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Tom is one of America's greatest unpublished writers...watch for his stuff...bound to make it through the gears one day......
-----Original Message-----
From: TDBadyna@aol.com Tom Badyna
Sent: Saturday, June 24, 2006 7:22 PM
Subject: The Crapification of America
A few weeks ago I bought a box of Diamond-brand stick matches for use by the fireplace in my office.Within a few days, the high humidity had rendered them useless. You'd strike and they'd fiizz and spark and go out. One after another. After about ten fiizing matches I threw the whole box in the fireplace and took out my Bic lighter.
This was no small event. When I first tried to make a serious effort at writing, about twelve years ago, I wrote that there were somethings in life that were near perfect, that could not be readily improved upon. Among these was Therma-Flu Alka-Seltzer, Eastwing framing hammers, Red Wing boots and Diamond-brand stick matches.
This morning I bought another box of Diamond stick matches, believing that I had had the bad luck to purchase matches from a rare bad batch. But these too, on another, wet, humid day, tended to fizz and spark and peter out with a paltry puff of smoke, lighting nothing.
This was a sad thing. For forty-some years, from childhood firecrackers to romantic-dinner candles, Diamond matches had reliably lighted whatever needed lighting, and now they don't. And in a tiny way, but measureable still, my life is less.
If Ivan Krueger hadn't already blown his brains out, he'd do it again.
(Ivan Krueger, a Swede, was known as The Match King, controlling by the time of his death -- circa 1900 -- over ninety-percent of the world's match production. Only a couple of Polish companies refused to buckle to his monopolistic pressures.)
This match thing, the demise of the quality of Diamond matches, is a small thing really, not worth this effort, but it got to me this morning, set me off.
I can't hardly read the paper anymore. I skim the sports section, then read the theater and book reviews. That's it. The rest is an ever-downward-spiralling chroinicle of a country going to pot. It is so bad, so hopeless, that there is no pleaure even in criticizing it. But some things, like a Hemingway sentence, were still good and true. An Eastwing framing hammer -- boy, you can't have one of those in your hand without smiling, mean looking, mean feeling, elegant, almost art, indestructible too. And Diamond-brand stick matches, strike anywhere, light anywhere, with that pleasing whiff of sulphur. But not anymore. And I'm pissed. You've made crap out of ninety-nine percent of the country, leave my fucking matches alone.
That's all I have to say.
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2006 12:19 PM
Subject: The Crapification of America, Part II
One of the things I liked best about Italy, one of the things that struck me most as being different from America in a meaningful way, was what ya might call the dignity they accorded all occupations. Twas as if everyone considered themselves a professional, from streetsweepers to clerks and waiters to bell men, carpenters, masons, fruit pickers....
It's not an egalitarian society, in fact, is a subtly severely stratified society with acutely defined lines, but it seemed to me everyone took pride in their occupation, in the small part of the world where they were expert. So I'm not claiming for Italy an ideal, only that I noted a pride in occupation that is absent here. It's a look in the eye, a posture, a slant of shoulder, a willingness to say this is who I am -- but more too, it was a competency. In America, it's what you were, or will be, or could have been, or should be. Occupations here are weigh stations on the way somewhere else. Maybe the difference between here and there has something to do with the class lines, maybe not. But it's there anyway, the difference, and in Italy I never went into a shop, bar or restaurant or hotel where the person I interacted with didn't consider him- or herself as a professional and proud of their tiny fiefdom and accomplished their tasks with self-importance and, often, aplomb. And I liked it.
That used to be a little the way it was even quite recently in some U.S. cities, New Orleans, Chicago, New York. But now with an IKEA up in what used to be the Brooklyn Navy Yards, a Duane Reade or CVS on almost every Manhattan corner, or if not, then a Starbucks, and with New Orleans drowned, it's harder and harder to find that. It's a loss. It makes life crappier, bad service, indifference, shame in their self as reflected in their status, too cool to do their job well...
It's what I love about the local 7 -11, the little Turkish clan that runs it. That abyssmal blight on America is their fiefdom amd they're proud of it. They walk to work, pedal their bicycles, take the bus in their stupid red shirts beaming fucking proud. "I'm the 7 - 11 guy, I make you coffee fresh every cup."
But that's not America. Home Depot is America. And Home Depot has stolen more pleasure from my life than any combination of evil women, nasty bosses, bad breaks, failures. If I believed in Satan, it'd be my guess that every VP on up is a Luciferous minion. Little do I loathe as much as Home Depot.
If they get into masonry supplies, I'm committing suicide. I thank God I can still go to the local stone yard, walk into the trailer, put my feet up, chit chat for a few minutes about stone and sand and gravel, receive some advice, offer some too, so on.
Used to be that way in hardware stores and lumber yards and plumbing supply shops all across this country. Never did you go into one and not come out knowing a little more than when you came in. The folks working there knew their shit. A guy might clerk in a hardware store for forty years. Forty years talking about nuts and screws and sandpaper and little tips. Forty years is time enough to weed out the bullshit you hear. A kid working in a lumber yard didn't get to talk to customers, not until he'd toted shit for several years. By the time he got behind the counter, he could tell you a thing or two about wood. Or, at least, he knew every scrap of wood they had and how to order it.
It used to be fun to go fetch supplies, even if you weren't quite sure what you needed. The supply folks knew what you did. You learned, you took another step into the club of knowing how the world's put together. But Home Depot changed all that. By the time an employee learns enough to be useful, he's promoted off the floor. And while he's on the floor, since he doesn't know anything, he tried to hide from customers by appearing busy -- or if he's a good employee, he ignores you and keeps the shelves in order, keeps the demonic place running smoothly for the pencil pushers at the home office. It's the process their concerned with, the structure of business. Last week he was selling shoes, next week he'll be desktop publishing. It doesn't matter. He's qualified. He's in business, marketing and it's all the same, and millions of customers wander aimlessly through the store, milling about, bumping into each other's fat waddling asses, looking for shitthey don't need -- buy, buy, buy. Who gives a fuck what it is. You'll feel better for five minutes.
I almost get physically sick every time I have to go to a Home Depot -- and if you're in the business I'm in, you can't avoid going there at least once a month. Their business model, capitalizing on the gross stupidity of the herd, has ruined the business model of thousands of hardware stores, lumber yards, plumbing supply shops. I've almost had nervous breakdowns standing in check out lines. Twenty people can be held up indefintely, burning daylight, because the sticker of fifty-cent piece of widget won't scan into the computer. This is a crisis and has to be attended to as if it were maybe a misrepresented Rembrant at Sotheby's. An idiot check out girl has to by training hold up twenty people while she pages an equally idiot clerk to go find the proper sticker for this widget, and neither of them know what it is or where it came from, and neither does the customer. It's a big store and he's bought a thousand things he's not sure are the right things. If it's to be a heart attack I die of, it'll be in line at Home Depot, and I'll ask you now, I want Home Depot named under cause of death on the coroner's certificate.
But I avoid Home Depot as much as possible, happily pay extra to buy the shit I need almost anywhere else. There's a local hardware store still in business, and I go there at least twice a week. I walk in the door and the guy who owns it says, "Hi Tom, whatcha need today?" I say, "Three-eighth self-tapping screws for my boat." And he goes fetches me the screws, assuring me these'll never corrode. I'm out in five minutes, maybe four, and still had time to talk about the weather. Or that's how it used to be. He used to give me a twenty-percent discount on everything, once he got to realize I buy a lot of widgets and tools, spit and bailing wire. But not anymore. The chubby little fuck ain't the happy guy he was two years ago. My twenty percent discount has evaporated. I've overheard him begging suppliers to keep delivering. But why should they. They deliver truckloads to Home Depot, and maybe two boxes to the Cutchogue Hradware, and it's twenty miles from the next nearest delivery. I still shop there, more than I need to, but his head clerk is leaving, going to Smithtown...
It's the choice we make, what we decide is quality of life, and what we've decided is that the highest criterion for our quality of life is stuff, the more the better, the cheaper the better, the sooner the better, and no matter how annoying and aggravating and stupefying the process becomes, we put up with it, because we need more stuff, we need it cheaper and we need it now. We make decisions on what kind of society we live in with zero weight given to what might make a man's life dignified on a daily basis. Dignity is a 700 series BMW and nothing less.
And if you wonder why I fantasize about living in Bolivia and riding a donkey to market...
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2006 2:37 PM
Subject: Summation of the Crapification of America
Sound business practices are one thing, even, maybe, a good thing. (I wouldn't know.) But adopting the business model as a fundamental principle underlying life is, I'll tell ya, an evil thing. It creates a world in which it makes perfect sense that, in order to save a truck from driving an extra twenty miles to deliver a few boxes, five thousand people have to drive thirty miles to buy what was in those five boxes. We call it efficiency. Then, with those five thousand people having nowhere else to go, you can cut services, run fewer and fewer registers, run them with stupider and stupider people making less and less money. It makes perfect business sense for fifty people to be aggravated for an hour so that one fifty-cent widget is properly accounted for. The people have no choice. To the man who created this, we give untold riches and honor and respect, kiss his ass in every way imaginable. We tell him he's done a good thing. The chubby little fuck at my corner store who can't globally compete -- he's a dufus, probably a loser, worth, at best, pity and condescension, nostalgia. It makes perfect sense for a group of men to buy a company, one with a good brand name like say, Diamond Matches, borrow the money to buy the company, then to make enough money to pay back the borrowed money, the product has to be made cheaper, outsourced to Bumfuck, Burma, reduce quality control -- who cares, the brand name will sell the inferior product long enough for the investors to get their money.
We accept this, honor it, believe in it like a religion, hope to be able to get in on some of the action ourselves. There is nothing we can do about it. It is a fact of life, like evolution, gravity, the Kreb cycle. It's called free market capitalism and it's rotting the quality of life for ninety-five percent of Americans. And there is no coherent opposition to it. And that, my friends, is the crapification of your country.
END
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