Barring the sudden anti-consumerist enlightenment of America, the fact of the matter is people like stuff. They like getting it cheap. You can critique that, and I'll probably agree with you, but it's missing the point a bit: IF those conditions = TRUE, THEN doorbuster behavior is the logical outcome. They might be better off not playing the game, but they're not playing it wrong.
Of course they are playing it wrong. The deck is stacked, the cards marked, and the house always wins. You keep acting as if the thousands of people who show up at Walmart on Black Friday all get the under-wholesale bait-and-switch bargain that induced them to show up. But they don't. The vast, vast majority show up too late to be among the few who grab the brass ring, and instead spend their money on stuff they didn't mean to buy at non-reduced prices.
I'm not railing against consumerism here, I'm just pointing out that your reasoning is fundamentally flawed by being based on a false premise, as is the "logic" that incites the frenzy in the first place. If the object of the game is to actually get what you want at the price that you wanted to pay, then shopping on Black Friday is playing the game wrong.
"Urgent: compelling or requiring immediate attention; imperative"
Let's look at that, shall we? Is it imperative for anyone to get a bargain on an X-Box? No.
Does the sale require immediate action? Require? Not really. Because getting a cheap X-Box is not exactly a human need in the first place, but also because the chances of your getting one of the 20 units at the advertised "doorbuster" price are not much better if you show up at Walmart on Black Friday than if you don't. So, on the whole, I'll go with Teresa's first take. The urgency isn't just artificial, it's plain false. Bargain mania is an externally imposed, false urgency, and in a very real sense the people who feel it are indeed being tricked. Their endocrine systems have been fooled into responding to a claimed drop in price on a luxury item (a drop that for most of them will never materialize anyway) as if it were a life-or-death, adrenaline-soaked emergency. No such emergency exists, at least until someone gets trampled or crushed.
Don't get me wrong, it's their award and they can conduct it any way they want.
Well, more correctly, it's Alfred Nobel's award, and they can conduct it any way they want that falls within the guidelines and strictures of Alfred Nobel's will. If Nobel's will could have been broken, his heirs would have done it a long time ago. Heaven knows, they tried.
Rikibeth-
It seems to me that the vestments of a number of the higher Christian churches retain elements of the medieval in their ceremonial garb, frozen in time like scholarly robes, British royal guard uniforms, and folk costume, to one degree or another. The ruffs are atypical, perhaps, but surely no more dated than miters, skullcaps, or floor length robes. Or do you find Catholic vestments funny also?
In a way it's a shame the Norwegian church gave up its collars. It always seems a shame to me when a market for quality hand work is lost. I always marvel at the quality (and quantity) of the cartridge pleating you get in scholars' robes, and continue to think that there is market potential for cross pollination of skills and products between the makers of ceremonial dress of all sorts and the really dedicated re-enactor class.
A local restaurant makes what they call Russian tea. This is tea that is made by boiling the water with a cinnamon stick in, steeping the tea in the boiling cinnamon water, and then adding orange juice concentrate and honey to the steeped tea. It's lovely and warming stuff, and I do wonder if this was the inspiration for flavored teas like Good Earth's house recipe, and Constant Comment. In any event, the orange and cinnamon combination is da bomb.
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|---|---|
| 2009 | 4 |
| 2008 | 2 |
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