S.A.L.E

‘Pundits are always blaming TV for making people stupid, movies for desentizing the world to violence, and rock music for making kids take drugs and kill themselves. These things should be the least of our worries. The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy.' – Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.Read that book, it’s too good, too funny, and just too truthful. Chuck’s telling you what you’ve already known all along, but were just too blind/idiotic/lazy/dishonest to admit.

It’s the Great Singapore Sale now, isn’t it. The one event of the year that gets everyone out of their homes till midnight buying shit they will never use, much less even really want like the materialistic mofos they are. With slogans like, ‘shopping is a girl’s best friend’ how the hell can a girl resist. There’s something seriously wrong with this society and the diagnosis is that we just consume way too much.

I saw an ad for VISA card at the airport promoting some discount on interest rates; something or other of the like. ‘Pay less, Eat more’. Good. Lord. No wonder the entire world save certain malnutrition-ed counties in Africais heading towards an obesity pandemic. I can understand if that were an ad to raise awareness for a new breed of rice that’s cheaper and more resilient for subsistence farmers in Bangladesh; those people need to eat more, we don’t. Who are the idiots that do these ads anyway? Shouldn’t it be ‘Pay Less, Eat Better’. Duh.

‘People enjoy the experience of buying more the product, because the moment of buying is one of enthusiastic fantasy and escape. The environmental crisis is really a crisis of desire’ I got that out of Adbusters. I’m not a fan or even a follower of the mag, it’s mad left-wing anti-immigrant, anti-capitalist, but occasionally, it has worthwhile things to say.

‘Buying things makes people happy because it takes their mind off being alive. I would think this would actually make them feel worse, but every woman I’ve ever dated seems to disagree.’ – Klosterman, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs.

It is a sad state of affairs. I like spending money, and I can certainly understand how buying things you really want can make a person happy. I love glossy paged coffee-table books, over-priced coffee, pretty dresses and cute shoes. But just like how I don’t believe I should eat more then I need to at a buffet, I don’t believe people should buy more just because it’s the great sale of the year. And I definitely cannot understand people that go to another place in the world for the sole purpose of shopping. In fact, shopping has got to be one of the most brainless, wasteful pastimes in the world. Not only are you not creating, or thinking very much or making decisions of any significance whatsoever (not to say most decisions of a single individual have any significance at all in the greater scheme of the cosmos...) But you’re consuming more then you actually really want and upsetting the ecosystem. I bet this world was made just so everyone could have what we wanted to live comfortably, but we’re greedy fuckers and now we worry about things like Global warming and Obesity without actually doing anything at all about it.

And we carry on consuming.

xoxox