Sunday, January 23, 2005

Why we are all doomed

I'm admittedly as shallow as the next person when it comes to wanting new stuff. For some reason, we feel better when we buy or receive consumer goods. A new doodad can often lift our spirits and convince us that all is right with the world.

Alas, with the passage of time, that lovely sense of warmth is replaced by a sense of obsolescence, of emptiness. Somehow, filling the cart doesn't fulfill the soul as much as we thought it would when we first walked into the store. It gets pretty old pretty quickly.

In my blatantly biased opinion, this product, Chia Shrek, spied at a Florida pharmacy, typifies the rampant consumerist ethic that's threatening to destroy any depth of being that remains in modern society. It is obscenely cheap, unbelievably useless, and most likely to end up forgotten and forlorn mere days after it crosses the threshold into your home.

The world seems to be populated by countless factories pumping out massive amounts of pure garbage that we neither need nor truly want (think, would you actually set out from the house with your heart set on buying one of these?)

At some point, the buying-for-the-sake-of-buying has got to stop.

6 comments:

Mellie Helen said...

Alright, alright, I'll admit it! I had a pet rock!! Okay??

...and all these decades later, I still remember it fondly....*sniff*...

Joan said...

I've never ever understood anything Chia. The Chia Shrek looks like a guy with a 'fro to me. Nothing like Shrek.

Those things must be selling well because they've been around for years. Scary, huh?

Suzanne said...

Chia anything is a worthy emblem of the completely pointless consumer good. This sort of thing has begun to upset me to the point that I find going to stores almost painful---all I can think about is how much wasteful material is being displayed, along with the waste that went or will go into creating, packaging, transporting, and disposing of said material.

Well, that was quite a mini-rant. Sorry about that!

Thanks for stoppping by my site yesterday. You have a very fine one yourself!

Jill said...

Okay, I'm woman enough to admit that I have purchased a Chia Donkey. BUT, it was for my annual White Elephant gift exchange. (And it was a huge hit!)

Rich Rosenthal II said...

I've wanted a Chia Jerry Garcia head for years. Sheck just wouldnt make my collection of kitch and tacky ornamentation.

Chris said...

You didn't mention the whole dollar store phenomenon - entire retail chains devoted to selling useless, poorly made crap.