people buy the stupidest crap

Here's an idea for a blog, or Flickr group maybe.

"People Buy the Stupidest Crap".

You know how when you're shopping you often see products that make you go, "who the hell buys this crap???" Dollar stores come to mind. So does all the fake brand-name watches and bags and shoes that fall apart weeks after you buy them.

But it's not just the cult of cheap goods. It's novelty items, or snazzy "inventions" that for some reason can only be sold late at night on TV. There's a glut of crap on the market that seems to be designed specifically to trick people into thinking they want/need it, just long enough to lay down the credit card. Don't people think about where all this crap ends up anymore? What happened to the guilt we used to feel about overflowing landfills, disappearing forests and all that stuff? What happened to reduce, reuse, recycle?

How is it that people still keep buying so much CRAP?

It's not that I always know what's crap, and what's useful. I was apparently wrong about the Roomba. I guess I underestimated this fine product's quality, not to mention the laziness of people.

Just the other week I bought a frisbee-type disc thing made of silicone, that you stretch like a giant rubber band to launch up to 100 feet! I mean, who doesn't want that? Well, it'll end up in the landfill eventually, but I'll probably get $7.99 worth of chuckles out of it.

style thoughts

Communicating complex ideas is a perilous task.

Good ideas are a mix of passion and free thought. Fearless thought.

The task is perilous because errors in words, whether spoken or written can suggest things not intended. Ideas fail not only when they are illogical, or poorly developed. They fail when they are not transmitted successfully.

So it is with great trepidation that I dare suggest that this blog might be the place to convey ideas.

But I don't think ideas are static things, that exist in ones mind, and either succeed or fail when communicated. Ideas change the moment they enter another mind, and change further upon processing. When speaking of ideas, of course I could be speaking of "information". Ideas are information we judge to be of some analytical, conceptual, descriptive or explanatory value. Words fail me...I need more education.

Dang.

back home

Going back home always makes important things seem so obvious, when they were practically invisible before.

Your mind takes a while to adjust, and when it does, you can barely believe how you thought before. Your mind is rebooted. Instant perspective.

Perspective on what, exactly, is up for grabs.