snarks

"Combat Shopping." Term I heard for Black Friday. I like it.

I've posted my doubts about Black Friday every year on this blog. I simply don't believe you can't get similar deals later.

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Why am I not surprised to find Upper Deck advertising on an online card dumping site?

Major League Baseball and the NBA have both dropped Upper Deck.

It couldn't happen to a nicer group of guys. Heh.

Upper Deck has always been dodgy. It's nice to know that karma has finally caught up to them.

It only took 20 years.

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In the same vein, Image comics recently released a title called 'Image United' which brings back the original 6 founders of Image comics. It's supposed to be a celebration of the founding of Image.

Celebrate?

I'd like to forget it ever happened.

These guys were arrogant and irresponsible. But what was worse, they were completely inept.

Most of their comics stunk, frankly. They were designed for the 'investor' crowd. (Where have you gone, Investor Crowd. Our nation turns it's lonely eyes to you.)

They completely bungled their scheduling, causing me huge problems with my cash-flow that I almost didn't survive.

So..for this 'Celebration' .I ordered just one copy of each creator's cover, the lowest amount I could get away with.

And...you guessed it....they screwed it up. I got five covers, two of a cover I'm unlikely to sell, and none of the cover I was most likely to sell.

They haven't changed much.

(O.K. O.K. maybe I'm a little hard on them. They created some good comics, too. They created some memorable characters, which later (more talented) creators fleshed out. And they have a nice little niche today, of good comics. So they have changed. But I still don't have fond memories of the original bunch.)

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Tiger, Tiger, Tiger. The media is not a golf course...

Marriage is a hole in one, Tiger. A hole in ONE!

(sorry)

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One in eight Americans on food stamps? It's looking more like Bread and Circus's Rome all the time, isn't it?

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See, here's the thing. If you are going to try to sell condo's, don't build them over apartments for low income housing...

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Really, now. Was there any point in the planning for Juniper Ridge where anyone thought a four year college situated there was likely?

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Here, there, and everywhere.

The Beatles wrote some good songs.

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I dreamed I had Japanese toilet paper.

No, I don't know what that means.

I dreamed I had an Arabic language Previews (my comic ordering form); and that I was testifying in Congress about it.

And no. I do not know what that means -- except that it's ordering weekend.

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Apparently, Wabi Sabi has opened, over on Brooks St. near the Pine Tavern, and it's all Japanese stuff.

I can see some of you rolling your eyes, but you know what? It isn't as crazy as it sounds. They'll have a strong reaction from the Japanese-philes; and the material is unique and interesting enough to probably garner a curiosity purchase from most browsers.

It's apparently not as Otaku oriented as I had expected; not much manga or anime. (Wiki: OTAKU: "... a Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly anime, manga, and video games.")

Which means there is still someone out there who has expressed an interest in opening a comic shop downtown.

I'm hoping the Wabi Sabi people willl be friendly; and send people my way who ask for Otaku stuff, and I can send all my Otaku customers their way.


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I can just see it. The Desert Sun guys scam a bunch of money and buy two Dodge Vipers. Someone takes them aside and says, "Dudes. Vipers are so redneck!"

So they go out and buy a Ferrari....

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Every time they profile a family in need in the paper, I have the opposite reaction I'm supposed to have. I think I'm supposed to feel compassion, but I just see them wasting money, mismanaging their money, being incredibly unwise. And sure enough, the Mom is shown smoking a cigarette. Her excuses -- paying 900.00 a month for a motel room because she can't save the money for a down payment for cheaper lodging; buying only microwavables; and so on....are just hard to take.

It's like saying:

"I only eat steak, because the only restaurant within walking distance is a steak house."

"I only drive a new car, because there isn't a used car lot near by."

"I had to buy the big screen T.V., because it's the only one the fits the empty space in my motel."

But I suppose if they had brains, or willpower, or common sense, they probably wouldn't be in that position in the first place.

But, damn. I just want to take that money and show them how to handle it...except, they'd probably be right back where they started the minute they were on their own.

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So Black Friday sales were down .5%? Baloney. Stuff and Nonsense. They have no possible conceivable way of really knowing that. Hell, they were talking about Black Friday being better by 2:00 in the afternoon!

No one asked me.

Nor, I suspect a single store in Bend. Or Redmond. Or anywhere else around here.

It's putting too fine a point on a basically unknowable number.

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We're open on Sundays again. I'm hoping we won't have to start from scratch again. Last time, it took years before enough people knew and it paid off.

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Black Friday results.

I'm writing this on the morning of Black Friday, before I go to work.

I'll update at the end of the day.

My expectations are very low, today. For years now, the big boxes have clamped a lock on this weekend's sales. Downtown Bend gets pretty good foot traffic, but at the same time, for some reason I've never understood, my regulars tend not to think of my store as a Christmas shopping kind of place.

The reason I'm writing this in advance is because this a game of expectations. It can be a real heart breaker if you expect too much of this day. I've learned over the last few years to treat it as a normal day.

Anyway, I'm even for the month, sales vs. costs. Not as good as being ahead, but better than being behind. I'm also currently 10% better on a daily average than I was last year; which considering how slow this month is, shows how dreadful last year was.

So I'm going to just relax and take what comes...


O.K. The day lived down to my expectations. I hit my low projection, which was 50% better than average. To put that in context, I used to almost always at least double average and sometimes triple and quadruple. This year's total wasn't even as good as the preceding Wednesday.

I'm just not willing to blow out my inventory. I'm sticking to my prices. And if that means lower sales, so be it.

The media is trumpeting a better Black Friday.

Whatever.

That may or may not be true. But it doesn't affect how I approach the season. I'd rather have lower sales and a small profit, than higher sales and stray into red.

Personally, I doubt Black Friday was all that great. Asking a retailer how sales are is like asking a real estate agent if you should buy a house. You'll get the answer you deserve.

I've pretty much decided this is going to be a long haul, and the trick will be to stay in the black month after month.

Hanging in there.

I wrote the following about a year and a half ago. At the time, I thought it might seem too egotistical. But...you know what? it seems truthful to me. And more true than ever. I've now blogged for 3 straight years, I've not missed a day of blogging since I started, and I've written over 1600 entries.

As follows:

It's funny. Without meaning to, I've exhibited one of my major personality traits with this blog.

I tend to be...dogged. Tenacious. Nose to the grindstone. Steady.

The same way I write this blog, every day, is the same way I approach my business, or indeed, most things I do. I just keep doing them again and again and again.

I'm not saying I do this with a dour, heavy touch. Sometimes it's barely perceived by others. But I'm steadily moving in a certain direction, or adding brick by brick by brick.

It's never noticeable to other people at first, but I just keep a'comin' and a'comin'. What I do isn't flashy, just steady and reliable and built of small parts.

I don't give up very easily. I don't tend to make big changes. Things change around me all the time, but I'm usually living in the same place, with the same family, and at the same job for days, months, years, decades.

I think people do tend to underestimate me, for a long time, but it doesn't seem to matter. I simply outlast them, and it doesn't matter what they think.

I love my routines. I keep things simple. I do just a few things at a time. But I keep doing them.

I'm not saying this is all a good thing. I've probably missed a whole lot of spontaneous-ness. I've missed lots of exciting changes, and traveling, and experiences.

But I've also missed lots of turmoil.

Frankly, I don't have to be as good or as smart or as strong or as charming....I just keep doing the whatever it is I'm doing and sticking to it. I'm the turtle and I don't mind when hares go flashing by. I know I'll find them sleeping by the road, and saunter right past them.

If it's something I want to do, I can spend many years preparing and then...with what seems sudden to everyone else, I do them. But I've been thinking and mulling about them forever.

But it's got to be something I want to do. It's almost impossible to get me to do anything I don't want to do. But as long as it's my own idea, I can really be very patient and paced and measured.

I can get blown off course, just like everyone else. But I tend to trend back fairly fast.

And just keep doing it. Like this blog.

Day after day.

And the little bits add up to a life.

Happy................3rd Year Anniversary.

Coincidentally, I started Best Minimum Wage Job a Middle-Aged Guy Ever Had on November 26, 2006.

Hard to remember now, that I actually started a few days before Bend Bubble 2 did; we were both spin-offs from Bend Economy Man's initial blog. We turned out to be more right than wrong about our warnings; which at the time seemed somewhat outrageous, and certainly wasn't being said by anyone in the mainstream media. Paul-doh has had enough, apparently, but I'm just going to keep posting merrily along.

I can't say it's always easy to write; but it isn't hard either. Along with that, of course, is that I'm not always (usually? ever?) funny, or insightful, or rockin' the scene. But it is what it is. As long as I keep enjoying doing it.

HBM mentioned that he thought Paul-doh would be back, that he was addicted to blogging. I think addicted is the right word. I know in my case, my day wouldn't be complete without me saying something opinionated.

I wrote a somewhat egotistical post about blogging about a year and a half ago, and put off posting until I hit some major milestone; but it's Thanksgiving and not the right time. I think I'll go ahead and post it tomorrow while everyone's distracted with Black Friday.

So for now, I'm just going to say to all and sundry -- Happy Thanksgiving!!

Dreams.

Linda and I watched a Nova program last night about dreams.

Dreams have always been one of Linda's interests; she even put on some dream workshops in the '90's.

So before I went to bed, I decided I was going to try to remember my night's dreaming when I woke up. This is what I remembered in the morning:

Linda and I are on one our little road trips, this time to Boise. I see her throw a soda cup out the window. "Did you just throw your soda cup out the window?" I ask. She gets a sheepish look, and says yes, and I start to ball her out and she says, "Quit telling me what to do."

We get to Boise, and Linda tells me to get the keys to the motel room. I walk in and the Indian guy behind the counter smirks and says, "You don't have a reservation." I insist that my wife called, and he says, "Yes, she inquired, but she didn't book the room."

So I go off wandering the streets of Boise, which are all torn up and chaotic, and I see a sign to a Ramada Inn. I follow the sign to base of a very steep hill, but there is no motel. There are these incredibly steep steps that switch back and forth up the hill, and a button at the bottom that says, "Push for help."

I keep pushing the button, but nothing happens. I look up that steps and see at the very top this incredibly luxurious hotel. I see some kids playing on the steps, and then Linda is there and says, "Oh, yes. These steps are dangerous and management refuses to do anything about it."

Just then, a hotel worker comes down and starts sawing off the sides of the steps, and I'm thinking, 'That makes it even more dangerous.'

I wake up, and to me, the meaning is pretty clear. The steps to riches are long and dangerous, but you can't take any sidesteps to get there. There are no shortcuts.

I tell Linda my dream, pretty proud of my little humdrum escapade and my neat little interpretation. It's also pretty clear that I'm worried that I've bullied Linda a little too much about this whole frustrating legal process that she's going through as executor.

Then she proceeds to tell me her dream.

"My dream was a little different."

"I dreamed I was one of 30 young virgins, who have been captured by villains. The women are using steel wool to take of the hair -- down there -- so that they can seem younger, because the villains are killing the older women. (Linda's correction: she says the Men were using the steel wool to make the women seem younger because they are going to sell them to another group of men. The women are being raped and tortured.)

"I manage to escape and I cut the throats of the guards. I don't see myself doing it, but I know that I have.

"I find the leader, and I somehow manage to tie him up, and I take the steel wool to him. He is begging for mercy. (Linda's correction, she says, "Did you show the women any mercy...)

"I tell him, 'I'll show you mercy!' and I take out a gun and shoot him."

I just kind of stare at her for a moment.

"Wow."

"Yeah," Linda says. "I woke up and couldn't believe how bloodthirsty it was. But...it was a hero dream."

Linda is often the hero of her dreams, saving innocents.

"Are you ... a tad mad at men right now?" I ask. Like me? I mean, if ever there was an emasculating dream!

"No," she says. "I'm not mad at men. Just mad at men who hurt women...."

Linda's dreams are incredibly vivid, and almost always tell a story. Amazing. One can never upstage her dreams -- her brothers used to accuse her of making them up, they were so storylike, with her as the action hero.

Mine tend to be ostracism dreams, or wandering lost in the big city type dreams. Still, humdrum or not, I going to start trying to remember them. When I was in the throes of depression, (through much of the 1970's) I used to sleep 10 or 12 hours a day and had incredibly vivid dreams.

The program last night said that depressives seem to dream more REM sleep, which can reinforce negative feelings.

That's not what I remember. My dreams always seemed positive, in contrast to my actual life. It was like I was living two lives. And it seemed to me that they reinforced my hopeful feelings, because unlike most clinical depressives I've heard of, I was always convinced I would come out of it. (And I've not had any recurrence in the last 30 years, thank god.)

When I was writing full time, I came to count on my dreams for solutions to story problems. I'd wake up, and whatever was blocking me the previous day was often solved. I even began my second book with a dream I had.

I've never believed some of the research that says that dreams are meaningless. If nothing else, I just got too many answers in my writing days to believe that.

I think it's time to start paying more attention to them again.

How low can they go?

Here's a statement to reckon with:

"Our company is based on low prices. Even in books, we kept going until we were the low-priced leader. And with will do that in every category if we need to."

Raul Vazquez, president and chief executive of Walmart.com. (This mornings Bulletin.)

"...WE KEPT GOING..."

"...IN EVERY CATEGORY..."

"...UNTIL WE WERE THE LOW-PRICED LEADER..."

Talk about laying down the gauntlet.

I should remind myself of this statement every time I complain about comics being such a small industry. Yes, comics are a small industry and as such only provides about 60% of the revenues I need, but it is the base of my business. All the other 7 or 8 product lines are 'sidelines' and provide the other 40%. It would be difficult to make it on only sidelines. As it turns out, it's fortunate comics are also relatively difficult to sell, taking up space and energy and organization for very little return. To a very small audience. So far, the big boys haven't quite figured out a way to do it. So far.

Yet, I think that may be the future of a store like mine. Assembling together enough unique product that Walmart can't quite take it all. Hard work, that.

"...we kept going...until we were the low-priced leader...in every category..."

Does anyone think through the logic of such a statement? Where do those cost-cutting savings come from? Material? Labor? Transportation?

Because it has to come from somewhere. Either the cost cutting comes from the suppliers, or their own operations, or from the material in the product itself.

I had a 'customer' in yesterday, who occasionally buys the supplies for sports cards he can't get anywhere else, but never....never, ever...actually buys anything worthwhile from me. (Supplies are a courtesy, not a profit center.) He was complaining about the card sleeves he had bought from Walmart.

"They're rejects," he said. "Really low quantity."

"Well, you know," I ventured, into dangerous territory. "You're not quite getting the deals you think you are on anything else, either." I proceeded to inform him of the "Home Team Advantage" program that Topps has for hobby stores, guaranteeing a higher rate of autographs, etc. etc. etc.

I lost him right away. He had the example of crappy sleeves right in front of him, but wasn't ready to extrapolate from that. It still hadn't quite entered his thinking that maybe, just maybe, he was getting lower quality on everything else he was buying from Walmart.

Next book I'm going to read is CHEAP, THE HIGH COST OF DISCOUNTS. Even though I suspect it may be disheartening reading.

I believe the publishing industry, which is already in trouble, is being forced into very dangerous territory.

What's the most likely result of Stephen King's latest book being sold for $9.00 at Amazon, Walmart and Target?

That these stores become an even bigger slice of the publishing pie.

And what are they likely to do with that clout?

Well, we already know what Walmart is going to do. They've told us. They'll drive the prices of books down. And down. Until they are the "low-priced leader."

And the publishing industry will have to agree. Because it's more than possible that Borders won't survive this; or any number of independent bookstores; and I wouldn't think Barnes and Nobles is going to do so well, either.

I won't be buying wholesale copies of Under the Dome for 24.00 from my distributer, which extended to every other independent retailer can't be helping them much. And so on, up and down the line.

How many best-sellers can I ignore before I become irrelevant? So do I buy and lose money? Do I buy, and explain to my customers that they have to pay 4 times as much from me, but, gee, I'm such a nice guy?

It all seems so self-destructive to me. To our culture. To our economy.

But, hey. What do I know?