<font face="Times New Roman"size="4"I've been mulling some things over for quite some time, and I think I am finally ready to put those things here and see what they look like. Imagine a bulletin board with many slips of paper tacked onto it, compiled in between washing dishes, dusting, knitting and gardening. During conversations with family, friends, strangers and even from time to time, my good old pal, ( ). They are all tacked up here, in no particular order of importance. They may also be riddled with holes as far as arguments go, but hey, they rattle around in my gray matter, and I am making a conscious decision to disgorge them onto the fickle electrons of cyberspace, in the public square where they will either fish, or cut bait. I will be prepared to be set back on my heels for any faulty logic on my part. So with out further ado:
I don't get it.
I think the thing that pushed me over the edge into "I can't take this drivel anymore" land the other day was watching a commercial on TV that showed these poor confused and unhappy people who had amassed a lot of digital photographs on their cameras and computers, but felt that something was missing in their digital hobby.
What was missing?
A photograph.
A "real" hold it in your hand, put it in your wallet, stick it in a picture frame, show it to your friends on the subway, photograph.
What's a good citizen to do?
Why, buy an expensive, specialized printer that eats up fabulously expensive photo paper, along with gallons of our wonderfully overpriced ink, and PRINT YOUR OWN of course!
Simple!
See, here's what you do: Instead of dropping off your film at the photo shop and coming back in a few days for your pictures, you go out and spend some hundreds of dollars on the printer, the wonderfully overpriced ink, the paper, and the software to run the printer. Then you come home, try to find a space to PUT your new techno gadget on your already hopelessly crowed computer desk, and spend hours and hours (hopefully) learning how to USE the printer, the paper, the ink and the software, so you can DO IT YOURSELF!
Now, instead of one company in town having the equipment and supplies to make pictures, we are ALL supposed to become the photo shop. Pay for the ink and supplies and equipment AND do the work ourselves. Isn't that great? Isn't that wonderful? So what if it actually costs more money? We are doing it OURSELVES! Aren't we clever? Aren't we computer savvy? Aren't we smart consumers?
The plain and simple answer to these questions is:
NOT!
The redundancy. The inefficiency. The cost. The illusion of control. The downright silliness of these concepts makes me want to snatch myself baldheaded in frustration.
Now. Take this "Do It Yourself" idea and apply it to other areas of life. Dry cleaning, painting your house, moving, laying carpet, doing tile work, pouring your own cement, making your own furniture.... now while I understand the joy of creating some of these things yourself and I honor that creativity. And I also have a high regard for being self sufficient. . .(that's an whole 'nother rant) , for a lot of us it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with not being able to afford to have the experts do it for us anymore. And here is the subtle part about this: The reason we can't afford it is that because there are so many "do it yourselfers" out there, the number of people who can make a living say, painting my living room, has been drastically reduced, so they have to charge A LOT more money for their services.
I mean when I go out into our garage and look at the sheer number of TOOLS and paraphinalia, and supplies that we keep on hand to "do it ourselves" it makes me crazy. And I realize that most of us have this same kind of collection, bought at considerable expense by the way, it just boggles my mind that we think we are saving money! I think we have been duped into thinking that we are SO smart, when in fact we are more like fish in a barrel and the marketers are the ones aiming the shotgun.
Take buying movies for example. Oh yeah, then buying movies AGAIN on DVD instead of video tape. Oh yeah, now you need the director's cut with the special features too. The next step will be buying movies in HD format. Oh, yeah you are going to need a new TV soon. . . add that to your list. And free broadcast TV? No, you should PAY for it. Oh yeah, and you still have to watch commercials even though you are paying for your TV channels. But oh my friend, YOU are in control! You call the shots! You too can have TIVO and watch a program ANY TIME YOU WANT! WOW..... Does this mean I can watch Fear Factor at 3 in the morning? So what if there are 300 channels? I can only watch one at a time, and if Fear Factor or Queer Eye For the Straight Guy is all those bozos can come up with for programing, tell me how is this a GOOD thing again?
What an amazing world we live in!
A Logic Free World. That's where we are living.
I suppose I could deal with the facts on the ground about all this stuff. But the kernel of annoyance, the pea under the mattress if you will, that will not allow me to sleep at night is the fact that we are fed the line that we are in control. That we have all these options. That we are SO blessed. That we are masters of our environment. When in fact we are nothing of the kind.
If the creators and marketers of these products would at least be truthful about it, I would not be so outraged. It's the big fat greasy lie that sticks in my craw.
Stop the train. I want to get off.
I'm done now.
For today.
(Whew! And I thought *I* was a smart _ _ _!)
* * * *
I don't get it.
I think the thing that pushed me over the edge into "I can't take this drivel anymore" land the other day was watching a commercial on TV that showed these poor confused and unhappy people who had amassed a lot of digital photographs on their cameras and computers, but felt that something was missing in their digital hobby.
What was missing?
A photograph.
A "real" hold it in your hand, put it in your wallet, stick it in a picture frame, show it to your friends on the subway, photograph.
What's a good citizen to do?
Why, buy an expensive, specialized printer that eats up fabulously expensive photo paper, along with gallons of our wonderfully overpriced ink, and PRINT YOUR OWN of course!
Simple!
See, here's what you do: Instead of dropping off your film at the photo shop and coming back in a few days for your pictures, you go out and spend some hundreds of dollars on the printer, the wonderfully overpriced ink, the paper, and the software to run the printer. Then you come home, try to find a space to PUT your new techno gadget on your already hopelessly crowed computer desk, and spend hours and hours (hopefully) learning how to USE the printer, the paper, the ink and the software, so you can DO IT YOURSELF!
Now, instead of one company in town having the equipment and supplies to make pictures, we are ALL supposed to become the photo shop. Pay for the ink and supplies and equipment AND do the work ourselves. Isn't that great? Isn't that wonderful? So what if it actually costs more money? We are doing it OURSELVES! Aren't we clever? Aren't we computer savvy? Aren't we smart consumers?
The plain and simple answer to these questions is:
NOT!
The redundancy. The inefficiency. The cost. The illusion of control. The downright silliness of these concepts makes me want to snatch myself baldheaded in frustration.
Now. Take this "Do It Yourself" idea and apply it to other areas of life. Dry cleaning, painting your house, moving, laying carpet, doing tile work, pouring your own cement, making your own furniture.... now while I understand the joy of creating some of these things yourself and I honor that creativity. And I also have a high regard for being self sufficient. . .(that's an whole 'nother rant) , for a lot of us it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with not being able to afford to have the experts do it for us anymore. And here is the subtle part about this: The reason we can't afford it is that because there are so many "do it yourselfers" out there, the number of people who can make a living say, painting my living room, has been drastically reduced, so they have to charge A LOT more money for their services.
I mean when I go out into our garage and look at the sheer number of TOOLS and paraphinalia, and supplies that we keep on hand to "do it ourselves" it makes me crazy. And I realize that most of us have this same kind of collection, bought at considerable expense by the way, it just boggles my mind that we think we are saving money! I think we have been duped into thinking that we are SO smart, when in fact we are more like fish in a barrel and the marketers are the ones aiming the shotgun.
Take buying movies for example. Oh yeah, then buying movies AGAIN on DVD instead of video tape. Oh yeah, now you need the director's cut with the special features too. The next step will be buying movies in HD format. Oh, yeah you are going to need a new TV soon. . . add that to your list. And free broadcast TV? No, you should PAY for it. Oh yeah, and you still have to watch commercials even though you are paying for your TV channels. But oh my friend, YOU are in control! You call the shots! You too can have TIVO and watch a program ANY TIME YOU WANT! WOW..... Does this mean I can watch Fear Factor at 3 in the morning? So what if there are 300 channels? I can only watch one at a time, and if Fear Factor or Queer Eye For the Straight Guy is all those bozos can come up with for programing, tell me how is this a GOOD thing again?
What an amazing world we live in!
A Logic Free World. That's where we are living.
I suppose I could deal with the facts on the ground about all this stuff. But the kernel of annoyance, the pea under the mattress if you will, that will not allow me to sleep at night is the fact that we are fed the line that we are in control. That we have all these options. That we are SO blessed. That we are masters of our environment. When in fact we are nothing of the kind.
If the creators and marketers of these products would at least be truthful about it, I would not be so outraged. It's the big fat greasy lie that sticks in my craw.
Stop the train. I want to get off.
I'm done now.
For today.
(Whew! And I thought *I* was a smart _ _ _!)
* * * *
[album 65561 GoofyHen2.JPG]
"Some wet hens are madder than others."