Tag: Consumerism

Wenzdaz Theme Music

Greetings to my fellow humans and coffee ants. It’s Wenzda! Humpda! December 17 2025.

Ashlandians find ourselves in warmer weather with less fog. We’re hanging at about 40 degrees F. Light gray clouds with low bellies soldier past sunlit dark green evergreens. The clouds tear and break as they meet the trees. Another slice of sky features darker clouds mingling with bright blue sky. All shines with a rainy sheen, waiting to dry off. Today’s high will strike 47 F, ‘they’ say. We’re unsure they’ll be correct.

Slop is the word of the year. Hard to argue with that. In this information age, disinformation sown and furthered by AI’s efforts to entertain and uneducate the masses while undermining political will and decision-making owns many media outlets and social platforms.

Some of this is deliberately done. Feeling down? Go shopping! Look at these deals!

Not into shopping? Tune into NASCAR. NBA, NFL, college football, college basketball, hockey, volleyball, oh, boy the Olympics are coming! The world cup!

Eat our new food! Buy our new stuff! Watch our new show! Enjoy our new movie! Don’t like them, then watch the old movies, the old sitcoms, the old dramas, and remember how it used to be. Don’t think. Just sit back and relax. Let us take care of you.

What a way to end the year, mired in slop, wondering WTF is going to happen next year. Will the U.S. wage open war on Venezuela or go all in with Russia against the Ukraine? Trump is all for that. War for peace. “We can only win peace if we’re strong enough to fight for it,” he’ll snarl. And enough Americans are simple enough to eagerly nod agreement. We got all that military power. Shame not to use it, right?

Thinking about slop as the word of the year has The Neurons laughing. “Slop is the word is the word that you heard. It’s got groove, it’s got meaning. Slop is the time, is the place, is the motion. Slop is the way we are feeling.”

The Neurons might be on to something this time.

Anyway, they slotted “Grease” as sung by Frankie Valli in the movie, Grease, in the morning mental music stream. Except we’re singing ‘slop’ instead of ‘grease’.

Okay, coffee is greasing me up. Hope peace and grace break through the slop and make a cameo sometime in 2025’s final days. Here we go again. Cheers

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Twosdaz Wandering Thoughts

It’s a bad sad, as in depressing.

A casual friend, Diana, an older woman, had a large yard sale. People found many products which were unused, as in still in its original packaging. Bruce said, “I have a drill press and wasn’t planning to buy a new one. But this one was completely unused, I mean, brand new and in its box. It’s better than mine, which needs some work, and she was only asking fifty dollars for it. I felt like it’d be a sin to walk away from that.”

People openly talked about the many thing and unused products for sale. Sitting nearby, Diana explained, “Well, I get lonely, so I order things so I could chat up the delivery people.”

That shocked my sensibilities. Diana is an extrovert, a real people person. She belongs to a book club, bridge club, and choir. She regularly travels, attends exercise classes at the local Y, and attends plays and concerts. She’s involved and engaged, and yet, she’s buying things so she can talk to people.

It’s something that I, a person who is quite comfortable not speaking with anyone but my wife, cat, and barista for days, struggles to comprehend.

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Do You Want to Connect

Daily writing prompt
Do you remember life before the internet?
View all responses

Life before the net. Do I remember those dark, soulless days? Oh, yeah. I remember those days, just as I recall life without the world wide web, life without cable and DVDs, life without CDs, eight-track and cassette tapes, life without microwaves, and life without cell phones and more than three networks. I remember life without remote controls, which my wife calls, the clicker.

Yes, I remember buying my first personal computer. I remember using the first one at home. Then I recall signing us up for Compuserve and Mindnet. I remember getting my first email address and having no one to email. That soon changed. Viagra offers quickly found my inbox. With it came an understanding of something non-meaty called ‘Spam’ and wealthy Nigerians in need of money.

Yes, I remember pre-net life. Primarily because our TV schedule was fixed according to the cable schedule. Cheers on Thursday, for example. But when the net came into its full flowering, I was able to find a huge variety of things to stream from around the world, watching them when I wanted, instead of waiting for their schedule. Long as I was willing to pay for it.

With the net, the days of going to the front door and looking for the daily newspaper disappeared. There was no need for all that inked paper to stack up and get put out for the trash. Now the news was right there online. I didn’t need to wait until 6 PM to check to see what was happening. Of course, information about what was happening locally soon began fading. We could no longer just pick up the paper and turn to the police log to see what the hell the sirens were all about the other day. No, that faded. Now, there are sometimes stories on Facebook or Nextdoor. Some others are struggling to bring the local news back to us. It’s a challenge. Many efforts arise and fall.

Freedom came with online ordering, too. I no longer needed to prowl through brick and mortar stores, making comparisons, trying to figure out what to buy. Boom, the net was heavy with choices. It was still onerous in the early days to compare things but then came Amazon… Suddenly, whoa. It was a desperate consumer’s dream.

Do you know what it was like to travel in pre-net days? Calling the airlines to get price checks, listening to them look up schedules for you, explaining options? Same with hotels. Expedia and the like made it easier…for a while. But wherever money and humans are involved with money transactions and information, others are there to scam us for their share of the pie.

Yes, I remember life before the net. It was simpler and harder, easier, and more problematic. That’s how it always is with progress. Each step unfolds with new and surprising insights, and the things we used to do begin to fade.

Just think: one day, people will be asking, do you remember life before AI?

And someone will reply, I remember the days before cars. And then we’ll all wonder, what was that like, and turn to AI for the answer.

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Frieda’s Wandering Thoughts

I sometimes subscribe to Hulu for streaming content. I’m actually currently a subscriber but I put my account on hold because they’re offering anything that anyone in my household wants to watch.

They sent me a notice that they’re ‘updating our Subscriber Agreement’. Three things were specifically called out. Here is the second point, copied and pasted for your consideration.

• We are clarifying that, as we continue to increase the breadth and depth of the content we make available to you, circumstances may require that certain titles and types of content include ads, even in our ‘no ads’ or ‘ad free’ subscription tiers.

Is that not straight out of 1984? We are offering you ‘no adds’ and ‘ad free’ subscriptions but they’ll have ads.

I can imagine something similar happening at restaurants: ‘We are clarifying that as we continue to offer vegan meals, circumstances may require that certain dishes include meat and animal products.’

‘Certain circumstances’. Guess it’s the god of money forcing them to do this. “We couldn’t help ourselves.” Executives wring their hands. “It was the money. The money made us do it.”

What bullshit. I might need to change my account from ‘hold’ to ‘cancel’.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: rebellious

This is Saturday, March 23, 2024 — 032324.

Winter’s turn continues to erode our confidence that spring has actually arrived. Rain. Heavy clouds signaling more rain may be falling. 51 F with milky, intermittent sunshine. Could be bleaker but something about this pulls me down.

I’m not alone in feeling a downward tug. Before I mentioned it, another friend announced that he felt blah and blamed it on the weather change from sunshine and warm air to cold rain. Others quickly agreed with him. Several wondered if we’d get snow. Then came memories of March and April snowstorms fro previous years. I volunteered the time I remembered walking down the street in early July and looked across the valley at the snow on Grizzly. Wow, the others exclaimed.

The cats are back in the house. Papi tried the front door, side door, and back door, in and out times three, before acknowledging with plaintive meows, there’s no sunshine. The sunshine is gone! Where is the sunshine? Stop the rain. Make it stop.

“Can’t, little buddy,” I answered the ginger blade. “You’ll need to endure, just like us.”

Tail up but a sulky look over his shoulder to me, he headed for the bed.

The Neurons loaded the Clash into the morning mental music stream (Trademark floundering). The song is “The Magnificent Seven”. Now, the original 1960 movie which went by that name was a favorite of mine but was a remake of a 1954 Japanese movie Seven Samari, released in the US as a film called, The Magnificent Seven. The 2016 remake was called The Magnificent Seven. It wasn’t bad. I suspect the next edition of The Magnificent Seven movie will be set in space, or maybe another planet.

Anyway, the Clash’s song, “The Magnificent Seven”, is a punk statement on society’s states, especially as people’s buttons are pushed to conform, go to work, and enjoy the entertainment provided. Keep up with what’s going on by buying the latest consumer goods and you’ll be happy, because you’ve been told, that’s how it is. Seems fit to me as we plug in, turn on, and tune out, feasting on whatever powers our pleasure centers: shopping, cooking, games, sports, hunting, television, movies, books, fashion, TikTok, the net.

Well, now I’m depressed. Thanks, neurons. Think I’ll go escape into a novel. Shut up, neurons. They’re so eager to laugh and mock me when I act hypocritically by conforming to the mores and norms. Bloody hell.

Stay positive (ahem), lean forward, be strong, and vote. Think I’ll nurse more coffee and escape into my writing. It’s a safe place. Here’s the video. Cheers

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Obsolescence

8/31/2014

That’s the date on my laptop’s shipping box. I discarded it yesterday. The box, I mean. Cut it up and tossed it in recycle. The box, I mean.

Looking at that shipping date, my personal laptop is almost ten years old. Although state of art when purchased, it’s now considered a weary old piece. I should replace it but I don’t wanna. One, I’m used to its foibles. Two, it does everything which I need done. Three, waste. This machine works and I’d be forced to get rid of it and its materials, adding to the piles of consumer trash.

I don’t wanna do that. That’s why I have five old computers waiting for disposal. One is a tower bought in 1998 that I haven’t used in years. One is an old personal laptop. Two are my wife’s old Macs of different vintages. One is an old business laptop which they told me to keep when I left the company.

Getting rid of them is on my list of things to do. Pull the hard drives. Find somewhere which will scavenge whatever they can for repurposing, and responsibly dispose of the rest.

I absolutely hate this cycle. My laptop’s software has been updated as far as I can take it with its current hardware. Microsoft provides the OS. Yes, I’ve used others but I succumb to convenience. Yeah, shame on me. I’ll research what MS needs for its next OS and see if I can update my hardware to keep it working.

Ten years is just too early to get rid of something. Just look at my cars. Both are ICE. One is nine years old with 48K; the other is twenty years and 108K. Both run fine although the newer one needs rear brake maintenance. But both look good, run well, and live in a garage, so I’ll keep on keeping on with them.

Just like my ‘puter.

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Floofvertising

Floofvertising (floofinition) – Employing the images, activities, or sounds of animals to engage prospective customers.

In use: “Tigers are popular creatures in floofvertising efforts, as their natural beauty, strength, and grace appeals to people who want to be like them.”

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