Letter Never Sent

This might be BS, but it seemed funny anyway. This guy at work told me that it costs a dollar to have an unlisted number. Instead of doing that, he listed his telephone number under “Hugh Janus”.

One Sunday night about a month ago, I was in the Half-price Books skulking around for something to read. Not being particularly optimistic or venturesome by nature, I couldn’t decide what I wanted, so I just paced around the store waiting for inspiration to strike. It didn’t.

Thankfully, an employee came over the intercom to announce that the store would be closing in ten minutes, and, that if we wanted to transact business we should get our collective asses in gear. I didn’t want to end the night without a book, so I ran over to Literature and grabbed the first thing that had a high probability of being good (and cheap). This turned out to be a thin paperback of Moby-Dick, complete with a 1960’s-style woodcut illustration of Captain Ahab on the cover. It cost me all of twenty-eight cents.

Almost every night for the past several weeks, I have propped myself up in bed to read Moby-Dick. It has been a revelation in many ways, and I have been pleased to jettison my preconceptions of the thing in exchange for actual experience. For such a small book, it delivers more than whole piles of other books. It is as deep and rich as the ocean itself, soaked with Melville’s humor and vitality. Melville devotes entire chapters (although all his chapters are brief) to various asides on whaling, whale biology, history, and seafaring. The entire first part of the book is a bibliographical list of places where whales appear in literature; from Jonah’s Leviathan in the Bible to Michel de Montaigne and Hamlet.

I have learned a few things as well:

• The Pequod’s first mate, Starbuck, is the inspiration for the coffee chain. This means Starbucks stole their name from Moby-Dick. Somehow, this is not surprising.
• Moby-Dick is based in part on a real albino whale by the name of Mocha Dick.

I’m still reading through the book, but one thing I’m starting to realize is the widespread poverty of modern language and literature. With so much being written and talked about, there is so little being said that has any lasting value or charm. Living in the information age is like living in the age of crap. It makes you appreciate those rare individuals who express things well. I’ll have to remember that the next time I go on about something unimportant: Speak less, say more.

Resources:

1. Read Moby-Dick online for free at Project Gutenberg.
   
2. Moby-Dick entry at Wikipedia

To all within earshot, have a Happy Thanksgiving! I’ll be doing a lot of driving and I imagine you will be too. Watch out for all those liberated office thralls motoring around in their family cruisers, don’t overdo anything, and enjoy the company of family and friends.

My company, Duet Design, is looking for partners web monkeys. Basically, we need a few extra hands since we have more business then we can get out the door. Right now, for every job we do, I’m the one doing nearly 100% of it. Obviously, this prevents future growth since I can only do so much per hour.

This is not an hourly or salaried position. You will only get paid for the hours you work like any contract or freelance job. The only difference is we juggle many different projects on a regular basis. Let me know if you are interested. I’d like to get to the point where I have several people I work with on a regular basis that I farm stuff out to.

Life hasn’t changed so much over the millenia.

On the morning drive to work, I sometimes look around at my fellow travelers whizzing by and think about how we would have lived twenty thousand years ago. Instead of climbing into metal pods to get to work, we would have risen in the morning and set out with our families to hunt, fish, and scavenge for anything edible. Finding and preparing food would have made up the bulk of our day. As it got dark, we would have returned to our homes and went to bed. Most of what we do now is just a veil obscuring two powerful motives: socialization and survival.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s behind Walmart’s push for cheap generics. They’re clearly feeling some sort of pressure from the neighborhood drugstores, which have been expanding rapidly and not just due to an aging population as the article suggests. In my neighborhood in downtown Dallas, there are 5 or more drugstores within a mile radius. On Lemmon Ave, there are two CVS stores less than a mile away from one another. I think as more people move back into city centers, or remote burb-claves and cocooning trends continue due to things like: cable TV, Netflix, and the Internet that keep us cooped up inside, the big-box stores will have to compete with a raft of smaller, neighborhood-type stores. This is fine except it requires massive, centralized companies like Walmart to get nimble. The other problem is that they’re getting more competition in the affluent suburbs from companies like Target and Kohl’s.

Beemer thinks Wal-Mart’s threat is indeed significant, despite the fact that its program so far only covers about 300 generic drugs out of thousands on the market. Because the company is largely using its pharmaceutical business to leverage up its store traffic in the hope that customers will buy other goods in its stores, expanding the $4 price to cover more drugs is likely. At a certain price, people will forego the convenience of the local Walgreen or CVS to make a longer drive to Wal-Mart.

Four dollars “is an incredible price point for Wal-Mart. I think there is no question they will expand it,” he says.

Key to its strategy is luring 55-plus, low-to-middle income shoppers that Wal-Mart isn’t getting right now and that could well be important to the company’s future. Indeed, the goal of all pharmacies is to become the one-stop shop for customers who buy multiple drugs each month. By luring buyers with promises of a few low-price, even below-cost generics, they can either retain or expand their base of customers who may buy other brand-name drugs at considerably higher prices and higher profits.

“Wal-Mart is basically saying, ‘I’m stabbing the head off my drugstore competitors,’” Beemer says.

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