Rabid Accounts Collection

Dear Ebay,

Re-fucking-lax. I really and truly hope that you don't really need my $3.60 account balance to keep the lights on so please don't go sending me urgent payment requests for a lame ass $3.60 invoice.

Which will probably turn out to be spam anyway.

Wowee, my eyelids are heavy this morning. But I've got my coffee lifting cranes in place and expect to be able to keep my eyes open for longer than a minute shortly.

[Update: Ebay sent another email this morning, which looked alot like the spam Ebay email I get all the time, that informed me that my account has now been suspended and the world might come to end unless I pay them their $3.60.

Rick mentions in his comment that he's no longer using Ebay, I'm very open to alternatives that don't suck as hard as Ebay does now. Got one to suggest? Bring it on!]

Here, Get Your Eyes Opened

The New Yorker: Selling Wal-Mart is long but worth the read to get a better sense of the public relations machinations behind the smiley face.

Written up in more detail at WIPE. But did you know Wal-Mart's average hourly pay for a full time worker is $10.51 and CostCo's is $17.46?

Something to think about. Found via the Grist Mill.

Also, here's another piece from Grist Mill explaining why a big box store like Wal-Mart can't really ever go "green".

Wal-Mart's initiatives have just enough meat to have distracted much of the environmental movement, along with most journalists and many ordinary people, from the fundamental fact that, as a system of distributing goods to people, big-box retailing is as intrinsically unsustainable as clear-cut logging is as a method of harvesting trees.