I want to be clear that my personal opinion of Halloween is enthusiastic approval and I do not share the concerns of cultural imperialism expressed by many of my countrymen - I'll trade you for it. We get a day off work to celebrate the birthday of the British monarch if I can interest you in that.
Having grown up and grown old to The Bee Gees, Olivia Newton John, Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford, George Miller, Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Baz Lurhman, and Hugh Jackman (we won’t speak of Paul Hogan), I just want to hear more of these bozos complain about cultural imperialism.
Excellent as always, and I didn't realise you were Aussie!
Incidentally the biggest "advantage" to Woolies and Coles' relentless price-gauging is that there no longer any cheaper than the totally Boujis local supermarket near my house, which has way better produce and products. Look, I'm super lucky that I can afford that, but the fact that I can go to a luxury, Trader Joe's style market, get better product, *and not pay any more money* is comical.
Also, I enjoyed your Peter Dutton description. Mine would be: "Peter Dutton looks like Voldemort's little brother who couldn't get in to Hogwart's and had to go to the crappier private Wizarding school, which big V never ceases to give him shit about at family gatherings."
One of the major theme's of Brad DeLong's recent book (_Slouching Towards Utopia_) is that capitalism generates massive amounts of *change* which often conflicts with the desires to maintain stable communities (and hierarchies). See, for example: https://braddelong.substack.com/p/in-the-generations-after-1870-all
"And so over 1870-2010, repeated technological and economic revolutions shook, and shook, and shook the human world to pieces over and over again, and then people had to try to pick the pieces up and assemble them into something over and over again.
That was very different than all previous history."
TIL that there's a Woolworth's in Australia that swiped the name from the U.S. retail giant back before it nearly went broke and morphed into FootLocker.
Publicly traded companies have one obligation: make money for shareholders. Disney might employ "woke" people that believe in the "woke" content they're making, but as soon as there are firm signals that "woke" isn't selling and "asleep" will sell better, they'll change direction.
The thing where we have companies here with the exact same name and sometimes even the logo of a US retailer but absolutely no historical connection with each other actually happens a fair bit and dates back to a time before strong globalisation when you could ape another successful foreign company's entire brand and identity and get away with it. We also have a Target exactly the same as yours right down to the logo, no corporate or historical connection whatsoever. We have a Kmart but I think it actually did start out as a branch of yours (ours is doing much better financially).
The right doesn't understand why capitalists 'go woke': because many of their employees are 'woke' who demand it, because most of the young customers (18-49, the target audiance) are more progressives and because progressives care more.
Companies have regularly made content 'offensive' to various parts of conservative worldview, but they almost never made content mocking 'pro-life' stance or 'promoting' abortion or portraying it as something 'cool' and 'trendy'. Why? Because they knew that the moment it happens, millions of social conservatives would legitimately start to boycott the company.
“…against foreign seppo bullshit like Halloween…
…(such as the porch Jack-o-Lantern left out until January that is Kid Rock)…”
Hey! You can’t malign our Halloween bullshit and then immediately appropriate it for your own selfish comedic effect!
I want to be clear that my personal opinion of Halloween is enthusiastic approval and I do not share the concerns of cultural imperialism expressed by many of my countrymen - I'll trade you for it. We get a day off work to celebrate the birthday of the British monarch if I can interest you in that.
Halloween is the best. Happy to have you join in. Also had no idea Australia doesn’t like Halloween???
Oh, I'm mostly kidding, it's a complaint I used to hear quite a bit in the past but the people who don't hate fun mostly won in the end
Having grown up and grown old to The Bee Gees, Olivia Newton John, Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford, George Miller, Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Baz Lurhman, and Hugh Jackman (we won’t speak of Paul Hogan), I just want to hear more of these bozos complain about cultural imperialism.
Excellent as always, and I didn't realise you were Aussie!
Incidentally the biggest "advantage" to Woolies and Coles' relentless price-gauging is that there no longer any cheaper than the totally Boujis local supermarket near my house, which has way better produce and products. Look, I'm super lucky that I can afford that, but the fact that I can go to a luxury, Trader Joe's style market, get better product, *and not pay any more money* is comical.
Also, I enjoyed your Peter Dutton description. Mine would be: "Peter Dutton looks like Voldemort's little brother who couldn't get in to Hogwart's and had to go to the crappier private Wizarding school, which big V never ceases to give him shit about at family gatherings."
"The Voldermorts at Christmas" couldn't be any worse than "The Crimes of Grindelwald".
One of the major theme's of Brad DeLong's recent book (_Slouching Towards Utopia_) is that capitalism generates massive amounts of *change* which often conflicts with the desires to maintain stable communities (and hierarchies). See, for example: https://braddelong.substack.com/p/in-the-generations-after-1870-all
"And so over 1870-2010, repeated technological and economic revolutions shook, and shook, and shook the human world to pieces over and over again, and then people had to try to pick the pieces up and assemble them into something over and over again.
That was very different than all previous history."
TIL that there's a Woolworth's in Australia that swiped the name from the U.S. retail giant back before it nearly went broke and morphed into FootLocker.
Publicly traded companies have one obligation: make money for shareholders. Disney might employ "woke" people that believe in the "woke" content they're making, but as soon as there are firm signals that "woke" isn't selling and "asleep" will sell better, they'll change direction.
Period.
The thing where we have companies here with the exact same name and sometimes even the logo of a US retailer but absolutely no historical connection with each other actually happens a fair bit and dates back to a time before strong globalisation when you could ape another successful foreign company's entire brand and identity and get away with it. We also have a Target exactly the same as yours right down to the logo, no corporate or historical connection whatsoever. We have a Kmart but I think it actually did start out as a branch of yours (ours is doing much better financially).
just popping in to say the cover art for this one fucks
Gonna boost my stats by putting a dragon on alllllll my pieces from now on
Of course the Woolworths decision was commercial. No one buys that shit, but apparently like to know it's there (like nature).
Loved it. No wonder your writing cracks me up at times. Good stuff.
Ha I also just read a few of these comments and damn people get offended over weird shite.
Brilliance. I just loved this.
Australia Day is a modern holiday, 1994.
The ONLY valid alternative will be the day Australia becomes a republic. Anything else would be as nonsensical as the date we currently use.
No other country in the world takes their occupation as a day of celebration. None.
We're dumb.
This is brilliant. Thank you.
They Live 😎
The right doesn't understand why capitalists 'go woke': because many of their employees are 'woke' who demand it, because most of the young customers (18-49, the target audiance) are more progressives and because progressives care more.
Companies have regularly made content 'offensive' to various parts of conservative worldview, but they almost never made content mocking 'pro-life' stance or 'promoting' abortion or portraying it as something 'cool' and 'trendy'. Why? Because they knew that the moment it happens, millions of social conservatives would legitimately start to boycott the company.
Interesting perspective