Wednesday, December 15, 2004

A Cautionary Tale

In the beginning, God created consumers and malls. And the malls were without form and empty. And God said (in a CAPS-LOCK, BOLD KIND OF WAY):
LET THERE BE MARTS
.

And The Lord created K-Marts, and Wall-Marts and filled the malls with marts of every shape and size.

And The Lord said it was good.

And the Lord divided the marts between Global Empires and Small, Independently-Owned ventures that had not a chance of surviving.

And The Lord said it was good.

And The Lord explained that maybe it wasn't good, but it was healthy corporate competition which keeps prices low and consumer choices high, and that WAS good, so sayeth The Lord.

And the Global Empire-Marts bore big obnoxious sprouts and flourished, like unto the nasty Cicada explosion of 2004 when they fleweth in your hair and cruncheth on the sidewalks. And great stock bonuses were awarded to the Upper Management who already enough riches to make Solomon weep. And from their yacht, they thanked The Lord and raised their champagne glasses high.

And they said it was mighty fine.

And the Small, Independently-Owned Marts flourished not. Their seeds fell upon hard economic soil and were choked by enormous concrete weeds and trampled by plastic shopping carts with sqeaky wheels. The global empires cared not -- as they were quite busy -- and the small, independently owned ventures said it sucked greatly.

And they lamented both day and night.

And the Global Empire-Marts ignored the whining of the Small Independently-Owned Marts, and said, "Be quiet, or we'll eat you up!" And they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws.

And the Lord reminded them this was not supposed to be Where The Wild Things Are and the Global Empire-Marts apologized greatly, saying it was their favorite bedtime story.

And the Global Empire-Marts began consuming The Small, Independently-Owned Marts as if they were made of milk and honey.

And they said it was yummy.

And K-Mart pretended to be reading Chapter 11 in bed whilst having the flu, but then devoured Sears, saying that Martha was like unto a corporate rock-paper-scissors VOLCANO when compared to their pansy Kenmore idol. And Sony devoured MGM, and there was great sadness for The Lion that was greatly beloved. And Cingular devoured AT&T, hoping to scare the BeJeebus out of Verizon -- can we eat you now? -- in the process.

And Walmart sat back, opened another case of Pork Rinds and did nothing because they owned damn near everything anyway. And Coca-Cola cracked open a cold one and devoured the leftovers, saying, "Things go better with a Coke."

And it really wasn't so good anymore.

1 comment:

lifeonhold said...

Haha, yeah, I was wondering how a global mart coming out of bankrupcy [K-Mart] could gobble up Sears. Doesn't that take 1) a good credit rating, and 2) money? Or does it mean that American icon, Sears, is in even worse shape?