{"id":589,"date":"2005-11-10T10:33:37","date_gmt":"2005-11-10T10:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vallentyne.com\/blog\/?p=589"},"modified":"2005-11-10T10:33:37","modified_gmt":"2005-11-10T10:33:37","slug":"sprawl-mart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/10\/sprawl-mart\/","title":{"rendered":"Sprawl-Mart"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2129636\/fr\/rss\/\">urban sprawl<\/a> continues, of which I am a part of course, having built a home in the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcburbs.  That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inevitable I suppose.  But the thing that gets me is the big-box stores.  Especially Wal-Mart.  Whatever you believe about its effects on the economy, and workers, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just no denying that those stores are just big ugly eyesores.  They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re huge, it&#8217;s like a football field of crap in there.  Whatever happened to having a second story?  I mean when you build a home, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no more expensive one to build than a bungalow (I&#8217;m told that&#8217;s because of the larger roof and foundation which tend to be the expensive bits), that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why most homes have a second story.  What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the matter with a second story on a Wal-Mart and having some frigging architecture, instead of looking like a factory?  I&#8217;m not saying that Wal-Marts should look like the Taj Mahal, but since they take up so much of the available space, wouldn&#8217;t it help everyone if they were nicer to look at?  It might make going there a little more enjoyable, instead of feeling like I&#8217;m herding my family towards the rendering plant.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, you know there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too many of these things when you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even have a decent plane crash without <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2005\/US\/11\/08\/walmart.crash.ap\/index.html?section=cnn_topstories\">hitting one<\/a>.  I mean, come on.  You fall out of the sky, and can&#8217;t manage to miss hitting one.  I wonder what the math is on how many square miles of the Earth is covered by Wal-Mart stores.  It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sad state of affairs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The urban sprawl continues, of which I am a part of course, having built a home in the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcburbs. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inevitable I suppose. But the thing that gets me is the big-box stores. Especially Wal-Mart. Whatever you believe about its &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/10\/sprawl-mart\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piGNU-9v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}