Posts Tagged ‘family’

Sheeple

I went shopping today for some clothes for my kids. I often go clothes shopping and more often than not I come home without buying anything. I’ve been wanting to buy some clothes for my nine year old daughter but each time I’ve taken a look around the junior clothes section of various stores, I’ve left empty-handed and disgusted. The clothes these days which are meant  to be worn by little girls are tacky, slutty and designed to be out of fashion within three weeks. What happened to nice, classic, pretty clothes for young girls? Why is the fashion industry intent on providing street walker style outfits for youngsters? What is this world coming to? Why am I channeling my grandmother?! I must be getting old or something…

Anyway, as I was saying, I went clothes shopping. After a recent growth spurt, my fifteen year old son has very few clothes left that fit him. I took him shopping a few months ago and he screwed up his nose and shook his head at just about everything on the clothes racks. Eventually he left with just two t-shirts and a pair of shorts – hardly a full wardrobe (plus a portable speaker system which took up more than half the budget I’d allocated for his clothes – how’d he swing that?!). So I thought I’d buy him a couple more t-shirts at least today, but the memory of his specific standards meant that I was passing over decent t-shirts too.

Well, the whole point of this post is to talk about how gullible people can be. Today I saw numerous expensive t-shirts emblazened with advertising from various famous corporations. Now I know for a fact that advertising is expensive. If you want to advertise on television you’re talking thousands of dollars for a mere thirty second spot. Try advertising your yard sale in a local paper and even then you have to shell out quite a few dollars for a measly quarter inch space. Advertising costs A LOT, and yet here are these big companies designing t-shirts with their logos on the front, charging $49.95 for the privilege of wearing them, and people are actually buying the things!

Company executives must rub their hands in Scrooge-ish glee every time they see the screen print of the latest ad on a new t-shirt design.  Since when did we all become such dumb, unthinking trend-seekers that we actually pay money for the privilege of walking around advertising some big already-mega rich corporation’s product? Do we really want to fit in that much that we can be pushed into paying for Coca Cola, or Nintendo, or Twilight’s advertising by becoming walking billboards? Gawd people are stupid. If you have to follow trends and have such little confidence in your own unique worth that you have to be up with the latest fads, step back and think for a moment what the instigators of those fads are doing to you. They’re not making you trendy or fashionable – they’re making you a deluded sucker who is helping to pay their advertising bill.

In reality, your need to follow fashion with the rest of the sheeple is making rich companies even more money than they already know what to do with, while the simple truth is, you’re down $49.95 for a crappy t-shirt with an advertisement on it.  Would you pay fifty bucks to have your neighbour’s yard sale ad printed on the front of your shirt?  No?  I didn’t think so.

PS… If you’re still unconvinced and you REALLY want to wear what will be the epitome of fashion (I swear – one day), then I can sell you a really spiffy wafflelogue.com t-shirt for a bargain $49.99.  Let me go find my Hobbytex – I’ll be right back!

There’s a book fair on this week at school, and I gave Maddy two $10 notes to take as she’s got her eye on a special notebook and pencils for sale there. She told me that they’re only allowed to take $10 at a time, so I suggested she leave one $10 note at home and bring it the next day. This is the conversation that followed:

Maddy: No, I’ll keep it in my wallet.

Me: I wouldn’t do that – someone might try to steal it.

Maddy: No, I’m not worried about that. They won’t.

Me: Well, it’s happened before, kids taking money out of other people’s wallets.

Maddy: They won’t steal it from mine – it’s got a peace sign on it.

Me: Erm, what’s that got to do with anything? That won’t stop them.

Maddy: Ohhh, yes it will Mum, believe me.

Me: How will a peace sign stop people from stealing money out of your wallet?

Maddy: Because people are afraid of it.

Me: What?!

Maddy: Peace signs scare people.

Me: What do you mean ‘peace signs scare people’???!!!

Maddy: People are afraid of it.

Me: But why do you think that?

Maddy: There was a kid at school who had a hat with a peace sign on it. Another kid came up, took one look at it, and ran away scared.

Me: Riiiiight……

Maddy: So my money will be safe in my wallet.

Me: O—-kay then…

MADDY: “Did you know that there are two places on your body, that if you get shot there, you will die instantly?”

BEN: “Where, Maddy?”

MADDY: “Your head & your neck – you will die instantly if you get shot there.”

BEN: “Not necessarily, I’ve heard of people who’ve been shot in the head or the neck and survived.”

MADDY: “No, Ben. (humouring his ignorance!) That’s just what you see in movies – in real life if you get shot in the head or the neck, you will always die instantly….(thinks for a moment)…unless you can get to a hospital.”

I found a disk with my photos from a trip to the UK in 2003.  The disk is all scratched so I’ve decided to save as many pics as I can, and post them here.

The first three are the kids and Dave seeing me off at the airport.

Click on an image below to see the full image: