I was waiting in a doctor's office this morning and read this amusing story about how living near a Wal-Mart makes you skinnier.

. . . for Wal-Mart shoppers to do their annual trampling.

Wal-Mart to managers: "We’re not telling you how to vote. But here’s how you should vote. . . ."

Wal-Mart recently redesigned their logo. Not to be outdone, the folks from Wal-Mart Watch had their own little contest. You can view the finalists here.

Yeah, everyone's is Petrillo's, but what are some other good ones?

I've been eating it here and there, and there, and there, and there's more and more good pizza around.

Red Devil became Joe's, and it tastes better than before.

There's a new joint called Bollini's across the street from Joe's. It's wood fired gourmet, and pretty good. People have been talking about it on Yelp.

There's a new one called Cerese on Atlantic that is a thin crust shop. I thought it was kind of wet, but it was pretty good. Kind of reminded me of King Cole's in East LA - lots of tasty grease.

There doesn’t seem to be much of a point to this story. But security guys hauling someone outside the door because he was asking people if they thought shopping at Wal-Mart made their lives better? For some reason, that’s funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEzm27Xjmmg

In El Paso Texas, the neighborhood of Segundo Barrio is being targeted for some "urban renewal" or "community redevelopment", aka, razing the poor part of the city to put up a Wal-Mart shopping center. The big plan is to destroy over 100 homes to make way for a big strip mall.

This is one of the big cases where eminent domain is being used to seize homes from poor people. So, there's a somewhat unusual coalition of conservative anti-ED activists, and Chicanos and poverty activists opposing this.*

The anti-ED** folks are the landlords who are going to have their apartments taken, and the others being the people who rent from these landlords, but *are* the neighborhood. Usually, they're not on the same side of the fight, but when a giant comes stomping into town, old enemies become friends. Nothing unifies like a common enemy.

If you want to know more about the El Paso situation: Paso Del Sur