The Whole Food vs. Wild Oats Debacle
I don’t know why I find this story so funny, perhaps because being a So Cal girl all of my life I watched the rise of Wild Oats, followed by the advent of Whole Foods and the subsequent monopoly of it. The CEO of Whole Foods John Mackey was, for years, posting under a typical forum “handle”, which was his wife Deborah’s name spelled backwards. It wasn’t that he posted on a Yahoo finance message board it’s what he chose to post there. He all but tried to crush Wild Oats by sabotaging its stock value. One guy on a message can’t do a lot of damage but the fact that it was THIS guy, and that Whole Foods then bought Wild Oats, is what the hoopla is about. It cracks me up though because here are these two harmony and crystals health food stores where all of we liberal lefties go with our cloth bags to buy our teas and organic produce and hormone-free meats and all the while sinister goings-on were underway.
For the record, Wild Oats appears to have been the innocent “little guy” in all of this. Frankly, Whole Foods didn’t need “harobed” in the forums because they were, simply, a better store. Wild Oats has the elite part of the Westside and the best locations and didn’t seem to draw as big a traffic nightmare as Whole Foods does. I liked them. They were a fine establishment. I used to frequent the one on Montana when I lived in Santa Monica. I loved their coffees and water selection. No, they weren’t Whole Foods but they were the prototype for Whole Foods. There is certainly room for both Whole Foods and Wild Oats in Santa Monica. Trust me on that one. What that city needs in another Von’s. The person who comes up with a less expensive way for citizens to buy whole foods will win the day in the end. The Walmart of the organic market.
Here is the guy’s defense:
Once this practice became public, Mackey quickly defended his actions in a blog posting. It’s worth reading. Here are five of the seven points he makes.
“1. I posted on Yahoo! under a pseudonym because I had fun doing it. Many people post on bulletin boards using pseudonyms.
“2. I never intended any of those postings to be identified with me.
“3. The views articulated by rahodeb sometimes represent what I actually believed and sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes I simply played ‘devil’s advocate’ for the sheer fun of arguing. Anyone who knows me realizes that I frequently do this in person, too.
“4. Rahodeb’s postings therefore do not represent any official beliefs, policies, or intentions by either Whole Foods Market or by me.
“5. At no time did I reveal any proprietary information about Whole Foods on Yahoo.”
It’s like Nixon and the Watergate tapes. There is a part of them that wants the public to know just how dirty they could play the game. Meanwhile, the LA Times asks, “Should Whole Foods unplug John Mackey’s computer”
Whole Foods now has to sell all of its Wild Oats stores. Its evil plan didn’t work!
20 Worst Ways to Die
So, it occurred to me that I should form an official list. That way, I won’t have to think about it anymore. It’s not like I do think about it all the time but it occasionally drifts into my mind while behind the wheel or contemplating airplane travel. And I occasionally think of it while sleeping at night, walking around town, even shopping. And yeah, cooking and/or eating in restaurants. Why the morbid obsession? If you think about it you are lulled into believing you have some control over it, which you do not. To a degree. I do think not all deaths are equal. The fear factor is a big component in judging overall awfulness of one’s death. I’m leaving out improbable ways of being murdered, say, sliced all over your body with a razor blade until you bleed out. And I’m leaving off all methods of medieval torture, like the the notorious Pear or the Catherine Wheel. Unless you count episodes of CSI, those kinds of things are less likely to happen than, say, a nuclear bomb going off in Los Angeles. Speaking of which, I think we are living in an era when a bomb could go off, even a nuclear one. So here goes. The top twenty, to my mind, worst ways to die.
1. Terminal disease. Not only do your loved ones have to watch you die but you have way too much time sitting around contemplating your past, what might have been your future and, god forbid, your children’s future. It’s so awful a thought I can’t even go there.
2. Plane Crash. I definitely would be putting this as number one except for the fact that I’m now a mother and terminal illness would be by far a worse way to go. But a plane crash would only be made better if it were an instant fireball. I imagine the ones that happen right at takeoff or landing are terrifying. The ones while you’re in the air and there’s engine failure, the worst. In case you’re interested, here is a rundown of the 100 worst in history. Good news is that plane crashes are EXTREMELY rare. The odds against it happening are staggering. Still, it’s terrifying.
3. Being locked in a hot car until you can’t breathe and you overheat.
4. Drowning by being locked in a car or flooded in a confined space.
5. Murdered and tortured by a serial killer. You’d think this would be higher but at least you have the option of fighting back – and I know I’d rather die fighting than just die.
6. Suicide. Horrible in any way, shape or form. It has got to suck to be that sure.
7. Attacked by wild animals, including sharks and grizzly bears. Bears in particular seem to be terrifying but then again, I’ve heard that you basically go numb so it isn’t so bad. Anything that makes you lose consciousness immediately isn’t so bad by comparison.
8. Suffocating. Either by someone putting a pillow over your face or by having something heavy fall on you like your roof.
9. Fire. Dying in a fire would not be fun. Again, I don’t even think about my own death so much as how it would involve my kid. Once you become a parent your first thought is always – how would I save my kid?
9. Death by flying object, like a spinning ceiling fan, a steel object off of a truck or a really fast baseball. But these things might be so fast they wouldn’t be that awful.
10. Starving to death. I should think would be higher on the list. Maybe by the time you get to the death point it’s almost a relief though, where starvation is concerned. I think about the Holocaust. That would be, hands down, the worst way to die but since we are not confronted by camps like these I have to leave it at starvation.
11. Being tortured and beheaded by Islamic terrorists. I guess this should be higher but what the hell.
12. One of those flesh eating things where you die in like 24 hours.
13. Mad Cow Disease.
14. Punched and beaten to death.
15. Car crash. It’s low on the list because it’s almost so instant as to not matter that much.
16. Nuclear bomb. That one you could probably see coming so again, should be higher on the list.
17. Injected with painful liquids like bleach.
18. Being pushed off of a building.
19. Dying of thirst. A whole different animal from starving to death and has to be ten times worse.
20. Shot.
The best way to die? In your sleep, of old age, peacefully. Or in an instant.
Sorry for the morbid post but it was on my mind and I had to blog about it. 🙂
Adventures in Parenting – The Good
I
t’s easy to sink back into complain mode about how hard parenting is. There’s no doubt about it; it’s tough as shit. It’s a lot of work and your kids end up hating you anyway, at least through the teen years but oh, there are those moments. Even though I had to bribe her to go to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with the offer of buying her a new sketch book and pencil, it was fun using our free membership to the museum. LACMA has made it their mission to interest kids in art. So much so that they offer a program that gives any kid that goes to the museum a free pass until they’re 18. They get to bring one adult along. So today, for free, we checked out the new Flavin exhibit. The museum is undergoing renovation so there was no modern art to check out except Flavin.
Emma had a great time looking at how the light coming off of his florescent light installations made the atmosphere change from room to room. It was a magnificent experience to walk around with her, all of nine years old, and be there at the moment when going to a museum becomes an actual experience for her. She wasn’t just being dragged along by me – she was looking at it with appreciation and awe. It’s like the first time they take a step, make a joke, laugh at one of your jokes. It makes it oddly worth it, even when they whine about being hungry and tired twenty minutes later.
Oh, and don’t bother taking pictures. It’s apparently disrespectful to do so and not allowed. A museum volunteer was hovering and pointing moments after these photos were snapped.
I Don’t Feel Bad About My Neck. Yet.
So, as someone once put it, life is an endless sea of humiliation. It was true then and it is true now. Hitting a psychic low point is never fun. Eventually, the sun comes up and you believe that life is, while not perfect, okay. And it’s not so bad. But feeling bad about oneself, namely one’s looks, especially if you’re a woman, is like a slug in the gut and it lingers. One’s only alternative is to develop a “I don’t give a fuck” attitude. But here’s another alternative. Read “I Feel Bad About My Neck” by Nora Ephron. I downloaded the audio book off of iTunes and have been listening to it all day. It has greatly lifted my spirits because Ephron is funny, passionate, worthwhile. She is a great reader, a foodie from way back, a great observer of life much the way Mark Twain was – truthful but bemused. There may only be one Ephron but she gives me hope that now that I’ve pretty much stopped being a “pretty girl” there is somewhere else to go. Read the book. It’s so good. The chapter on having a purse alone is worth the price of the book.
What was THAT All About?
Well, my domain name registration, sashastone.com, expired. Thus, the hosts helpfully parked it whilst I got my proverbial shit together. And now, at last, we’re back in business. This morning I took the iPhone tour. I am at a spiritual crossroads of what I need versus what I want. If I take the little bit of extra money I can squeeze out for an iPhone (which I really really really really really REALLY want) I can’t really send my daughter to one week of horse camp, which she would really really really REALLY love. In the end, it’s no contest. The kid wins out. But because the marketing machine over at Apple has so embedded my psyche, I’m currently figuring out how I can earn enough from a freelance job and/or cleaning someone’s toilet to buy the iPhone. I feel like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka, “I want it and I want it NOW!”
Truth be told I can wait on the Iphone and SHOULD wait. I bought the first generation Macbook Pro because I couldn’t wait and though I love my machine I should have waited until they worked out a few specific kinks. The iPhone will no doubt have things about it that annoy customers that will be fixed with the second and third generations. I have my ATT contract on hold until such time as I decide to upgrade with their revolutionary device. Such is life as a single mother: you have to cover all bases and not act selfishly. So horse camp it is.
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About Me
I spend way too much thinking about me.
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