"I like my Skechers, but I LOVE my Prada backpack" 10 Things I Hate About You

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 02 January 2004 15:37:39

I guess it's a new year, and therefore time for resolutions. I therefore resolve to blog at least once per week. I'm sure that even I could find a nibblet of time for that.

Two strange things struck me today.

1) I was in my hometown looking for a new 2004 diary in which to journal. (My boyf suggested this week that I may be overdoing the whole journalling thing by having both a weblog AND a diary. Not true. I'm just a frustrated writer at heart. Or something. Perhaps it means I have a deep-seated yen for the sort of life that is so outthere that it needs to be documented...dunno.)

Anyhoo- there must have been a total of 20 diaries *in the whole town*. Not one of them met my requirements. Does this say something about me or about everyone else?

2) I was in Woolworths and as I walked past the toy section something caught my eye. It was the MacDonald's golden arches sign. Curious as to why there would be such a strange corporate mixing happening I turned down the aisle and (to my horror) discovered a MACDONALD'S MCICECREAM MCFLURRY MCMAKER. Puh-lease. Do we really need all the tie-in merchandise that we have come to know and love as a generation coming from a large, world establised chain that sells fast food? It looks like the line between our personal lives and the retail/corporate world is blurring faster and further...soon enough there will be no "me" and "everything else". We're teaching our children, these poor little millennials who are trying to learn how to be people, that identity doesn't exist. Everything is the same. McD's on the High Street in Croyon, McD's on any street in New York, India, South Africa, Your Toybox....it's all the same.

We're breeding a new flat-earth mentality. Beware, corporations! Beware, Parents! Beware, Everyone! One day you'll wake up and, in true Orwellian style, you won't be ABLE to go to a boutique to buy something "a bit different". There won't BE "a bit different". There'll be MacD's (and tie-in merchandise), Next, the Gap and JD Sports.

So there's a bit of new year cheer for ya'll. I think I'll just finish with an extract from a great book by Douglas Coupland- Microserfs. Don't tell me you're not the same...

"Todd, I should add, like many 1990's people*, equates his self-worth with the number of messages on his phone-answering machine. If the red light's not blinking...YOU'RE A LOSER."

*you can, of course sub 2000's people at this point. Next time you're at the pub, look at the table and count the number of mobile phones nestling among the pint glasses. And don't forget your own...