ethical dilemma
So I was watching Nightline the other night and one of the stories was, surprisingly, about Christmas shopping. The reporter was talking to some 20-something chick who’s apparently an online shopping guru or something. They were in an electronics store and she was demonstrating this “awesome app” on her iPhone. I don’t remember what it was called, but let’s just call it the bar code app. Basically, the bar code app allows you to scan the bar code of any item you might wish to buy and see if you can buy it online more cheaply. So then, when it comes up more cheaply at Amazon, you depart the brick and mortar store in haste — the brick and mortar store that gives you free access to these bar codes but just lost your business — and go purchase said item online for less.
I’m sorry, maybe it’s me, but I have a bit of an ethical dilemma with that. I know that’s quaint and dusty of me — an ethical dilemma, how last century of you, Trace — but I think it’s kind of sneaky and exploitative to use the brick and mortar store not as a place where you purchase goods but as a kind of research tool to find where you can purchase for less the very same items that they are selling. If you do find it for less, why not approach the manager of the store and ask if they’ll match the price? Don’t we need brick and mortar stores? Do we want our entire lives to be conducted online?
The bookstore we used to visit every Saturday morning recently went out of business along with all its other locations in San Diego. And I’m sad about that, really sad. I’m sad that 3-dimensional life seems to be slipping away from us by inches. I’m sad that the printed page seems to be disappearing. I don’t mean to sound like that cranky old lady down the street waving her cane at life and proclaiming doom at every turn, but damn. We’re 3-dimensional creatures who still need to conduct 3-dimensional lives — which is really a different post, I suppose.
But back to my dilemma here. Am I the only one who thinks using an app like that is sneaky and, well, a bit ethically squinky? If you’re willing to ask the store to meet the lower price you found, I have no problem with it, if the store ultimately meets the price for you. Be blunt and tell them to meet the price or you will purchase it elsewhere. In this economy, I imagine they’d meet it. But if you scan the bar code in that store, find a lower price online, and then buy it there, my opinion is you’re exploiting that store and robbing them of your business, business they desperately need.
Is it just me? If so, I’m starting the cane-waving and fist-shaking decades ahead of schedule here.
Look. If the brick and mortar store ultimately goes away, where will you go to use your “awesome bar code app”?
oh, for god’s sake, women
Go read roo’s post about one woman’s rude comment to her, a woman I’ve already soundly beaten up in my head. The whole posts touches on the general nosy meanness of women in certain areas.
Seriously, womenfolk. What’s wrong with us? Why do we have to be such beyotches to each other? And why is there such a proprietary vibe, a need to know or comment about one another’s bodies — whether we’re pregnant, whether we’re NOT pregnant and WHY? It’s one thing if the women involved in the exchange are friends, but it’s another thing altogether if they’re strangers and one of the women has no effin’ boundaries. What is it about the female DNA that makes us this way? Roo hits on a point that I think I’ve mentioned before in one of my infertility posts: Men don’t ask these kinds of questions or make these kinds of comments to women. They’re just wired differently, thank God. They know when to keep their mouths shut and, besides that, it’s not a competition for them, but I think it is for women. Am I thinner than you? More fertile than you?
I need to know to feel better than you and, mostly, better about myself.
Stop it, women. Stop it, I beg you!
Ugh.
happy thanksgiving!
What I’ll be eating …….
Actually, this is an outright lie, since I am currently in the deep dark middle of nowhere with no Polish sausage arms in sight unless you count my MIL’s. This is only what I’m fantasizing about eating. Plop this pudgester on a platter, garnish with some parsley, and I’m good to go. No gravy, no side dishes necessary. Just the all-consuming pudge.
Hope your Thanksgiving is just as jolly and delicious, pippa!
miss it and miss a lot! a lot!! a lot!!!
If you look at the protected post below and think, “Eh, a recap of the last post she wrote about Maybe Church, I don’t need to read it,” I should mention that it does contain new mindblowing blockbuster information.
Well, at least “new,” anyway, but it’s Friday, and I have a penchant for engaging in massive gigantic soul-shaking overstatements on Fridays.
All of this to say that the post isn’t just a recap.
password
Being sent out. Check your emails today, pippa.
Oh Lawd.
carrie underwood asked out by stranger in front of fiance
Who knows how I stumbled across this little snippet of video? Somehow in the meanderings of my need-to-get-a-life life, I found this, of all things. But it’s adorable.
Some dude asks out Carrie Underwood in front of her fiance — now husband — hunky hockey player Mike Fisher. Watch his face. First, it’s like, “I’m gonna kill this guy.” Then, when Carrie responds the way she does, there’s that grin of his. That killer grin says it all. He says nothing to the dude the entire time. He’s just that strong silent presence. The dude’s parting comment is pretty funny too and it leaves Fisher grinning even more. (Uhm, I can definitely see the appeal of this fellow of hers. Ahem.)
So much going on in just 19 seconds of tape.
sometimes you just need to offload
I’ve figured out why my thinking has been sluggish lately. It’s not my diet, which is fine, or lack of exercise, which I partake of daily on my trampoline, or the drinking or drugs, to which my body has now acclimated after many jittery decades of abuse.
No. It’s stupid random stuff that clogs my brain and ruins me utterly.
Take Jim Caviezel, for instance.
He’s a nice-looking fellow, no? But that’s not the thing clogging my brain. Nope. It’s not. It could potentially be brain-clogging, I suppose, but that’s really not it right now.
Because I am, sad to say, much more bothered by this thought:
Is the prosthetic nose worn by Jim Caviezel in The Passion of the Christ …..
the same prosthetic nose he wore in The Stoning of Soraya M?
(Granted, these photos are not at the same angle, but that’s the best I could do.)
It’s a bit sad, don’t you think, that this is the stuff that consumes me? Frankly — and I think this a deeply disturbing admission — I find him better looking as Jesus than as his normal self but it’s not because of “Jesus,” although I can’t say that with certainty which is the disturbing part. Really, I think it’s because of the nose. I think. I hope. That crook nose nicely de-pretties his practically perfect face which just makes him much yummier in my opinion. I don’t like a pretty man. This is why I would gladly punch Brad Pitt repeatedly in his pretty-pretty face — for his own good, you see.
But back to the noses. They look nearly identical. Is this the same nose? The same nose artist? (Which I’m pretty sure is the correct technical term.) Did Jim Caviezel just put his Jesus nose in a drawer thinking, “Better hang on to this. Never know when I might need it”? And does he get better reviews with a Middle Eastern nose?
Okay.
I need help, pippa. I just wrote a post about Jim Caviezel’s prosthetic noses.
This is not normal behavior.
“kooky” a film by jan sverak
I love this trailer of the movie Kooky by Czech filmmaker Jan Sverak. I’m now kind of pining to see the whole thing somehow.
” …. forced to stand on his two stuffed feet and become a hero.”
Hahaha. Magical with a touch of silly. My kind of thing.
soo … nice try
A few people I’ve never before heard of or from have emailed me asking for the password on the upcoming churchy posts. One even made a first-time comment on a recent post simply — it seems to me — to meet my criteria for getting the password. I’m sorry, but I’m going to be a total battle-axe here and I don’t care.
So let me clarify my earlier clarification:
There are no criteria anymore.
If you don’t get the password, it could be for any number of whimsical, spur-of-the-moment reasons that flit through my brain. This pleases me immensely.
But — you especially won’t get the password if I think you’re playing games with me to satisfy your morbid curiosity. Seriously. Don’t email me telling me I’ve heard from you before “in the past” when I can easily search through my emails and see that’s not true. Do you think I don’t do that? Then you, my friend, really don’t know me. Don’t diss me like that. Come on. I’m blonde. I ain’t dumb.
I know the people I know on this blog and you can neither fool me nor fake me out on this. And the people who know me on this blog don’t have to basically introduce themselves to me in an email. Come ON.
So. Okay. (Calm down, battle-axe. Sheesh.)
But Crackie is in NO mood on this topic, ‘mkay?