Things that Revolt Me
Nov. 29th, 2024 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maeve66I am going to be grumpy in this entry. This grumpiness is the result of the New York Times, though not for the normal reasons (crappy snotty biased articles, equally condescending op eds, most of them, etc) -- it is the result of Wirecutter. I do not enjoy Wirecutter, unless I am looking up one thing, though it's a rarity. The last time I looked some consumer product up on Wirecutter, it was... I think a pot. A saucepan? I don't even know the terminology well enough. I wanted a good pot to cook rice in. Anyway.
What was sending me berserk today is really the greater hatred I have for Black Friday. I have always hated Black Friday. I have never ever bought anything on Black Friday -- it's my personal Don't Shop day. My family never did either, let me say... not out of disdain or a critique of capitalism or whatever, just because we did not in general buy the kinds of things that were big ticket items.* We got new clothes twice a year at K-Mart, once at the beginning of summer, and once before school started. Each of our series of used avocado green Chevys were inherited from my father's uncle. Christmas seemed very wonderful and expansive and extravagant to my sister and me, but looking back it was more a question of enjoyable quantity than anything that cost a lot. I am still perpetually astonished at the prices of gifts people I know routinely give each other for birthdays and Christmas. The wrapping paper is often the most enjoyable part of it all for me -- I mean, I like GIVING presents, and wrapping them. Of fancy items of consumption we had... a dishwasher, which remained an amazement to me. A washer and dryer in the basement for both flats in our building. A tv (it is still bizarre to me, the idea of having more than one -- lots of my students' families have one in almost every room). An okay Pioneer stereo. Otherwise our apartment was a space full of refinished used furniture, india prints flung over anything you could sit on, endless shelves of books, house plants, political posters, photos my mom had taken, guitars and a mandolin and a dulcimer and recorders (and yet I cannot play any of those things... I could once play the recorder and do some duets with my mom). I guess my mom was kind of 70s hippie-ish as well as a socialist. I remember we both really enjoyed Apartment Living which basically was a magazine that showed how to do interior design knockoffs on the cheap, in 70s style -- lots of macramé and rich colors and use of large coffee cans covered in découpage or whatever, and thrifting.
Anyway, that's the way I like objects. What makes my guts churn is "door busters" and every electronic thing in the world being hyped at deafening levels -- I looked through Wirecutter this morning, god knows why, and saw not one single thing I could ever imagine wanting. Ring cameras. Various iterations of Alexas. Technical cookware I could not even understand. Electronic toys for toddlers that are basically screens but prerecorded or something? Or not? I don't know, I couldn't even understand it but it made me want to be a crotchetty old Luddite who insists on wooden toys and fabric books and art supplies.
It was strange -- the visceral dislike of everything on that list (even the Apple products, and I am an owner of a MacBook Pro, an iPad, and an iPhone) was slightly similar to BUT NOT AS ENJOYABLE AS that yearly snarky take-down of the Williams-Sonoma catalogue. Which is kind of what I feel like the NYT is ... it is just as condescendingly bougie but tries to disguise that with its staid paper-of-recordness.
Okay, I feel slightly purged now, whew. I think I am going to do a book-end entry on Things that I Love (or am grateful for, same diff).
*Let me interject here that I am NOT someone who thinks that socialists should be abstemious for some stupid moral high ground reason. Friends in grad school would always try that shit on me, and it's nonsense. Also, my dad raised me with a couple of jingles that guided him: 1) I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus, sitting on the dashboard of the car; 2) The working class can kiss my ass; I've got the boss's job at last (you can see he was a premature aficionado of today's ironic wokeness), and -- crucially -- 3) Nothing's too good for the working class.
What was sending me berserk today is really the greater hatred I have for Black Friday. I have always hated Black Friday. I have never ever bought anything on Black Friday -- it's my personal Don't Shop day. My family never did either, let me say... not out of disdain or a critique of capitalism or whatever, just because we did not in general buy the kinds of things that were big ticket items.* We got new clothes twice a year at K-Mart, once at the beginning of summer, and once before school started. Each of our series of used avocado green Chevys were inherited from my father's uncle. Christmas seemed very wonderful and expansive and extravagant to my sister and me, but looking back it was more a question of enjoyable quantity than anything that cost a lot. I am still perpetually astonished at the prices of gifts people I know routinely give each other for birthdays and Christmas. The wrapping paper is often the most enjoyable part of it all for me -- I mean, I like GIVING presents, and wrapping them. Of fancy items of consumption we had... a dishwasher, which remained an amazement to me. A washer and dryer in the basement for both flats in our building. A tv (it is still bizarre to me, the idea of having more than one -- lots of my students' families have one in almost every room). An okay Pioneer stereo. Otherwise our apartment was a space full of refinished used furniture, india prints flung over anything you could sit on, endless shelves of books, house plants, political posters, photos my mom had taken, guitars and a mandolin and a dulcimer and recorders (and yet I cannot play any of those things... I could once play the recorder and do some duets with my mom). I guess my mom was kind of 70s hippie-ish as well as a socialist. I remember we both really enjoyed Apartment Living which basically was a magazine that showed how to do interior design knockoffs on the cheap, in 70s style -- lots of macramé and rich colors and use of large coffee cans covered in découpage or whatever, and thrifting.
Anyway, that's the way I like objects. What makes my guts churn is "door busters" and every electronic thing in the world being hyped at deafening levels -- I looked through Wirecutter this morning, god knows why, and saw not one single thing I could ever imagine wanting. Ring cameras. Various iterations of Alexas. Technical cookware I could not even understand. Electronic toys for toddlers that are basically screens but prerecorded or something? Or not? I don't know, I couldn't even understand it but it made me want to be a crotchetty old Luddite who insists on wooden toys and fabric books and art supplies.
It was strange -- the visceral dislike of everything on that list (even the Apple products, and I am an owner of a MacBook Pro, an iPad, and an iPhone) was slightly similar to BUT NOT AS ENJOYABLE AS that yearly snarky take-down of the Williams-Sonoma catalogue. Which is kind of what I feel like the NYT is ... it is just as condescendingly bougie but tries to disguise that with its staid paper-of-recordness.
Okay, I feel slightly purged now, whew. I think I am going to do a book-end entry on Things that I Love (or am grateful for, same diff).
*Let me interject here that I am NOT someone who thinks that socialists should be abstemious for some stupid moral high ground reason. Friends in grad school would always try that shit on me, and it's nonsense. Also, my dad raised me with a couple of jingles that guided him: 1) I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus, sitting on the dashboard of the car; 2) The working class can kiss my ass; I've got the boss's job at last (you can see he was a premature aficionado of today's ironic wokeness), and -- crucially -- 3) Nothing's too good for the working class.
no subject
Date: 2024-11-29 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-29 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-30 01:57 pm (UTC)Yes ...
Date: 2024-11-29 11:05 pm (UTC)Re: Yes ...
Date: 2024-11-30 12:04 am (UTC)Re: Yes ...
Date: 2024-11-30 12:31 am (UTC)I just want people to realize that they can do things themselves, not be stuck just buying whatever someone else wanted to sell.