anti-corporate | Kids Like You & Me (KLYAM)

I love Christmas, plain and simple. It’s my favorite holiday. No, not for the sharing of joy, and spirit, not for celebrating some dude’s birthday (can’t remember the guy’s name), and certainly not for seeing some fat fuck lodge his holly, jolly ass in my chimney. No, rather, I adore all the little doo das that are packaged with this season. At first glance, y’all that know me, must be screaming to yourselves, “WTF?! WHAT HAS THIS WORLD COME TO?!” But, don’t bash your pathetic, worthless skulls through your computer screens, just yet. It’s not like I’m hawking Dr. Pepper *cough Mr. NWA. Mr. Dr. Dre. Gangsta* Anyway, I think if one carefully plucks out the good, the bad, and the ugly, you can still maintain some politico aficionado dignity. So, yeah I’m mostly anti-consumerism and anti-corporate, but I must say I have an affinity for the GOOD Christmas specials, films, songs, decorations, traditions, etc. that make Christmas Christmas, that is the commercialized Chri$tmas, not that guy’s birthday, whoever he was… So, like everything else in life, I have mastered the task of weeding out the bad and especially the ugly and preserving the good ( a must see Christmas list will appear as a future post). To wrap up (no pun intended lol) this little, somewhat aimless, rant, I’d like to mention that a major beef of mine about Christmas is the way it’s pushed on consumers sooo early. I for one, do not begin my Christmas splurge until the day after Thanksgiving, in which Christmas With Johnny Cash rocks into heavy rotation until the Twenty-Fifth of December. Anything before this is wayyyy too early. Satan’s little helpers market Christmas the day after Halloween, if not before then. Thanksgiving is merely a break between the jamming of Christmas down your throat, squirting out red and green blood under the mistletoe.

Chris

This isn’t really a thorough, ground breaking analysis but…profit maximizing corporations suck. There is no excuse and here’s why: Dell, maybe you own a computer made by these guys, utilizes a strategy called 3-7. It’s pretty simple, three out of ten computers are efficiently produced and are expected to be immune from any major problems. The other seven computers will be prone to problems and will require some kind of repair work. This business model works out wonderfully for Dell because people who encounter a computer that requires repair will send it back for service (back to India where the repair will be incredibly cheap) OR buy another computer (Dell hopes it’s one of their “3” models that costs only $500) all together, figuring it’s too much of a hassle to wait for a repair. Dell doesn’t mind repairing computers or assisting people in their difficulties. Their cheaply manufactured products will make them a shit load of money in sales and cost them only slightly in expenses and production. This kind of profiting off of bad things happening is not uncommon. It’s been around for years — the automotive industry has been a consistent example over the years of purposely making shoddily and unsafe parts and accessories. That’s because the cost of repair (paying damages to victims of an “accident” OFTEN subsidized by the government through TAXPAYER monies) is minutely important relative to profit, which will always be there. It can and has been argued that many industries make money off of bad things happening. And honestly I don’t feel like I am in the business to propose a lasting solution to this terrible problem. Social business is a start, perhaps most feasible in an industrial age like ours.

Boston based shows/fests – DIY, punk, noise