They want you dead so they can have your money.

The site doesn't claim to take any kind of political stance on the globalizing, capitalist behemoth, and Adbusters' nightmare that is Wal-Mart, other than that as purely sociological entertainment. They even say so in their, uh, manifesto:

People of Walmart was founded in August of 2009 by three friends and roommates after an inspirational trip to WalMart. Let's face it; we all have seen the people who obviously don't have mirrors and/or family and friends to lock them in a basement, and they all seem to congregate at Walmart. It's not everywhere that you can shop for milk at 10 a.m. next to a 400lb mother of 6 wearing a pink tube top, leopard tights, and hooker heels.

And again: this is, on a very real level, needlessly mean. Cintra Wilson would approve.

But it's also completely fascinating to see the "all stripes" crowd that comes to Wal-Mart for their psychotically competitive, mom-and-pop murdering prices. The composite picture that's coming together could be one of the great photo essays of our time. I'm gonna go ahead and call this art. It's Andreas Gursky meets the social voyeurism of Party Crash photog Nikola Tamindzic, mixed in with the strange loneliness of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks. Here're some of my favorites of what you're going to see. Like I said: art.

The thing that makes America great is its hustling spirit, and nowhere is that more evident than in the many new and creative ways we find to rob and steal from our wealthier neighbors to stay afloat. Instead of paying $25 for a parking sticker in the Hamptons, people are stealing them. Why is this news? Because everything that happens in the Hamptons is news, and also because, ha, one of the people that got robbed was Calvin Klein, can you imagine the look on his smug rich face when he has to stand in line at some shitty municipal office all day to get another parking sticker?

You can rob his car again while he does so.

Sadly, robbing Calvin Klein is not an industry large enough to support America's teenagers, all of whom are out of work because they do not hold the advanced degree now required to land a Taco Bell job. The only hope for our most unskilled and unemployable citizens: Wal-Mart. And it's trying to get into NYC again.

Wal-Mart has tried this before. They were handily run out of town by the unions and told not to come back lest they find their automobiles burglarized for their parking stickers, and also maybe they would "find" a baseball bat contacting their shins at high speed, because you ain't from around here is ya, Wal-Mart? So back then Wal-Mart went on home, to Arkansas, (or Florida), where they are against unions, because unions are communists. (And homos??). But now everything has changed because there is no more money and hello, your old friend Wal-Mart is back, with jobs, to move into NYC! Wal-Mart would like to move into a poor neighborhood somewhere in an outer borough where they will be welcomed, and unions still say they will put up a big fight, but will they?

We hope they can keep Wal-Mart out. But we're not optimistic. Cause in our great nation these days, if you're not working at the Wal-Mart, you're working at the casino. And nobody's working at the casino any more.

As first reported by the Abbeville Meridional...

According to the lawsuit, Rebecca (White) was in the grocery aisle shopping on Oct. 11, 2008. Her basket was full of food when suddenly and without warning, a large nutria came from behind the Coke rack and ran straight towards Rebecca, the lawsuit said.

Rebecca, fearing for her safety, pulled the shopping cart towards her to protect her from the nutria and as she did, the cart rolled over her left foot causing her to stumble and causing her to suffer an injury.
Wal-Mart's employees came to assist her and told Rebecca that, "she had an encounter with Norman" a name the employees had given the nutria, the lawsuit stated.

A more recent story by the ABA details the extent of Rebecca White's injuries...

Fearful of her safety from what appeared to be a large rat, White says she yanked her shopping cart back and ran over her own foot, breaking several bones and damaging nerves. The injuries required surgery.

Now, I couldn't let this first night doing Gawker late nights go by without posting this story. The nutria have been a nuisance in for years back home in Louisiana, and now they've even migrated up to Jersey and are causing all sorts of panic there as well. These nutria must be stopped, dammit! Do something Obama!

Things got so bad a few years ago that the state of Louisiana set aside money in its budget for nutria culinary research, hoping that the invention of some dish, Blackened Nutria perhaps, would spark a demand for nutria meat, thus helping the state end its chronic nutria overpopulation problem, as this New York Times story from 1997 details. That effort failed. Miserably. And yes, I have tasted nutria, and no, it doesn't taste like chicken, so there. And this hilarious "How to Cook a Nutria" instructional video was a small part of that terribly misguided governmental effort. Enjoy.

Nutria photo via Red Star's Flickr.

There is a "text-messaging hoax" going around 16 states (!) saying hey, if you go stand out in front of your local Wal-Mart for this, you will be killed.

The text messages appear to be tailored to local conditions — warning of gang activity in areas where gangs are active, but vaguer threats in areas, such as Walmart's home of Northwest Arkansas, where they aren't.

A text rumor making the rounds in New Mexico says three women are to be killed in an initiation rite for a Mexican gang.

Only if you make it past the razor blade Halloween candy and the ghost that comes out of the mirror when you say "Bloody Mary" three times! I'm not saying this is kinda funny, I'm just saying. [Ad Age. Pic via]

• Do not use the same meager handful of non-white employees over and over for photo ops: People notice this after a while. Specifically, your non-white employees.
• Do not act like the boss on The Office: Simply watch each season of that show in full, and see how he treats the subject of diversity, and then do not do that. Surprising how realistic that show is.
• Do not claim that your staff made up entirely of upper class Ivy Leaguers is 'diverse': It is not, we don't care what it looks like on the outside.
• Do not claim that your company is 'diverse' because you hired minority-owned vendors: Hiring a 'diversity consultant' or an 'urban marketing firm' is not in and of itself a mark of diversity. Sucks right!!!
• Hire a staff made up of many different types of people: Problem solved. (Though you may personally still be a jerk).

Just a few of our winners:

• Netflix: Profit was up 45% in the fourth quarter.
• McDonald's: Opening 650 new restaurants.
• Spam: Parent company Hormel is "Enjoying Growth in a Slowing Economy!"
• Wal-Mart: Hey they're not doing too bad at all!
• Campbell Soup: They're a blue chip stock!

Anecdotal evidence also indicates that Crystal meth dealers and Online porn are doing just as well as expected. [Previously]

Except it won't, really. Because Apple CEO Steve Jobs, unlike Franzen, occasionally acts like a grownup — and always acts like a businessman.

Walmart is planning to start selling two iPhone models around Christmas, according to store employees interviewed by Bloomberg. This is surely the end of the iPhone's upscale brand image, argues scary-smart economist Stephen Dubner in his Freakonomics blog.

There are two problems with that. One, Dubner bases his argument on the rumor that Walmart will sell iPhones for $99, less than half the cheapest price they go for today. Yes, dumping the iPhone at a cheap price will piss off customers who spent a hundred dollars extra at an Apple Store.

But it's not going to happen. Apple is notoriously controlling about prices. And there's no way Jobs is going to put his pricey retail palaces at a disadvantage. Sure, Wal-Mart demands discounts when it can play one supplier against another. But Apple, not Wal-Mart has the advantage here. In the past, when Wal-Mart started selling iPods, it didn't get any special discounts. Bloomberg asked a Walmart employee how much the iPhones would cost. The answer: $199 to $299, just like they do today.

Lots of analysts believe that Apple will eventually sell iPhones for $99. Hardware gets cheaper over time, and AT&T actually pays most of the bill, hoping to make up the subsidy with wireless subscriptions. So sure, Apple might drop the price — but it will drop the price everywhere at once rather than cut Wal-Mart a special deal.

But the Walmart-will-ruin-everything line is a great theory, and one that plays especially well in places like San Francisco and Manhattan, which have many Apple Stores but no Walmarts, and dislike Oprah as much as they love their iPhones. Points to Dubner for combining so many cultural touchstones in a single post. Wish we'd thought of it first!

(Photos via nayrb7 and ILoveMyPiccolo via Freakonomics)

A complaint filed today in New York State Supreme Court in the Bronx on behalf of survivors of the fallen worker, Jdimytai Damour, claims that besides failing to provide adequate security, Wal-Mart "engaged in specific marketing and advertising techniques to specifically attract a large crowd and create an environment of frenzy and mayhem," according to published reports.

Wal-Mart's ad agency would consider that an honor! At least one of those frenzy-inducing ads was still running well after Damour's death. When framed as a cold, calculating, malicious act by Wal-Mart, the charge may sound borderline ludicrous, like something a lawyer throws in just in case; but Ad Age points out that there's been a longtime campaign to try to get stores to stock adequate merchandise on Black Friday, so shoppers don't feel the need to trample each other to get those few super-cheap TVs in the back of the store. That's not a bad idea at all. [Ad Age; pic via]

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."

A 28-year-old pregnant lady was also knocked down in the frenzy. The good news is that most people got that cheap XBox that Ricky wanted, and the "My First Sex Scandal" karaoke microphone/dildo that Amber was desperate for. So the young man didn't die in vain. What were we just saying?

Before police shut down the store, eager shoppers streamed past emergency crews as they worked furiously to save the store clerk's life.

"They were working on him, but you could see he was dead, said Halcyon Alexander, 29. "People were still coming through."

Only a few stopped.

"They're savages," said shopper Kimberly Cribbs, 27. "It's sad. It's terrible."

• SlotMusic cards will be SanDisk MicroSD cards preloaded with music, album art and other extras.
• Each card will be packaged with a USB sleeve, making plug-in to any computer theoretically no problem.
• The details in the announcement seem intentionally vague on whether the disk will be a one-on-one alternative to CD albums, or whether record labels will create bundles that take advantage of the cards' 1 GB capacity.
• MP3 will be the audio format, with rates as high as 320 kbps rather than the grainier 128 kbps most commonly used to share MP3s. (The 128 kbps rate was chosen as the target for MP3 audio quality back in the early '90s, when ISDN lines were the future.)
• No DRM! Seriously, none.
• The Big Four music labels — EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner — have signed up.
• So far, no details on the initial catalogue of music. "Check back soon for announcements" says the artists page at SlotMusic.org.
• It's gotta be annoying to the record execs involved that Slotmusic.com is owned by a defunct band called S.L.O.T.

Boomp3.com

While the US economy remains in an explosive state, some Americans — like Kirsten Dunst— have begun to look for a second job to supplement their lifestyle. The How to Lose Friends & Alienate People star recently apply for a position as a greeter at a local Wal Mart Super Center. Dunst felt like she’d be perfect for the position because she’s a total people person and enjoys making people feel at home. Dunst even practiced greeting people at the premiere for Hound Dog. Dunst said, “It’s not a life or death situation that I get a second job. I would like a second job and I want to fully prepare for my interview. I can actually say that I have greeting experience instead of lying about it on my resume.”

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

We've got a call into Walmart, but our guess is that through ad network LinkShare's affiliate marking program, hundreds if not thousands of Web site publishers put Walmart banner ads on their sites in hopes of referring shoppers and earning a slice of revenue from whatever they buy on Walmart.om. It would be very difficult to thoroughly vet each publisher. But if there's ever been a need for a clear example as to why Madison Avenue interactive agencies do not trust their clients to ad networks that claim extensive reach above all else, there is no more. Update: A Wal-Mart flack has gotten back to say: "We are investigating this matter and take it very seriously. This site used our banners without our authorization and we are working to have them immediately removed."

"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.

(Photo by AP/Charles Rex Arbogast)

More precisely, Wal-Mart family money. Madrone Capital Partners, which manages venture-capital investments for the heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, led Cuil's most recent $25 million financing round in April. Madrone's Greg Penner, who married Carrie Walton, Sam Walton's granddaughter, is on Cuil's board. And on Wal-Mart's.

Penner, who lives in Atherton, has ensconced himself in Silicon Valley society, despite an atypical background for the liberal Bay Area: His parents are evangelical sex therapists who believe in counseling gays into heterosexuality. He is a protege of Stanford Business School's Jack McDonald, and served as an executive at Walmart.com, a short-lived dotcom spinoff of Wal-Mart backed by Accel Partners and later folded back into the retailing giant.

Most significantly, he's also a board member of Baidu, a Chinese search engine which is eating Google's lunch in that country. The Waltons' investment in Cuil could be written off as simply an attempt to make money. But with Penner involved in two prominent Google's rivals, it's hard not to wonder if the Bentonville gang isn't hoping to do more than just add to its pile.