QOTD: "Originality is the art of concealing your sources." - Franklin P. Jones
Reading: Jon Ronson, Them
Listening to: the original cast album of Urinetown
Decluttering accomplishments: mailed packages, caught up on household paperwork, threw out more old magazines
I used Friday as my annual "personal holiday" and took advantage of it to catch up on a bunch of things at home, though my den/office is still massively cluttered. The simple truth is that I own way too much stuff. Which is why I am so amused when I see really strange products being advertised.
Before I get to them, I'll mention that it wasn't exactly an "all work and no play" extended weekend. For example, I went to the Smithsonian for a little while, breezing through the African Art Museum and parts of the Freer and Sackler galleries. I also used some of my free movie coupons to see a couple of things I'd been meaning to see for a while. My Big Fat Greek Wedding was funny, but didn't have enough conflict to be completely satisfying. Bowling For Columbine was further proof that Michael Moore is a grade-A asshole, but he can be quite amusing. While I laughed a lot, I found many of Moore's views to be poorly thought out. For example, in his comparisons of the U.S.A. and Canada, he claims Canadians have as many guns as we do, but doesn't distinguish between hunting rifles and handguns. That's a fairly trivial example, but it's typical of how he manipulates the numbers. And he never really comes up with an answer as to why gun violence is more of a problem here than in other countries in the developed world. Still, the movie was provocative and worth seeing.
I wanted to mention a quick follow-up on a previous rant. Were-creatures pretty much have to be predators, since how else would you catch lycanthropy from one? My speculative were-panda isn't out there attacking anything but the bamboo, which isn't about to turn around and bite somebody in return. Although, bamboo has been described as voracious ... hmm, were-kudzu, anyone?
Also, you might notice the new color scheme here and on the archive page. That's Phase1 of the belated annual redesign. Phase 2 will involve updating the FAQ, the links to other journals, and the life list, including adding some links there about things in progress or things I've done. (Actually, I did update the color scheme of the life list and moved the Mt. Hagen festival to the "done" section, while adding a new item on the "travel" section, having read about bathing in cocoa and being scrubbed with the hulls of said magical plant.) Phase 3 will be the last one and will update the index page. Don't hold your breath on any of those.
But, as I said, what I really wanted to write about has more to do with consumerism. As a person who is trying to declutter and simplify my life, I can't help but wonder about some of the new products I read about. Take, for example, FizzyFruit. Somebody has figured out how to carbonate apples and oranges, injecting fizz without breaking the skin of the fruit. Supposedly, this will make fruit more fun and help parents persaude their kids to eat fruit instead of junk food. I suppose the novelty might work once. But, like a lot of other truly silly products I see in the supermarket (pink or blue squeezable margarine, cocoa flavored frozen french fries), the only value is novelty.
People do buy things just because they're new, though. Mary Joan mentioned "Mud and Bugs" cereal to me, for example. She bought it because she'll eventually figure out something clever to do with it. So far as I can tell, it's just ordinary sweetened cocoa cereal (the mud) with marshmallows shaped sort of like bugs. But I suppose that the good folks in Battle Creek, having long since abandoned their original mission of nutritional evangelism, have to come up with new ways to sell thirty cents worth of grain and sugar for four bucks. I'll stick to the more boring and more nutritious stuff, which is also a lot cheaper. (Travel trivia: you can buy Kellogg's corn flakes damn near everywhere in the world. If there's a store or kiosk of any sort, they always have corn flakes. It's one of the universal foods, available even in places normal Americans don't go to.)
Another food item that mystifies me is p.b. slices, which are claimed to "make eating peanut butter easy." I have to admit that I was unaware that eating peanut butter was difficult. These are cellophane wrapped one ounce slices of peanut butter, sort of the p.b. equivalent of individually wrapped slices of American cheese. Maybe if you're locked up in the sort of place where they won't allow you knives this might make sense. Nah, that doesn't make sense either. You'd just do what everybody else does and stick your finger in the jar. (I will point out that were I an advertising executive, I have a better marketing idea than making p.b. easy to eat. Individually wrapped slices could be sold fairly well as portion control. But I'd have a way difficult time marketing anything as silly as this.)
And then there's the whole category of dubious medical products. My current favorite is the vibrating tampon. I'll admit that it's probably not fair for me to comment on this, since I've never had a huge problem with menstrual cramps. Maybe the eight women who claim Steve Kilgore is a god for developing this product really did experience tremendous relief from using it. But there are just a huge number of things on the site which set off my bogosity meter. One has to wonder just how these women came to Mr. Kilgore's attention in the first place. It would be pretty creepy for a guy to ask every woman he knows about her experience of menstrual cramps and even creepier for him to offer her something that could be misconstrued as a sex toy in relief. Mixing issues by railing against the use of bleach in the manufacture of conventional tampons is another red flag. The lack of actual peer-reviewed medical citations is a more obvious hint of something fishy. The ungrammatical writing on the site didn't exactly boost my confidence either. Nor did the fact that Mr. Kilgore's company doesn't appear to have any other products. Very strange.
Another dubious product in this category is the stomach pacemaker. I understand the motivation, since we all know what big business weight management is in the U.S.. The problem here is that, not only does this device still require invasive surgery to implant, it's questionable whether the thing works. In the first clinical trial in the U.S., some of the patients actually gained weight, but the researcher behind this writes that off by saying that they hadn't gotten any dietary instructions or behavioral screening with their surgery. Umm, isn't that exactly the reason why people are willing to undergo bariatric surgery? If they wanted to diet or do behavioral modification, they'd be doing that, not having the digestive equivalent of shock therapy.
Cat people are particularly prone to targeting by the masses of consumerism. I'm no longer shocked at people spending $30 or more for embellished velvet or fake ruby collars for their precious critters. And I wouldn't begrudge any cat the luxury of a four dollar can of Kitty Kaviar, though I could live without the cutesy spelling and one could buy comparable dried bonito in any Japanese market. My scorn is reserved for the mood collar. This is a cat collar with a mood ring type crystal and a chart to interpret just how Kitty is feeling. I'll save you $35 right here and now. All cats have only one mood. Color me perverse.
While I'm on things that change color, I saw an ad for a "make your own people polish kit." "People polish" turns out to be glittery body gel. The product isn't really a stupid one (or at least no dumber than any other cosmetic), but the name is. I will note that this seems like a perfect gift for the fashion-obsessed fourteen year old in your life. The similar "make your own eye shadow kit" would have delighted me in junior high. Come to think of it, it still would, though nearly anybody who'd be inclined to spend $24 on a gift for me is far more likely to buy a book or CD. At least nobody I know is extravagant enough to buy me a $322 pair of leather gloves with metal fringe, which are quite possibly the single ugliest accessory I've seen advertised this season. Though the computer mouse encrusted with Swarovski crystals comes close, even if it's not technically an accessory.
Finally, in the past couple of months, The Wall Street Journal has provided a couple of gems regarding fabric. The first is about a product that I don't consider at all silly, but the article described it in unique terminology. Writing about techniques that make shirting fabric more wrinkle resistant (with results turning up in shirts at surprisingly upscale shops), the WSJ referred to the new fabric treatments as "botox for broadcloth." Alas, that isn't helpful when somebody like me, who loathes ironing, tries to find such miracle fabrics.
The sillier story - and I know the WSJ thought it was silly too, since it was in the A-head, the fringe news column on the front page - had to do with various textile innovations coming from Korea. These include boxer shorts with microgranules that emit far-infrared rays to "cut odor and improve circulation." There are also lavender or peppermint scented suits, to alleviate stress, and business attire with schets of charcoal sewn into the armpits and crotch to block electromagnetic radiation. There's the aloe vera bra in case your breasts need moisturizing, the Vitamin D slacks to lubricate your legs, and the "menstrual-pain reducing pants." The latter also allegedly emit far-infrared rays. Never mind that anything that's above absolute zero emits far-infrared radiation. Hmm, maybe that's how the vibrating tampon really works. By the way, lest one pick on the Koreans over this, the article also claimed that Dupont is now making clothing that can be detected by global positioning satellites. One has to wonder about this, since GPS is a passive satellite system, lacking sensors to detect anything. I guess they haven't come up with fabric that has built in bogosity meters.
On a more serious note, Thursday's Washington Post had an article about the announcement that Claritin, a popular anti-allergy drug, will be sold over the counter soon. The thing that I hadn't realized until reading this piece was what the real economic implications of that are. People usually assume that selling drugs over the counter is good for the people who use them. But, here's the rub. Even though the list price may go down, people who get the drug via prescription drug plans end up having to pay it out of pocket now. So their net expenditure actually goes up. In addition, the insurers pressure doctors not to tell patients to use the over the counter drug, rather than to prescribe other medications.
My final counter to the consumerist fury of this time of year comes from an interview with Luiz Inacio da Silva, better known as Lula, the new president of Brazil. He was interviewed for Newsweek by Lally Weymouth, who asked him what the biggest turning point in his life had been. He replied, "I ate bread for the first time in my life when I was seven years old. Until then, I drank black coffee and mixed flour in the coffee and porridge for breakfast. In those days, a lot of children starved before reaching the age of one. I managed to survive."
If that doesn't give you some perspective on the holiday shopping frenzy, nothing will.
Copyright 2002 Miriam H. Nadel