Consumer Angst

Finally, someone gets it.

[Edited to protect the verbally-inept, i.e., me]

Err… ever get to wondering why some things which seem so crystal clear to you completely escape the attention of others? Like, ambient noise, for example: some people are just better at tuning stuff out than others, like me. Well, having intrusive advertising in everything from the pen I write with to the side of the building I live in, poking at my senses relentlessly from dawn to dusk, well, it makes me irritable. Even though I’m a media junkie I find that I watch TV less, browse the web less, heck, even go out less, just to avoid the onslaught. (And I don’t even live in a big city! Imagine what I’d be like if I had to install myself a couple billboards down from Times Square?) Yet, no one aside from a couple of cranky designers makes much fuss over this. Jesus, doesn’t it bother you that you have to flip through about three hundred perfume samples before you can get to your monthly Cosmo Quiz?

We put a man on the moon (32 years ago, even!); surely we can devise a better way to make commerce?

My Youth

I’m unclear on my exact reasoning for this, but I have always held to the belief that, fundamentally, I haven’t changed all that much in about 20 years. (For you mathematicians out there, that means, since I was about 12.) Oh sure, I’ve become a little older and a little bolder, but that’s just putting on a coat of fresh paint of the same color. So imagine my shock upon finding this… The sheer level of ambivalence that ensued within was such that I couldn’t even finish watching the thing. And to think, I really, really liked this song when it came out…. Blame it on my youth.