Stay classy, Wal-Mart

When you're a multi-kazillion dollar business like Wal-Mart you have to have your priorities straight. Making fat stacks of cash? Check. Increasing your market share? Check. Crushing unionization of your workers? Check. Engaging in pointless, time wasting, money wasting legal battles so as you can look heartless and shirk any and all responsibility for anything you do? Double check.

Wal-Mart Stores has spent a year and more than a million dollars in legal fees battling a $7,000 fine that federal safety officials assessed after shoppers trampled a Wal-Mart employee to death at a store on Long Island on the day after Thanksgiving in 2008.

Of course! If they don't spend millions fighting this, why they'll be responsible for all sorts of piddling fines resulting from easily preventable deaths of their employees. I mean this is just another example of small business fighting against the draconian socialist overreach of the man.

$7,000? Wal-Mart isn't made of money! Well, not literally. Not yet, anyway. But I'm sure there's some sort of important legal reason that they're spending millions to fight a minuscule fine for.

But in fighting the federal fine, Wal-Mart is arguing that the government is improperly trying to define “crowd trampling” as an occupational hazard that retailers must take action to prevent.

Yeah, this is an important precedent to have on the books. I mean the government is always trying to butt its nose into a business to collect money for "crowd trampling" regulation violations. How do you think they plan to pay for health care? Human stampeding fines.

So stay classy, Wal-Mart. You would rather spend millions than pay a measly seven grand in OSHA fines and admit that maybe you should have some better safety protocols for when you try to herd human cattle through your stores for Chinese made lawn furniture that's 3 cents cheaper than at Target. Priorities.

Broken News: Respected author to churn out some bullshit about vampires

NEWARK—After a literary career that began with 1959’s Goodbye, Columbus and has spanned the decades. Noted author and Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Roth today announced that he was abandoning his more high brow literary pursuits to churn out some old hoary cack about vampires.

“I don’t know, I doesn’t seem like provocative explorations of what it means to be Jewish or of the American identity and blurring the lines between biography and fiction makes a guy a buck anymore,” the author explained in an interview with the New Yorker.

“So I’m just going to churn out some shit I thought up over lunch about vampires, teen romance, and epic battles over love and sit back and watch the money pile up. It’s pretty much what everyone else is doing. Why fight it? I don’t think I’m even going to make it all that different from Twilight.”

He sighed before adding “Ooh! Maybe a vampire school or a boarding school where vampires and humans meet! Has anyone done vampire style Harry Potter knockoff yet?”

Reaction from the literary world was swift with most surprisingly supporting the move.

“Frankly 90% of what I read is some awful re-purposed shit about forbidden love and euro-trash vampires that I’d appreciate reading what someone competent could do with a completely fucked out genre,” said Michael Kimmelman of the New York Review of Books. “Even if he is just nakedly slumming it for cash.”

Others, from the New York Times to McSweeney’s, offered support ranging from “Just don’t make them sparkle” to a fervent hope that Roth would attempt to tie his famed Nathan Zuckerman character into the new series of novels. Either by making Zuckerman a vampire, a vampire hunter, or recounting a romance had with a shiksa vampire in his youth.

“Zuckerman as a teacher at a school for vampires is the idea that has me most excited,” said Times literary critic Janet Maslin when contacted for this story.

When presented with some of these suggestions Roth reportedly yelled that they were all legally his and that he’d sue anyone who infringed on them.

But Roth’s recent foray into naked money grubbing is part of a larger trend in the literary world. Cormac McCarthy recently announced he was about to start work on a trilogy of books about werewolves, while Michael Chabon has reportedly cast his lot in with merpeople, hoping that will be the next genre to take off and set him up with a lucrative series of films.

Alice Sebold has quit writing books to becoming a staff writer on Two and a Half Men, while the estate of Roberto Bolano has unearthed a 1700 page novel entitled Star Wars Jedi War: The Mandalorians Revenge which will be released by Lucas Books and Ballentine by the end of the year.

“There’s just no money in integrity nowadays,” observed Harvard English Professor and Twilight fan-fiction writer Dr. Karen Whitman. “Sure you can try to putter around here and there writing the odd masterpiece of American fiction and getting a Pulitzer every couple of years, but where’s the money in that? Who wants to make a movie out of a heady tome about the immigrant experience in 1930’s San Francisco? Why not just crassly jump on board whatever is popular at the moment and ride that wave to the bank?”

“Like I wrote in my Twilight short story Love’s Bite, after Edward leaves Bella to marry the new, shy, mousy, literary girl Karen: ‘Sometimes you just gotta keep it real.’”

As of now Roth plans to have the first novel out sometime next month with four to follow by the end of the year. He says he hopes that his endeavors will lead to a movie company taking a chance on glomming onto the Twilight bandwagon and churning out a low budget competitor, but that he is, at the very least, hoping that these novels can be turned into a low rated drama for the ABC network.

“Fingers crossed,” Roth said. “Film or TV. I will tailor this bullshit to whatever medium will provide me the riches that being considered one of the greatest living writers has failed to.”

Theoretically rich

We know what Facebook is worth to it's owners: a vast shit-ton of filthy lucre (warning: advanced economic term). It's why their founder openly mocked those who gave him their trust, talks openly about how he doesn't believe in privacy, and Facebook itself is catching heat for its privacy issues: that information is worth money. Fat stacks of cash.

But what is Facebook worth to you, someone with a fan page who is trying to leverage shady privacy holes to your own benefit? I mean other than as an effective method to know too much about your friends, allow your family to know too much about you, bitterly stalk ex-girlfriends, or creepily stalk attractive people you've never met but you'd like to consider killing? Two fitty? Naw, tree sixxy.

According to a new study released by social media management company Vitrue, Facebook Fans are valued at $3.60 a piece in earned media for big brands. When scaled to Fan Pages with one million Fans, that equates to $3.6 million annually — and Vitrue says that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

That's right, each fan you have is potentially worth $3.60 to you. How do you actually monetize that?

/throws things on floor, runs out of room, jumps into car, and screeches off in cloud of dust

OK, no one knows that or will ever know that. It's the paradox of the internet. But hey, if you have fans, that's a theoretical $3.60 in your pocket, and theoretical money is what fuels our countries biggest financial institutions. See how that worked out?

OK, you're probably just a regular Facebook user and you don't have fans, seeing as all you do is post up too much information about what you did last night and "funny" pictures of your cat in a sombrero. What are your friends worth? They're priceless... which is another way of saying worthless. You don't have theoretical money in this scenario, Facebook does. Yours.

So if you want to be a real Intarwebs trillionaire like me and Sean here at TB Industries, get some fans. I bet the Can This Pickle Get More Fans Than Twilight guy is rolling in it.

Ballin'

As we are a massive blog empire with millions, nay billions, of committed readers (read: a few dozen of our friends... if that) we are likely to assume that our vast demographic variety (read: a bunch of white liberals in their twenties) also includes some Republicans.

Perhaps in a fit of pique or some race based vapors over Obama or health care, you might have decided to donate some money to the RNC to help retake the House, Senate, and overthrow the socialist network that has been built in this country in one short year. Why? Because it is marginally more entertaining than flushing that money down the toilet. Plus, it doesn't enrich the sewer people. Scofflaws and government teat suckers the lot of them.

But you might wonder what your donation to the RNC will get you. Well, the answer is "a hell of a good time for RNC Chairman Michael Steele".

The Daily Caller reports that “FEC filings suggest Steele travels in style”:

Once on the ground, FEC filings suggest, Steele travels in style. A February RNC trip to California, for example, included a $9,099 stop at the Beverly Hills Hotel, $6,596 dropped at the nearby Four Seasons, and $1,946.25 spent at Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage-themed nightclub featuring topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex.

Although Steele’s high-flying ways have angered GOP donors, RNC communications director Doug Heye explains, “It takes money to make money.”

Ballin'! Though as I would know Sean would know, no "nightclub" that has dancers lezzing it out in bondage gear has them "simulating" anything. Maybe the bondage thing was a metaphor to illustrate how they're using procedural tricks to tie up Congress and the lesbian thing was a thematic expression piece to illustrate the dangers of gay marriage and gays in the military. Or maybe it's just the only way Michael Steele can relax after a hard day of yelling "Armageddon!" on the TV.

My favorite part of the story is the $.25 part of the tab. It either suggests that the person signing it was too cheap to bump the tip up an additional $.75 (it would just encourage the lesbian stripper's poor life choices and wouldn't empower them to find better work) or Steele was there with a bank roll of quarters, tossing them up on the stage and asking for fifty cent lap dances. Possibly nickel lap dances.

Takes money to make money. And trips to bondage clubs, it also takes trips to bondage clubs to make money. Just imagine the cash they'll rake in for next month's Palin/Bachmann duo show at the Spearmint Rhino in Vegas. $100 buck cover, three drink minimum, and no touching.

Chart of the day

Click to embiggen

The good people at, uh, Good and Column Five have put together a chart, uh, charting the distribution of income amongst the various religions within these United States based on this Pew survey. What are the money religions? Where should you place your faith to get the most bang from your buck? Who does the baby Jesus prefer to reward with riches or curse with poverty completely irrespective of whether or not they believe in him?

Well, clocking it at 46% and 43% of member of their faith taking in $100k+ are Judaism and Hinduism, besting the national average of 18% *cough*stereotypesareaccurate*cough* Also doing well spiritually and financially are Christians (Mainline) at 21%, Christian (Other) at 23%, Orthodox at 28%, and Buddhists at 22%. Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, and Godless savages are all at the national average, while Jesus has punished Evangelicals, Black Churches, and Jehovah's Witnesses with lower rates of return on their spiritual investment.

Hindus also show higher than average placements within the $75k+ bracket, while also showing, along with the Jews, lower than average numbers in the $50k and below, poverty stricken wretch category. So I think the message is clear: Shiva and Abraham for your financial and spiritual well being.

Laugh now Jews and Hindus, you may beat us Catholics in the percentages and percentiles, but we smash you in raw numbers and overall money pile size. Plus our church is way richer than yours. Have you seen how decked out the Pope is? This all proves that Catholicism is better than Hinduism and that our improving of the Torah was a prudent financial plan. Because isn't that the best way to measure religions: by fat stacks of cash? I think that's what God would have wanted were He still alive.