you have to name it? Let’s give it a different name than “DIY ethic.” Let’s just call it “doing stuff.”

Granted, during my teen years, my dad could have gotten me to be more helpful around the house if he had managed to convince me it was punk. Somehow, building Adirondack chairs for the back yard didn’t scream Dead Kennedys to me.

My point is that naming the basic concept of being a capable, competent human being as “an anticonsumerist political stance” is not only silly, but counterproductive. I agree with the message, but not with the means. Yes, you can make your own chair, your own clothes, your own crafts. No, you don’t need to buy that stuff. But don’t alienate other people with your pompous acronyms. I don’t need to read about the sociological implications of knitting. I don’t need to hear about “DIY,” about “craftivism,” about politics and silk screening.

Other people will associate making their own stuff with punk and most people, sorry to say, don’t want to be punk. Your little naming frenzy is just turning people off from a very good habit to form. Shut the hell up!

Actually, you don’t need me to tell you to shut up. Do it yourself.

Finally, the interview

I called him. He called me. I forgot to call him. He forgot to call me. It just never worked out.

But now, after all this silliness, I finally have my interview with Brandon McCormick, director of Consumerism! The Musical, the first anticonsumer satire I’ve seen in years that hasn’t made me want to slap the perpetrators.

We ended up doing it by e-mail, so the interview will sound stilted and weird. Forgiving my James Lipton-ness, here we go.

Name: Brandon McCormick

Age: 23

Day Job: Full time filmmaking, I own Whitestone

Location: Atlanta, Ga

Education: Art College Drop out

Now the questions:

How long have you been making films?

I’ve been making films since I was 15 years old. I started writing in high school as a way to cope with Math class. I began making films and then started winning awards. I figured maybe I could pull this off and make a living doing it. I was awarded a full scholarship to Art Institute of Atlanta through a film festival, but then soon dropped out to start my own company. I figured I could either learn about outdated equipment and techniques for four years, or start my film company and go for it.

Why consumerism as a topic? Who came up with the idea and how? Do any of Whitestone’s other movies relate to this?

As Americans, we’re faced with copious amounts of consumerism daily. One can’t help but think about it when walking through a normal day. I came up with the concept for an over the top musical about consumerism when I heard the statistic that Americans make up about 5% of the world population yet use up 60% of the worlds resources (dont quote me on that, it’s just something I heard). We throw away more food than the rest of the world gets to eat. I dreamt up the idea ironically in a Starbucks, which accounts for the opening scene. I then commissioned writer and musicians Billy Wilkerson and Nick Kirk to create the song for the piece, which they executed brilliantly, and I was then able to film the piece from there.

I think a similar piece is Smiling Addiction, which really highlights a view of sadness to our addiction to being happy. Many people think it has to do with medication or drug addiction, but they couldn’t be more wrong. It has to do with our society telling us what will make us happy, and we buy into it every time. It has to do with my own addictions that I purse to try and be ‘happy’

You call it “a satire and celebration of the culture we live in.” What makes that topic so rife for satire? What do you find funniest about it?

As a consuming American myself, I feel that the only way I could even talk about the subject was to make fun of myself. We really live in cartoon proportions considering the rest of the world, and the history of mankind before us. The Hummers and the extremely expensive clothing, it’s really absurd. I think everyone else is laughing at us, why not join in? The best and most honest satire is the satire of ourselves.

This has been viewed on YouTube over 185,000 times – over four times more than Whitestone’s next-most-viewed video. What do you think accounts for that?

It certainly hits a nerve in the culture. I know most people dont like to be preached at or watch things that make their eyes roll. Consumerism! The Musical highlights the things we all do, big or small. I believe consumerism at any level in inescapable, I know that people see themselves in the video because I put myself in the video. Maybe if they can take a look at it dead on, and think for a moment, we can all realized the absurdity and try to do something about it, no matter how small.

Who wrote the song?

The extremely talented Wright Brothers, Billy Wilkerson and Nick Kirk.

Billy is a writer at Whitestone Motion Pictures as well as a talented musician (he is the voice who sings in the song).

Nick is the composer at Whitestone Motion Pictures and creates all the original music for Whitestone.

They were the team behind the music to “Smiling Addiction” and “Off the Shelf” as well.

(note: they make a cameo in the piece, they’re the guys in the mustaches that fall off “A llama, wow, why?” 1st = billy 2nd = nick)

Did you have a hard time explaining it to people when making it?

I had a hard time explaining to some. Our Executive Producer Dave Ronne got it right away and really made it possible to push the film forward. 

I had the hardest time explaining it to the mall personnel in a way that they wouldn’t kick us out. They kept saying…”hmmm…it looks like you’re making fun of the mall” and I’m going “no no no, it’s a celebration!!”

Your comments on YouTube talked about the film as self-satire. What do you do in your own life that you were referring to?

This film is completely about myself. I am that guy. I zip around drinking $4 coffees and overeating every chance I get. I ironically filmed the storyboard before the film and watched playback on my brand new iPhone while filming. I’m that guy, and this film serves as a reminder that haunts me and makes me question a lot of my actions. It helps me think twice about some of the decisions I make, and maybe someday, the addiction can be broken.

Do you own a llama?

I own two of course.