another really really long post to test the this stuff out again. i need a post with 100 characters or more to make sure it's functioning.

test

A gallon-sized jar of whole pickles is something to behold. The jar is the size of a small aquarium. The fat green pickles, floating in swampy juice, look reptilian, their shapes exaggerated by the glass. It weighs 12 pounds, too big to carry with one hand. The gallon jar of pickles is a display of abundance and excess; it is entrancing, and also vaguely unsettling. This is the product that Wal-Mart fell in love with: Vlasic's gallon jar of pickles.

Wal-Mart priced it at $2.97--a year's supply of pickles for less than $3! "They were using it as a 'statement' item," says Pat Hunn, who calls himself the "mad scientist" of Vlasic's gallon jar. "Wal-Mart was putting it before consumers, saying, This represents what Wal-Mart's about. You can buy a stinkin' gallon of pickles for $2.97. And it's the nation's number-one brand."

Therein lies the basic conundrum of doing business with the world's largest retailer. By selling a gallon of kosher dills for less than most grocers sell a quart, Wal-Mart may have provided a ser-vice for its customers. But what did it do for Vlasic? The pickle maker had spent decades convincing customers that they should pay a premium for its brand. Now Wal-Mart was practically giving them away. And the fevered buying spree that resulted distorted every aspect of Vlasic's operations, from farm field to factory to financial statement.

Indeed, as Vlasic discovered, the real story of Wal-Mart, the story that never gets told, is the story of the pressure the biggest retailer relentlessly applies to its suppliers in the name of bringing us "every day low prices." It's the story of what that pressure does to the companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U.S. manufacturing, and to the economy as a whole. That story can be found floating in a gallon jar of pickles at Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart is not just the world's largest retailer. It's the world's largest company--bigger than ExxonMobil, General Motors, and General Electric. The scale can be hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244.5 billion worth of goods last year. It sells in three months what

number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its own category of general merchandise and groceries, Wal-Mart no longer has any real rivals. It does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway, and Kroger combined. "Clearly," says Edward Fox, head of Southern Methodist University's J.C. Penney Center for Retailing Excellence, "Wal-Mart is more powerful than any retailer has ever been." It is, in fact, so big and so furtively powerful as to have become an entirely different order of corporate being.

Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.

Of course, U.S. companies have been moving jobs offshore for decades, long before Wal-Mart was a retailing power. But there is no question that the chain is helping accelerate the loss of American jobs to low-wage countries such as China. Wal-Mart, which in the late 1980s and early 1990s trumpeted its claim to "Buy American," has doubled its imports from China in the past five years alone, buying some $12 billion in merchandise in 2002. That's nearly 10% of all Chinese exports to the United States.

One way to think of Wal-Mart is as a vast pipeline that gives non-U.S. companies direct access to the American market. "One of the things that limits or slows the growth of imports is the cost of establishing connections and networks," says Paul Krugman, the Princeton University economist. "Wal-Mart is so big and so centralized that it can all at once hook Chinese and other suppliers into its digital system. So--wham!--you have a large switch to overseas sourcing in a period quicker than under the old rules of retailing."

Steve Dobbins has been bearing the brunt of that switch. He's president and CEO of Carolina Mills, a 75-year-old North Carolina company that supplies thread, yarn, and textile finishing to apparel makers--half of which supply Wal-Mart. Carolina Mills grew steadily until 2000. But in the past three years, as its customers have gone either overseas or out of business, it has shrunk from 17 factories to 7, and from 2,600 employees to 1,200. Dobbins's customers have begun to face imported clothing sold so cheaply to Wal-Mart that they could not compete even if they paid their workers nothing.

"People ask, 'How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply? How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?' Sure, it's held inflation down, and it's great to have bargains," says Dobbins. "But you can't buy anything if you're not employed. We are shopping ourselves out of jobs."

The gallon jar of pickles at Wal-Mart became a devastating success, giving Vlasic strong sales and growth numbers--but slashing its profits by millions of dollars.
There is no question that Wal-Mart's relentless drive to squeeze out costs has benefited consumers. The giant retailer is at least partly responsible for the low rate of U.S. inflation, and a McKinsey & Co. study concluded that about 12% of the economy's productivity gains in the second half of the 1990s could be traced to Wal-Mart alone.

There is also no question that doing business with Wal-Mart can give a supplier a fast, heady jolt of sales and market share. But that fix can come with long-term consequences for the health of a brand and a business. Vlasic, for example, wasn't looking to build its brand on a gallon of whole pickles. Pickle companies make money on "the cut," slicing cucumbers into spears and hamburger chips. "Cucumbers in the jar, you don't make a whole lot of money there," says Steve Young, a former vice president of grocery marketing for pickles at Vlasic, who has since left the company.

At some point in the late 1990s, a Wal-Mart buyer saw Vlasic's gallon jar and started talking to Pat Hunn about it. Hunn, who has also since left Vlasic, was then head of Vlasic's Wal-Mart sales team, based in Dallas. The gallon intrigued the buyer. In sales tests, priced somewhere over $3, "the gallon sold like crazy," says Hunn, "surprising us all." The Wal-Mart buyer had a brainstorm: What would happen to the gallon if they offered it nationwide and got it below $3? Hunn was skeptical, but his job was to look for ways to sell pickles at Wal-Mart. Why not?

And so Vlasic's gallon jar of pickles went into every Wal-Mart, some 3,000 stores, at $2.97, a price so low that Vlasic and Wal-Mart were making only a penny or two on a jar, if that. It was showcased on big pallets near the front of stores. It was an abundance of abundance. "It was selling 80 jars a week, on average, in every store," says Young. Doesn't sound like much, until you do the math: That's 240,000 gallons of pickles, just in gallon jars, just at Wal-Mart, every week. Whole fields of cucumbers were heading out the door.

For Vlasic, the gallon jar of pickles became what might be called a devastating success. "Quickly, it started cannibalizing our non-Wal-Mart business," says Young. "We saw consumers who used to buy the spears and the chips in supermarkets buying the Wal-Mart gallons. They'd eat a quarter of a jar and throw the thing away when they got moldy. A family can't eat them fast enough."

The gallon jar reshaped Vlasic's pickle business: It chewed up the profit margin of the business with Wal-Mart, and of pickles generally. Procurement had to scramble to find enough pickles to fill the gallons, but the volume gave Vlasic strong sales numbers, strong growth numbers, and a powerful place in the world of pickles at Wal-Mart. Which accounted for 30% of Vlasic's business. But the company's profits from pickles had shriveled 25% or more, Young says--millions of dollars.

The gallon was hoisting Vlasic and hurting it at the same time.

Young remembers begging Wal-Mart for relief. "They said, 'No way,' " says Young. "We said we'll increase the price"--even $3.49 would have helped tremendously--"and they said, 'If you do that, all the other products of yours we buy, we'll stop buying.' It was a clear threat." Hunn recalls things a little differently, if just as ominously: "They said, 'We want the $2.97 gallon of pickles. If you don't do it, we'll see if someone else might.' I knew our competitors were saying to Wal-Mart, 'We'll do the $2.97 gallons if you give us your other business.' " Wal-Mart's business was so indispensable to Vlasic, and the gallon so central to the Wal-Mart relationship, that decisions about the future of the gallon were made at the CEO level.

Finally, Wal-Mart let Vlasic up for air. "The Wal-Mart guy's response was classic," Young recalls. "He said, 'Well, we've done to pickles what we did to orange juice. We've killed it. We can back off.' " Vlasic got to take it down to just over half a gallon of pickles, for $2.79. Not long after that, in January 2001, Vlasic filed for bankruptcy--although the gallon jar of pickles, everyone agrees, wasn't a critical factor.

By now, it is accepted wisdom that Wal-Mart makes the companies it does business with more efficient and focused, leaner and faster. Wal-Mart itself is known for continuous improvement in its ability to handle, move, and track merchandise. It expects the same of its suppliers. But the ability to operate at peak efficiency only gets you in the door at Wal-Mart. Then the real demands start. The public image Wal-Mart projects may be as cheery as its yellow smiley-face mascot, but there is nothing genial about the process by which Wal-Mart gets its suppliers to provide tires and contact lenses, guns and underarm deodorant at every day low prices. Wal-Mart is legendary for forcing its suppliers to redesign everything from their packaging to their computer systems. It is also legendary for quite straightforwardly telling them what it will pay for their goods.

jezzuz you're bored!

I've got a nasty hangover and I can't go back to sleep. Yep, I'm bored.

Wal-Mart is a damn monopoly!!

Thanks for the reminder jerky boy, now I need to get a big, fat, juicy, raw Vlasic pickle out of my swampy 1 gallon jar of pickle holding juice

Isobel Ford closed her eyes for a moment. The swaying of the old bus on its worn-out springs as it rumbled down the road was almost soporific. Only almost, because it wheezed and creaked and the engine knocked. Her eyes popped open seconds after they closed. In front of her, Mr. Stanton from the college's athletic trainers' office wrestled with the wheel, his eyes fixed on the dark road ahead. Good. He was awake and driving carefully. But then he generally slept in the bus, probably had the entire time the meet had been going on.

Damn it, the 35 year old sharp featured woman grumbled to herself, none of the boy's teams, except maybe the chess squad traveled like this. The football team was even flying to out of town games now. The baseball and basketball teams and yes, even the men's track team, went in the new air-conditioned Greyhound style buses, not this old rattle trap. It was 1966 for god's sake. When was the administration going to wake up about women's sports?

Of course those old fuddy-duddies in that ivory tower called the College President's Office hadn't realized that it was a new day and new ideas were sweeping the country. Even the demonstrations and the sit-ins hadn't alerted them to the idea of the equality and importance of women's athletics.

Her eyes traveled around the dark interior of the bus. She really couldn't make out much of anyone but she knew where all of her girls were piled up. She knew them and fussed over them. She knew who most of them were dating and how their grades were as well as subjects like which events they shone at and who ran the best relays together. She knew that at least one of them was having sex with one of those very higher up males she was silently complaining about. She smiled to herself. That was okay. Her eyes searched down to locate both girls who enjoyed certain games they played with her in her office with the doors locked.

She snorted. That was another thing. That not-to-be-named girl could discreetly spend the night at a certain male Professor's off campus apartment and no one would say a word. But let Rhonda or Daphne spend the night at her place and she would be out of a job the next day. Free love didn't extend to Lesbians even in this modern day.

The night clouds parted and the bus was illuminated by the half moon. Isobel could see clearly the members not only of her team but also the rather unfamiliar members of the cheerleading squad that had accompanied them to the meet. That was nice of them, she acknowledged. They weren't required to do that, even though most of the ones along were the back-ups. She strained her eyes towards the rear where two girls were sleeping on the same seat.

Pam Maguire was one of her girls. The slender, long legged brunette was good over the hurdles but even better for long distance. She wore her hair long for an athlete and loved to let it fall in soft curls around her shoulders. She was a theater arts student, a rather unusual field when most of her teammates were Physical Education majors. Isobel briefly enjoyed one of the fantasies that involved her; a fantasy involving her desk, her strapon and the young woman's long legs.

She really didn't know Pam's roommate, Kim McCall. The other girl was from somewhere up in Canada, living with American relatives to allow her to go to school here. She was, of all things, a math major. Not exactly what one thought of when the word "Cheerleader" came to mind. Isobel snorted again. What a silly thought. Sometimes the hardest things to spot were your own prejudices, even as you complained about other people's. She shifted to a more comfortable position and closed her eyes.

The two roommates in the far back were huddled together, but they weren't asleep. Pam had showered and changed clothes after the track meet, but the young brunette had donned her customary outfit of shorts and a loose sleeveless shirt to go with her white socks and running shoes. The slightly shorter, black haired Kim was still wearing her bright red and yellow cheerleader outfit. She leaned her head against her friend's shoulder and studied the coach at the front of the bus through the lashes of her seemingly closed eyes.

"Miss Ford was looking at you again," she whispered without moving her lips. She giggled softly. "She wants to throw you down on that leather couch in her office and fuck you."

"How do you know its me?" Pam replied, her lips resting against Kim's hair. "I saw her watching your legs while you were cheering. Every time your skirt went up she licked her lips. I've heard she has one of those harness type things that lets her fuck a girl like she's a man. I'll bet she's thinking of a sexy cheerleader stretched out on that couch with her skirt up and her legs spread wide."

"Really? She really has one of those whadda-call-its?"

"Strapons, I think they're called. I heard Rhonda Kelly talking about it with someone in the gym shower room one day. I wonder how many members of the team Miss Ford has had already?"

"Are you interested?" Kim inquired. The girls shared a laugh inaudible beyond their seat. The two of them had been friends before they became lovers. Neither of them had curbed a roving eye for either other girls or guys, although they turned down only one bed on the nights they were both in their room. "Variety is the spice of life, especially at college," was their motto. Neither of them were LUGS (Lesbians Until Graduation). They just wanted to have fun. Although they cared for each other deeply, they didn't have any real plans for life after graduation together. Of course, right now they didn't have plans for ANY life after graduation. "Right now", was their concern.

"Maybe so. But I think that blonde girl, Deborah, three doors down the hall might be a more interesting project. I've noticed she had like two dates in the Fall and since then nothing. I swear I've seen her turn her head when someone attractive goes past her."

"Really? She is cute. But speaking of girl-watching, I saw the dorm monitor Meredith the other day. You were coming back from practice and her eyes were so fixed on your legs I thought she was going to run into the wall."

"You're kidding. Wow. She's a senior. That's exciting."

Kim shifted around as though she was sleepily trying to get more comfortable against her roommate's shoulder. Her fingers touched the waistband of other girl's shorts. She grinned into the flowing hair and slipped her hand into the gap between the top of the shorts and the bottom of the shirt and onto the taut stomach.

"Kim," came a fierce whisper, "What are you doing?"

Kim didn't answer. Instead her hand took Pam's and drew it over to her. Parting her legs, she tucked the other girls hand under her skirt.

Pam's fingers touched Kim. "Good God," she muttered. "You don't have any panties on."

"Nope, I took them off before we got on the bus."

"One of these days you're going to forget and do that BEFORE you cheer," Pam hissed, even as her fingers toyed with the fine dark hair on Kim's pussy.

"Who's going to complain? You? I know you. You'd be grinning."

"That's because you're the sexiest girl on campus."

"Liar." Leaving Pam's hand between her legs, Kim's fingers crept back up under Pam's shirt. "Left your bra off again, I see." She stroked the small firm globe, her index finger brushing over the stiffening nipple.

"If you don't stop that, Lisette," Pam nodded slightly towards the girl sitting closest to them, "Is going to get suspicious."

"Why would you say that?" Kim suddenly smothered a gasp as two of Pam's fingers found her damp slit and gently eased it open. "And what do you believe she might think, as well as the whole bus, when I start screaming your name?"

"Don't scream then." The fingers slipped deeper inside and all conversation ceased.

Kim buried her face in her roommate's shoulder, muffling an involuntary moan. Pam pressed the heel of her hand against Kim's clit, rubbing it in tiny circles in time with the two fingers she had plunged inside Kim's tight silky walls. Kim's hips jerked to meet each twist of her roommate's fingers. She shifted back and forth in opposition to the pressure of the hand on her throbbing clit.

One of Kim's fingers joined the thumb placed on Pam's nipple. Catching the stiffened nub between them they squeezed every time the other girl's fingers pressed inside her. As the motion of Pam's hand became faster and more demanding, Kim squeezed tighter and tighter on the hard pink nipple. She cupped the breast with the remainder of her hand in a firm hold.

Wetness poured over Pam's fingers. Kim shifted her face once more, her lips pushing the loose collar of Pam's shirt aside. She sought a dark flush on the lower neck, showing where she had marked her roommate recently while making love. As her tight internal muscles locked on Pam's fingers, she closed her teeth on that same place and also pinched the nipple she held even harder. Pam's eyes snapped open and she bit her lower lip as she felt her friend shudder and her fingers suddenly become even wetter.

When the two girls stopped shivering Kim peeked around the immediate area. Still pretending to slumber she barely opened her eyes. Pam remained still but her wide-open eyes also scanned the bus. They both held their breath, trying to see if anyone had noticed the slight commotion in the back seat.

"Whew," whispered Kim. She gave a tiny giggle. "That was exciting."

"I hope that holds you till we get back to the room," her friend whispered back.

"Mmmm, you have plans for then?"

"I always have plans for you and me. I swear, do you slip something in my food?"

"Not since those brownies the weekend of the concert." There was another soft chuckle into Pam's hair. "You didn't mind me not wearing panties that time."

"Neither did the baseball team's number one pitcher. We're lucky the season was over. I don't think he recovered for a week."

Silence returned to the back seat and after a while both girls dozed off. Not long after they did, with a screeching of brakes, the bus pulled up to the gym. The door squeaked open and the lights came on. Everyone stood and stretched. Kim hastily took the towel from Pam's gym bag and patted down the cracked leather seat.

Isobel waved the sleepy girls off the bus one by one, waiting at the bottom of the steps to get them pointed at their luggage and towards their dorms.

"No, that way Roxanne, you're headed in the wrong direction. See you at practice tomorrow Tina. Ursula, you're blocking the world there, get moving. Rhonda," the woman's eyes locked with the 20 year old blonde, "See me in my office tomorrow about 10."

"Kim," Isobel smiled as the last pair of girls reached the top of the steps, "You dropped your keys." She pointed behind the girl standing at the top of the steps.

"Thank you Miss Ford," the girl replied. She turned partway, bent and scooped them up. She scampered down the steps, waited until her roommate joined her and the two of them, the last ones off, headed off into the dark. Isobel stood motionless for a moment. She closed the door, waved to Gene Stanton and walked slowly to her office, her bag over her shoulder and her mind in deep thought.

She unlocked the door, snapped on the lamp on the side table and then closed the door behind herself. She looked at her watch. No point in going home now. She pried off her shoes and stretched out on the couch. She rested one arm over her eyes. The other hand crept down to her slacks.

She unfastened the belt and unzipped her slacks. Her hand slipped inside her panties and she touched herself.

Now then, had she really seen what she thought she had? Her fingers parted the trimmed hair on her pussy and started stroking gently in the ready slit. She had, she knew it. Kim had not been wearing panties. Furthermore, her pussy lips had been quite puffy, and wet. Obviously someone had been at it. Isobel curled two fingers inside herself and commenced to seriously frig her own cunt. Perhaps she had simply masturbated. Unlikely. Isobel recalled the way the two young women had snuggled together. There was no other answer. Pam had obviously fingered her roommate on the way back. Isobel bit back a groan as her fingers brought her to the edge she had teetered on all day.

"Well then, young lady," Isobel moaned as she brought herself to climax, her mind fixed on the flashing legs of her long distance runner. "I think you and I need to have a conference here rather soon."

Isobel's hopes and fantasies would have been pleasantly confirmed had she been able to see the dorm room shared by the object of her attraction and the cute cheerleader. The moment the door closed behind them the two girls were locked in each other's arms, showering kisses over each other's faces. Pam unzipped Kim's cheerleader outfit and pulled it down to her waist. Kim responded by grasping Pam's t-shirt and pulling it over her head and throwing it aside before catching the hem of her lover's shorts and pulling them down.

Pam made an ineffectual attempt to stop Kim but the dark-haired girl eluded her. Even as she struggled out of her outfit, Kim went to her knees and began kissing her roommate's mound. Somehow her contortions ended with her clad only in her sneakers and white socks. Her hands helped Pam step out of her shorts while her tongue ran down the inside of the other coed's thigh.

"Kim!" protested Pam.

Kim's voice was muffled as her lips touched Pam's pussy. "What? This is what you were planning on doing to me wasn't it? I just got you first. Its my turn anyway. You had me on the bus."

"But I didn't get to...ohhhh."

Pam had been prepared to argue her case but then she simply sighed happily as her roommate's tongue slipped up inside her. Closing her eyes, she moaned softly as Kim darted in and out of her pussy. The lithe cheerleader's hands slid around until they held the runner's firm butt, pulling her forward. Kim pressed her face between the long slender legs before her and proceeded to tongue lash her roommate.

Still aroused from their secret encounter on the bus, it wasn't long before Pam began to gasp for air and her hips began to grind forward, rubbing her bush on Kim's mouth. Kim tipped her head up under the other girl and drove her tongue as deeply as she could along Pam's inside walls. Knowing her roommate's body, she felt the first spasms run through her lover and closed her open mouth over Pam as the explosion released the flood of girl juices.

When Kim rose, her face wet and shiny, Pam grabbed her in a tight hug, kissing her roommate and savoring the taste of herself on Kim's lips. Arms around each other, they almost staggered to one of the beds and threw the covers off before collapsing to the mattress. There was a moment of confused hilarity as they struggled to get their shoes and socks off, a moment that might have led to more had they not been so tired.

Kim pillowed her head on Pam's shoulder and gently stroked her flat, lean stomach. The other girl kissed the top of Kim's dark hair and wrapped one arm around her.

"Wish we could put a double bed in here," Pam yawned. "As much as I love you against me, I do sometimes wish we had a bit more room."

A soft giggle tickled her shoulder. "I think it might be a little obvious then how we spend the night together. While I don't think either of us care about dorm gossip, or heck, campus rumors, can you imagine what would happened if our parents dropped by suddenly?"

"Oh my."

"In the meantime," Kim snuggled closer, "Are you going to let Miss Ford catch you?"

"Well, of course I will," Pam replied sleepily. "But I'm going to make her chase me before I give in."

"Let me know how it goes."

"Oh, if it goes as well as I hope it will, you'll definitely be the first to get it."

that's not even the whole article there are pages and page more but I got sick of pasting. and I can't believe you actually read that shit!

now you can see how bord I am too..

Fish just wouldn't be Fish if he didn't post something perverted now would he?

My bike is out of commision too, this sucks

the fish again showing his unoriginality...

with the weather being so nice like this it's just teaseing me like a stripper at a night club

yeah, i need to borrow someones bike for a quick blast.

what's wrong with yours?

Rims are off, tail is off to install pc'ed pegs with LED's (done by Firebretha) and to clean up the wiring since I don't need the resistors anymore, left fairing, left air duct cover are both off so that I can install the LED flasher relay but the relay I received was defective so the bike won't get put back together till mid to late next week. Custom LED already sent me out a replacement but they're using USPS from NJ. I say it'll prolly be here Tue or Wed.

y are yo u removing the resistors to the blinkers?

are you going with that blaster X lighting system??

I don't need them anymore since I'm installing the low amp relay. This relay is not depedant on a high current draw in order to flash at DOT rates. It has a range from .05A - 10A and will flash normally whether you have regular filament style bulbs, LED's on all 4 corners or even a combo of both. Pretty expensive for a relay though at about $26 shipped.

What's that?