Craptacular, Craptacular!
The wicked witch of Halloween’s corpse had hardly shed a degree of body temperature before stores started hawking Christmas goodies this year, much to my chagrin. I know Christmas is the season where retailers really make their money for the year, but the way things are going these days, I’m expecting next year’s Christmas hysteria will start in June. What’s worse, consumer product manufacturers are really struggling to identify new markets for consumers and coming up with some truly crap gift ideas.
For example, consider this value proposition: it’s Christmas and you’re away from home, working hard at a customer site. Why not bring a little Christmas cheer into your life with a USB LED Christmas light? Are they insane? I swear, it’s like consumers are desperate to burn their money: “Sure, yearly savings as a percentage of post-tax earnings are in negative territory in the US, but I gots ta get me a glowing fake Christmas tree to plug into my computer!”
Even worse are the gifts people buy other people. I swear, a significant portion of Earth’s natural resources are sitting in a closet somewhere just because someone felt they needed to buy a Remington Shaver for that hairy relative they don’t really like. At the bottom of the barrel-of-consumer-shame is those products that aren’t actually designed to be used. You know the gifts I’m talking about, those gag gifts where the majority of the product’s value is the gag of giving them to someone.
Example: Does anyone really need a Dead Bug Funeral Kit? How about a Hipster Handbook? I mean, if the bug is dead, a dignified burial isn’t going to change anything; and if you’re a hipster, why would you need a manual? Unless, of course, you’re actually trying to be a hipster, in which case you need more than a book to help you.
The moral of this Christmas story is simple: stop shopping big and start thinking big.
for awhile, i thought you were gonna post one of those personalized amazon stores where you get some credit. seems like all the rage lately.
I also hate that the Christmas season starts in October now. I saw a giant 8 foot inflatable Santa at Safeway in mid-October – bad enough such landfill-fodder exists, worse that it’s being sold prematurely. And I pity the mall workers, with their added fire hazard decorations and killspree inducing repetive non-denominational Christmas music. It’s not that I hate Christmas because I’m Jewish – I just hate it because it’s so *tacky*!
SantaCon.
Want in?
Maybe I should have titled this entry “Cryptacular, Cryptacular!”, given the cryptic nature of the last comment. I’m guessing it was posted by Evan, and for those not in the know: Santacon is a yearly event where people dress up like Santa, get loaded, and act “naughty”. The basic idea is to blow off Christmas stress, as well as reveal some of the crassness of a commercialized Christmas.
Of particular note is the Santacon held last year in Seattle, where the author of “Fight Club” was accosted at a reading at a local book store, forced into Santa pants, made to drink tequilla, and reminded sharply that “the first rule of Santa is you don’t talk about Santa”.