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Showing posts with label consumerism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label consumerism. Show all posts

Monday, June 25, 2012

Super-Sized Stupid

I looked at this picture in this article and had to ask myself: "If I could, would I?"

A 1 million dollar shoe collection? Seriously? 
No, I don't think that I would. Even if I trade the word "shoes" for "purse" or "perfumes." No.

I swear, I think what's wrong with us all today is that we have no limits. We are a "super-size" mentality. Food, sex, cars, homes, shoes, clothes... Anything we can have, we want the biggest, most expensive, fastest, fattest, richest - just any-est.

I know that somebody reading this is saying, "So?" But it is a "So?" issue. It matters.

This is why people are starving themselves to be the thinnest. You know that centuries back, people were being gluttons to be the fattest. How silly are we? Women are risking surgery and other medical procedures to have the biggest boobs and/or butts and/or lips. And, wait though - sometimes people let freaks off the street or operating out of their kitchen sink perform these procedures! Like they're getting a relaxer put on their hair by Mr. Leo or something... Too bad there's not a procedure to force us to better use our brains.

I have seen the most ridiculous "news" stories over the past year about people being so damn silly with money. There was the one dad who bought his daughter an apartment that cost something like 60 million dollars. There were the two rich guys competing to have the most expensive yacht. It's as if these fools - rich, super-rich or freak-me-mama wealthy are trying to see who can spend the most money the fastest. One rapper was in a club, just fanning hundred-dollar bills across some stripper's ass. (In two years, I might get to read about his bankruptcy or non-payment of spousal or child support, right?)


Let's not just pick on the rich. Poor people are almost as bad, sometimes worse. People who don't have next month's rent are in the stores, just knocking each other over to buy tennis shoes for two- and three-hundred dollars. Or they are driving cars with more value in the rims than the car itself. Or - this was my favorite when I was in one small town a couple years ago: they are like the guy that had a Bentley (I am dead serious) parked outside his house - a house that looked like those tar-paper shacks you see in photo-essays about American poverty. A Bentley. A Pepto-Bismol pink Bentley. I didn't even know what kind of car it was until I asked somebody. Broke-ass, dumb-ass, embarrassingly stupid person.


Look even at the way we see food. It's already been talked about how we "super-size" everything (except our salads) when we go out to eat. What kills me is the way we have started using food as a status symbol. It used to be enough to be seen in an "exclusive" restaurant, but now we go another step. Now, we want be-jeweled food. I guess rich some folks can't just have a hamburger unless it's garnished with gold dust or dust of diamonds or some such! Or - and I guess this is if you're too classy for blinging out your food - there are the recipes using some outrageously priced meat or mushroom. Maybe one that only grows in the Himalayas every six years and on a full moon. Or meat from a cow that was fed caviar and grapes. People don't care as long as they think they are being "exclusive."

Personally, I want to be inclusive, especially when it comes to my food. I want to know that lots of people have eaten (and lived through) what I'm ordering. I don't want to be the idiot that gobbles down something exotic and new. Find out a few years later that the knot growing on the side of my ass is from some weird and unpronounceable shit I paid a lot of money to eat.

I don't know, though. I guess we started to doing these crazy things to feel more important than someone else. Now we can't stop.

Of course, this is the "broke-ass" me talking. Give me a few million dollars to play with and we'll see...

Peace
--Free