consumerism

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Free Irony Supplement Available at CVS

November 4, 2009 | 1 comment

I like CVS. The one near my new apartment even has an Rx counter with a drive-thru window. Like most any Angeleno, I feel instant affection for any merchant that allows me to patronize their store without exiting my car. Plus, you gotta admire their self-sustaining marketing strategy. Supply and demand is for amateurs—these guys are rockin’ some cause and effect. Check it out:

Darn it. If I’d been paying attention I could have saved $5 when I bought¹ $20 or more of Halloween candy.

____
¹ Yes, that’s right: $5, and one pronoun. Look at the flyer again.

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How Do You Rate on the LA-dar?

June 29, 2009 | 5 comments

Again, an item in Ye Olde Facebook Newsfeed set me to thinking. The blurb below was posted by an old schoolmate of mine. I have anonymized her profile picture, and (obviously) blurred out her name. She still lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where we grew up; I (in case you didn’t know) now live in Los Angeles.which-ca-city-LA-screencap

I haven’t taken the quiz, so I don’t know what questions my friend answered. She was puzzled by the result, so I’ve endeavored to develop more in-depth questionnaire to determine how temperamentally well-suited one is for L.A. residency. So here it is: Derek’s L.A.dar, v 0.5.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Pete Needs Teflon Tape

June 2, 2007 | 2 comments

All I thought I’d do was reply to this email, and the next thing I knew I just got all into it. I guess I’ve had some angst built up around the issue of shopping at Home Depot – you be the judge. Afterward I figured as long as I typed that much, it might as well be a blog post.

The author of the original email is Pete, a member of the Fantasy Football league I’ve been in for the last six years. The email conversations between the ten of us in the league aren’t just your average profane trash-talk. I doubt, in fact, that one could easily find such creative, unpredictable, even erudite trash-talk anywhere in the world of fantasy sports. Pete, for his part, regularly cracks my shit up with a style of obscenity unlike that of anyone else I can think of. As you’ll see, he doesn’t always limit himself to fantasy football-related subject matter:

SUBJECT: Re: complaint

Seriously, Home Depot and Loew’s suck moose knuckle.

I’m just trying to find a nice simple roll of Teflon pipe thread tape, and neither of those cockmeister companies carry it. Lowe’s even has an online “project center” where several plumbing-related projects call for the use of Teflon tape, but you can’t buy it from them. Fucking assbags.

P.
–
“I just beat the asses of three thousand men. The hell you leave me alone” – Rodney Leonard Stubbs, Great Outdoor Fight Champion, 1973

My reply:

They have it at the Home Depot on Balboa and Roscoe in Van Nuys*… at least they did a couple of weeks ago when I needed to put on my new shower head. It was kind of on one of those little afterthought-like consoles that they put onto the end of the aisle – the end by the aisle halfway back in the store, so it’s not like you can just walk in, go 15 feet over to the end by the cash registers, grab your teflon tape and turn around. Because that would just make our life too goddamned easy.

Of course, then you have to try to guess which fucking line might move fast enough to get your 1 item rung up in less than half an hour. And don’t think it’s the slick new self-checkout registers, either – at least two, if not three of the four always have an “OUT OF ORDER” sign taped to the screen, and the one remaining LCD panel has some clueless geriatric standing in front of it, brow furrowed, index finger held semi-motionless in midair eight inches from the screen, as though it’s some kind of fucking transactional Ouija board whose unseen force will any moment now magically guide their finger to select the right form of payment. This withered stooge still hasn’t figured out how to use the DVD player he got two years ago, and yet he’s rolled his cart straight into the self-checkout line, because darn it if he won’t get a kick out of making that barcode scanner thing do that “BEEP” noise. Dear God, deliver us from Depot. You can forget about the self-checkout-register-monitor kid in the orange apron untangling this situation anytime soon – she might as well get out her Sharpie and and start making her “out of order” sign. I swear, the lines at Costco might be longer but at least they fucking MOVE.

Hope you have a super rest of the day anyway, Pete. Is there a True Value nearby?

Best of luck!
Derek :-)

* Pete lives in Florida; I live in Los Angeles

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GPS Goes Old-School

January 28, 2007 | 1 comment

Although I’m usually reluctant to indulge in simple linkblogging, I would like to call your attention to a product that is, in more ways than one, exceptional. Credit for it coming to my attention goes to The Map Room.

I thought I’d try my hand at composing a little bit of ad copy for this little treasure. Here goes:

“Does your vehicle’s GPS navigation system confuse you more than it helps you? Do you glance at the screen to discover that you appear to be motoring over a golf course? When you pull out of your driveway on a quick run to the grocery store, does a disembodied female voice attempt to guide you to the Company Picnic you attended last August? Then you are among the millions of drivers today that just aren’t cut out for satellite technology.

analoggps_actionphotoanaloggpsIntroducing the Analog GPS. It’s back to the navigational basics with this new (yet very old), state-of-the- Age of Enlightenment instrument. It’s just like the one great-great- great-great granddad used, with an attractive brass finish and its own wooden carrying case! As the vendor states, ‘Not included are the required declination charts (call for details) or the extremely accurate watch you are going to need to use this thing. Meets R.N. standard 3329-5 of 1787.’

So don’t wait – act now! You can be a Luddite on wheels for the extremely high price of $3,117 plus shipping – and by ’shipping,’ we mean six to eight months to the West Coast by way of Cape Horn.”

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Cameraphone Follies: Off-the-rack Ego

December 19, 2006

Ego storeI guess it stands to reason that L.A. would have an actual store where customers can purchase an ego boost. Where else does ego so grease the gears of the local economy?

Like so many other commodities, ego now comes in a variety of forms. Stroking, toadying, and empty flattery are popular. Less often mentioned but no less prevalent are such services as sucking up, brown-nosing, being buttered up and having sunshine blown up your ass. The sensitive nature of these deliveries naturally requires an establishment like the one pictured to be staffed by licensed egotologists, serving the demands of everyday egotists.

I was even thinking of getting into the ego business myself, and planned to name my own retail operation Leggo My Ego (trademark implications notwithstanding). But then I began noticing things like this:
discount ego

Chalk it up to supply and demand. Come to think of it, most people I run into do seem to have ego to spare. Perhaps it’s due to Pilot Season, Awards Season, or the annual pilgrimage to Sundance… who knows. On the other hand, I’d think that the new season of American Idol would have upset the egosystem the same way it did in the past. Ergo, ego is a field I might do best to avoid.

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