Consumer Culture

A few days ago I got an amusing solicitation in my snail mail. It was from this Grapefruit Orchard place in Texas, and promised me orgasmic experiences with the so sour so good fruit. I mention it because it had an amusing paragraph on the part where you sign your sanity away for twenty bucks plus shipping & handling. It reads as follows:

"Of course, Harry. I'm willing to test a box of Orchard Rio Red grapefruit at your risk. Send me a box of 12 sun-sweetened Orchard Rio Reds {not just any of your underground-grown, unsweetened Rio Reds, Harry, so you'd better bite into them first and test them out}. If I absolutely love them, I'll send you $18.88 plus $5.97 shipping. If not, I'll just write "No, thanks" on the invoice and mail the invoice back to you. We'll still be friends."

Still? I was never friends with anyone who owned an orchard. I might be, in the future. Heck, I might even own an orchard some day. But I don't know that I'd call someone who tells me that my grapefruit supply is the most essential secret to my happiness is not one of my most clued-in buds, if you know what I mean.

This culture of consumerism is frightening. I was reading Bill Bryson's 1989 venture through small town America, THE LOST CONTINENT, and I realized exactly how much our culture drives us to create unique individuality that forces us all to keep up with one another. I mean, how we as advertisers try to convince every single resident of the world that their entire future happiness depends on getting a Triple Chocolate Fruity Blast smoothie, a Scrubbly Bubbly Cleaner Pad, a Lot-O-Meat Burnt Burger, any odd thing we would never otherwise associate with financial security or future bliss. And it's all in capitals. The branding of molecules has begun! Everything Must Have Capitals. I feel like I'm reading old time books where they capitalized odd nouns. A holdover from the German days of English perhaps. It has me checking my behind every time I take a shower to see if I've been stamped like a Cabbage Patch kid or a Huggly-Snuggly-Wuggly bear. Or like a chicken. Oh, excuse me, Chickette.

All in all, it makes me sick. Same with this attitude of bewilderment that a lot of people in the U.S. have in the face of political situations, understanding other countries, realizing the consequences of their actions, in other words. Because it's not in front of us, we don't care about it. We are the ultimate short-memory nation. Let's drop atomic bombs. It will be so far away that we'll never feel the effect. What do you mean that country can't be obliterated? It supports us? Hah! Forget them. So there are poor people here? Why do they have to complain? Why can't they just go home. Like this lettering I saw on a truck: "God Bless America Love It or Leave It." I just might. It hurts to know that we have allowed ourselves to be blindsided by our own needs, by our own desires, our own petty concerns that we can't extend a hand, let alone a nation's hand, to help anyone, even our own. Everyone just prays that good things will come to them, and mostly they do, but the rest of us are stuck and sinking fast in the quicksand of modern life. It makes my desert island idea seem pretty appealing.

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I wrote another one for H.:

Quiero confundirme
entre tu piel
y la mia.

Quiero confundirme
entre el sabor de tus labios
y el sabor de los mios.

Quiero confundirme
entre los latidos de tu corazon
y los latidos de lo mio.

Pero más que nada
quiero confundirme
entre tu ser y mi ser

hasta que mi alma
se confunda
con la tuya.


~~AEW~~
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Actual conversation (in Spanish): RJ (Random Jerk): "Hey, don't I know you from my dreams?"
Reply: "Well, if you do, then you should know my boyfriend from your nightmares."
I love comebacks!