Tag: Consumerism

August 9, 2023 – Americans Really Are Disgusting

August 9, 2023 /

I have spent too much time buying new clothes lately. It wasn’t because I needed them but because my look needed to be right. I am speaking specifically all the activities around my renewal party that we had. For my re-proposal, I was instructed to wear a white flowing shirt with jeans, which I didn’t have. I had to get a new wardrobe to wear to the party as well.

I don’t want to make myself sound better than I am but the truth is I have gotten too fat for much of my current wardrobe. So, the reality is I have been sucking it in for the past year as well as enduring bulging shirt buttons. Getting some new cloths was a opportunity to breath a little (and get fatter). I have probably gained 30 pounds since I started working again. When I was delivering packages for Amazon, I was logging 30,000 steps a day. Now, I am sedentary and I also generally hate exercise. I like a eat and drink too.

So, gaining weight is a me problem. If I really wanted to change that, I could get serious about it and I should before it is too late. I have unfortunately always been a yo-yo person. I am not naturally skinny and I gain weight until I can’t believe where I am at and set about changing that.

But I have also spent too much time in various malls lately. I shudder when I go in. I see a lot of people wasting away their lives looking for things to buy. We colloquially call it shopping. It is not just buying things we don’t need but it is spending money we don’t have which I think is more damaging. What makes me shudder is rampant consumerism for the sake of entertainment.

I do pretty well financially, but I think about the waste and resources that it takes to make things that we buy just to make us feel good about ourselves. With the rash of visibility in homeless, I see piles of trash that just follows their movements. It makes me think that items like clothing are literally disposable. I would say that it is so ubiquitous and inexpensive that it is really valueless.

Recently, I took the whole back of the car to the donation center. Yes, it was clothes my kids outgrew and that I have no fault. But is was also unwanted bedding because the color palette changed, same with the drapery of the whole house. It was many items of clothing for whatever reason. It was decorations that were used a couple of years and now no longer have earned our fancy.

The whole thing just kind of makes me sick. I know that these organizations are cherry picking out of our donations. That means the rest of it just gets thrown away. So while we fool ourselves into thinking that we are doing something good, the net result is still the same, waste.

I suppose that I would be remiss that it is not just home goods or clothing but a lot of our lives. Our cars get too expensive to fix, appliances have dated colors, TVs are not flat enough, curved enough or large enough and don’t have places to plug in more things that aren’t flashy enough. We are so busy looking to buy things that are enough today that we only have enough time to consume things made in factories to save time so we can look to buy more things.

Clearly, we are not all going to be in a position to grow our own olive trees and make our own oil or thresh our own wheat to make flour so that we can bake our daily loaves of bread. But surely chicken fingers and diet soda is not a proper human diet. In fact, it is a diet that actually adds vitamins an minerals to deliver any sort of nutrition at all.

End Your Programming Routine: This probably warrants more work on what should be done to lesson the environmental impact and be good stewards of the land. We live in a modern world with modern convenience. We can eat world cuisine because the ingredients are available. I can purchase an entire set of clothes in 30 minutes instead of waiting days for it to be made, that’s a good thing in my book. Let’s just make wise and future thinking choices.

April 27, 2023 – Don’t Be Afraid to Ask

April 27, 2023 /

As a follow on to last week, I have been doing a reloading series using up all of my stored brass to make room for the actual components that I want to store and need to reload in the future like primers, bullets and powder. Also in this time of scarcity, then beggars cant be choosers so I have started to utilize websites to filter what might be in stock at certain stores.

What I have been doing is looking at a powder and filtering what is in stock. There were three Alliant rifle powders that said “On-Sale” for $19.99. I thought, what a deal, other brands were running $35-45 a pound. I thought to myself that I am going to get my limit of 1lb based on the price (this is partially why there is actually powder on the shelf).

When I arrived at the store, I went to the reloading section, found the powder shelf and it was there. But when I looked at the price, it was $50.99. There was no indicator of sale either. So, I grabbed it and went around looking for some help. The gun counter was swamped as usual and nobody was in sight. After about five minutes of standing around, I decided to just go to the register.

When I got to the register, I said to the cashier “before I buy this, I just want to verify that the price.” I explained what I saw online and what was on the shelf. They looked it up and called a manager. The manager said that they were going to honor the web price but that their cost was $30/lb. So, I was buying it at less than they were paying for it. If it weren’t for the 1 lb. limit, I would have been tempted to buy some more.

Somebody messed something up. My guess is that this was one of these changes that were applied programmatically and somebody didn’t check the output. Like I said, this price was applies on all powders of a certain brand. They went and pulled all the powders off the shelf right after my transaction. This event probably caused a somebody a long day with tech support.

Components are still hard to find. I only bought this powder because of the price. It actually was not my first choice. But, my first choice is not on the shelves. This will work. Actually, I did more research after buying it and have discovered that published loads are for the longer/heavier target bullets. So, while I got a deal on the powder, I am going to end up paying double for the bullets to use with it.

That’s OK because I am still in the experimental phase. To date, I haven’t shot more than a single, popular bullet weight. I have no idea if my rifle will be accurate, so this will be another data point using these target bullets. The price we pay for science…

End Your Programming Routine: When I saw the price, I didn’t believe that it was true. In fact, it really wasn’t. But because I suspected something was wrong and questioned it, I came out on the right side of the deal. I was prepared to put the powder back on the shelf but I didn’t end up having to, because I asked. If in the situation, you should too.

September 6, 2022 – The Modern Consumer

September 6, 2022 /

I hope that everyone had a great Labor Day. Unofficial Fall is here and my kids go to school tomorrow. I have tried a couple of newer mechanisms to get goods for my projects and my experience was less than stellar. Today’s podcast is all about my opinions on what the modern consumer can expect.

End Your Programming Routine: I am coming around to the realization of the statement ‘Ignorance is Bliss’. Before the internet existed, a person would go to a store and whatever they carried is what was possible. In today’s world, we have so many choices, but getting them when you want them makes it very difficult to end up being satisfied by your choice. I feel like this has to get better, but that will be a different podcast.