Newsweek: “Wal-Mart is Mexico’s largest private-sector employer in the nation today, with nearly 150,000 local residents on its payroll. An additional 19,000 youngsters between the ages of 14 and 16 work after school in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores, mostly as grocery baggers, throughout Mexico—and none of them receives a red cent in wages or fringe benefits. The company doesn’t try to conceal this practice: its 62 Superama supermarkets display blue signs with white letters that tell shoppers: OUR VOLUNTEER PACKERS COLLECT NO SALARY, ONLY THE GRATUITY THAT YOU GIVE THEM. SUPERAMA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING. The use of unsalaried youths is legal in Mexico because the kids are said to be “volunteering” their services to Wal-Mart and are therefore not subject to the requirements and regulations that would otherwise apply under the country’s labor laws.”

Well, if Wal-Mart is going to “employ” “volunteer packers,” I think it’s high time that those who frequent Mexican Wal-Mart outlets become “volunteer consumers.” After all, if a corporation as rapacious as Wal-Mart prefers not to pay their packers, perhaps consumers can prefer not to pay Wal-Mart for the goods they acquire from their stores. Who says that Wal-Mart holds all the cards in establishing a new economy?

So here’s the deal, Mexico Wal-Mart shoppers: the next time you enter a Wal-Mart, wear a sign that reads I AM A VOLUNTEER CONSUMER WHO WILL OFFER NO MONEY FOR THESE GOODS, BECAUSE YOU’D RATHER EXPLOIT KIDS THAN PRACTICE BASIC ETHICAL PRINCIPLES. THANK YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING.

In the past few years, I’ve observed Melville House grow from a mom-and-pop imprint to an independent press keeping the work of Stephen Dixon, Tao Lin, the last interview of Jacques Derrida, and numerous other volumes in bookstores. Now Melville House is now having a summer sale. The MH website doesn’t specify whether or not this sale is being conducted because of the distribution nightmares now facing nearly every indie press working hard to offer alternative material. But if this is indeed the case, then you may want to throw a few bucks Melville House’s way for their backlist. And if you purchase two books, you get a copy of Lewis Lapham’s With the Beatles. Support your indie presses!

A very happy eighth birthday to Speedy Snail. Rory Ewins has been maintaining a grand arsenal of academic writing, cartoons, computer advice columns (Dr. Komputor) — in short, a variegated life preserved in web form reflecting the great possibilities of the personal web. I met Rory once — a good seven years ago at Fray Day 4. I was then posting a good deal of sophomoric personal material to the Web. But to my great shock, Rory recognized me and introduced himself. Not being among the cool kids, Rory and I both performed our material late in the night in front of a crowd. I recall capacious plumes of marijuana smoke drifting over the heads of disinterested twentysomethings sitting on the front couches at Cellspace. It was an audience that grew distressingly less interested with the fine folks who dared to share their stories. Thankfully, a German friend and I were there, sober, laughing hysterically at Rory’s grand delivery of a Madagascar tale. (You can find the audio here. Oddly enough, my own performance, which chronicled the history of a love seat, appears to have been dropped and unreferenced by those who have deemed me not part of history.)

Incidentally, Speedy Snail’s birthday reminds me that edrants celebrated seven years on the Web back in May.