For those about to shop

The Wal-Mart in my town has begun to grow like meteorite-born movie monster The Blob, slowly devouring its own surrounding parking lot so that it will be well-positioned to mount an attack on the neighboring Applebee’s in the next few weeks. And this frightens me, how obviously its progress toward world domination is going unchecked. Because the populace is scared.

There are people in this world who claim to not know what Wal-Mart is. These people aren’t so much lying outright as they are trying not to attract Wal-Mart’s murderous attention. But I’ll play along if I run into such lying liars, and I’ll tell them, “You know. That big, evil, sentient store that you go to when you want to be depressed about the state of humanity.”

“You mean the human feeding trough?”

And then I understand. “No, that’s the Golden Corral. It’s the buffet across the street, also covertly owned by Sam Walton, where Wal-Mart shoppers go to inflate their market value before being contracted to be sold as Soylent Green. But I understand the confusion. You can also go there to be depressed about the state of humanity.”

“Ah,” these people will say. And then I’ll hit them with a brick, because anyone feigning ignorance about Wal-Mart is almost certainly Walton himself. The greedy, alien-collaborating bastard.

Shopping-wise, I actually admire that a store aspires to carry all merchandise known to man. But for the sake of music, I can’t abide it. Forget distribution; a lot of musicians now sell exclusively to Wal-Mart. Talk about ease. No need to get it into a hundred small chains. Sell to Wal-Mart and go home, and your buyers won’t even be able to return anything because they’ll have been herded into train cars and slaughtered at the Corral by the time they have any complaints.

AC/DC sold exclusively through Wal-Mart with their new album Black Ice, thus suggesting their lack of dedication to hoarse screaming and team-loaded weaponry. I used to work with this guy named Nick back at Bingham’s Bagel Deli on the OSU campus in Columbus who might have had an opinion on this. Nick was a huge AC/DC fan, so I wonder if this soured him, or if he’s still rocking out.

Or if he’s about to rock out.

“Tell me something, Nick,” I’d ask him. “AC/DC has that song, ‘For Those About to Rock, We Salute You.’ ”

“Right.”

“Well, doesn’t that strike you as odd? If I’m going to salute someone for rocking, I’m looking for someone who is already rocking, or who has recently completed rocking. Maybe even someone who used to rock consistently in the past. But that’s it.”

Nick would get offended when I asked this sort of thing, which was often. “It’s a tribute to their fans,” he’d say dourly.

“I understand that. But ‘about to rock?’ What if the Nobel committee honored a scientist who was ‘about to cure cancer’? And a few years back, did baseball make a big deal when Mark McGuire was ‘about to break the home run record’?”

“It’s…”

“You wait for results in this world, Nick. I don’t want to be cynical, but you have to be realistic.”

Nick was usually into being a dick. Every once in a while, a guy would walk into the deli holding his girlfriend’s purse, and he’d be doing it in the most “this isn’t my purse” way possible, on a straight arm, away from his body. So Nick would say loudly, “Hey, look! That guy has a purse!”

But AC/DC wasn’t funny. It shook him all night long.

“The fans are about rocking,” he’d say. “It’s like, the band is giving back.”

“I understand that,” I’d tell him. “But it’s obvious that Brian Johnson and Angus Young don’t own rental property. Because let me tell you, tenants are always ‘about to pay rent.’ ”

Nick didn’t want to indulge me, but I had a lot of questions. What constituted “about to rock”? Did your rocking have to be imminent? What was the deadline: 30 seconds? Five minutes? An hour? Within the day? Were you striking a pose, air pick held high over your air guitar? Did you have to have your rocking shoes on? Devil horns in the air?

And where was the line on actualization? If I was about to rock but got distracted, would I still be saluted? Because I was definitely about to rock; I just didn’t get around to it. But the song doesn’t seem to require actual rocking (there is no verification or back-checking), so there may be a loophole. And let’s also say, to make this example more convincing, that I had a really good reason for stopping just short of rocking, like maybe the propane tank on my grill exploded. Even Angus couldn’t rock through that, but I’m thinking he wouldn’t be docked in terms of the salute.

“Do I actually need to somehow commit to rocking?” I’d ask him. “What if I just consider rocking but may not truly intend to do it? Like, I’m undecided on the rocking front. Maybe I need to sign something. Or maybe a penalty if I pledge to rock but then renege on it?”

“You just rock! You just rock out hard!”

“I’m thinking I could put it in my Day Runner: ‘1:00-1:15: Rock.’ At 12:45, I’d expect my salute. But then I might remember a Kiwanis luncheon that I promised to go to. And you can’t rock at Kiwanis. It’s in the by-laws.”

But Nick never got it, and that was a shame. Because I’m thinking you’d need some sort of accounting to track such things. Karmically, I’d owe one rocking session for each I missed after being saluted, but that would mean there’d be times in which I was definitely, decisively about to rock, but would not be saluted. Karma aside, ignoring a salute on a session like that seems to run counter to the spirit of the song. It really is a conundrum with no definitive answer, like the permissibility of abortion or whether the Jonas Brothers should be flogged.

Maybe you need to rock around that cannon blast. FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK! FIRE! (Cannon blast.) (Commence rocking.) WEEEEEEEEE SALUUUUUUUUUUUTE YOU!

I know they don’t sell cannons at Wal-Mart. Yet. Which really makes the debut of Black Ice there a total poseur move. If I were AC/DC’s integrity consultant (come on; you know they have one), I wouldn’t let them distribute through any store that didn’t sell some sort of heavy artillery.

It should be available at naval bases. War zones. Bob Evans.

Now if you’ll forgive me, I’m about to write an action blockbuster starring Vin Diesel and the late Don Knotts. I’ll expect my seven-figure payment by the end of the day.

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