Total Perspective Vortex
What really happened to Trillian? Theories abound, but you can see what she's really been up to on this blog. If you're looking for white mice, depressed robots, or the occasional Pan Galactic Gargleblaster you might be better served here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/.
Don't just sit there angry and ranting, do something constructive.
In the words of Patti Smith (all hail Sister Patti): People have the power.
Contact your elected officials.
Don't be passive = get involved = make a difference.
Words are cool.
The English language is complex, stupid, illogical, confounding, brilliant, beautiful, and fascinating.
Every now and then a word presents itself that typifies all the maddeningly gorgeousness of language. They're the words that give you pause for thought. "Who came up with that word? That's an interesting string of letters." Their beauty doesn't lie in their definition (although that can play a role). It's also not in their onomatopoeia, though that, too, can play a role. Their beauty is in the way their letters combine - the visual poetry of words - and/or the way they sound when spoken. We talk a lot about music we like to hear and art we like to see, so let's all hail the unsung heroes of communication, poetry and life: Words.
Here are some I like. (Not because of their definition.)
Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Smart Girls
(A Trillian de-composition, to the tune of Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys)
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Smart girls ain’t easy to love and they’re above playing games
And they’d rather read a book than subvert themselves
Kafka, Beethoven and foreign movies
And each night alone with her cat
And they won’t understand her and she won’t die young
She’ll probably just wither away
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
A smart girl loves creaky old libraries and lively debates
Exploring the world and art and witty reparteé
Men who don’t know her won’t like her and those who do
Sometimes won’t know how to take her
She’s rarely wrong but in desperation will play dumb
Because men hate that she’s always right
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
Don’t let them do puzzles and read lots of books
Make ‘em be strippers and dancers and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be smart girls
They’ll never find men and they’re always alone
Even though men claim they want brains
Life(?) of Trillian
Single/Zero
Wednesday, February 02, 2005 Supersize This
I've been to Brobdinag.
No I am not delusional from an overdose of acetaminophen and codeine. Well. I might be. But I have been to the closest thing to Brobdinag those of us who are not Gulliver will get. I have a mega headache, going through acetaminophen like, well, like it's really good candy, and Bone is out of town and needed me to run some errands for him in his car, and there it was, looming on the horizon: Costco. Where I knew I could snag a two thousand count bottle of Tylenol for the price of a 500 count bottle at regular stores.
I have a love/hate relationship with Costco. Yes, they carry some really good stuff and really low prices. But. The whole jumbo economy family size thing is not exactly convenient or necessary for a single women who lives in a compartment. I learned something about myself on this recent trip to Brobdinag: Now that I'm in an elevator building I'm slightly less able to ignore the lure of 50 pounds of apples. When I lived in my old place, all I had to do to break the Big Savings! spell was to envision myself dragging jumbo economy family sized anything up four flights of stairs.
I admit I am weak willed at the thought of saving money or a good bargain. (hey, I am Scottish and single and do I seem like I'm made of money?) This makes me prime target for Brobdinag's, I mean Costco's, special brand of marketing. They don't actually have marketing. Per se. They don't advertise apart from a few occasional direct mail or newspaper inserts. Their marketing relies heavily on word of mouth and company enrollment. That's how they first got me. We got a free membership through work. Well. We had to pay for the membership but they gave us a $50 gift certificate upon buying a membership, so basically, Costco paid me $5 to join. How could I resist?
And you know what they say. Once you go warehouse club, you'll never go back. It's true. The jumbo size seduces you, awes you and satisfies you like no regular grocery can. It's a little scary at first, seems a little out there, what will your friends and neighbors think? I actually hid the fact that I had a membership, I was embarrassed and ashamed that I would stoop to that level. It seemed so, so, suburban. But now I'm out and proud. I've even converted a few friends and family members to swing my way. When I go to a "regular" grocery, in the back of mind I'm thinking, "it's a better deal at Costco." It does spoil and change you.
There is a seduction. The whole experience is very cleverly engineered. Do not be fooled by their bare bones appearance. That appearance serves two functions: 1) It's cheap and easy for them, 2) it fools you. Once you're inside the confines of the warehouse club (which should be the first clue something's amiss - it's a warehouse) it's very disorienting. You lose all sense of normal consumption needs. It's exactly like going to Brobdinag. Everything's proportionally big. The ceilings are extraordinarily high. There are no windows. This is intentional. If you could see outside to get a site line perspective on the parking lot, you'd realize that the gallon sized vat of olives enticing you is so large it's going to have to ride home in the passenger seat of the car. The shopping trolleys are oversized, proportionally, so when you thunk the 48 can case of baked beans in there there's: a) room for tons (literally) more stuff, and b) it doesn't seem like way too many cans of beans for a person who is not a cook at a state penitentiary to be purchasing. (I always feel like Lily Tomlin in the shopping scene in the Incredible Shrinking Woman wheeling the trolley around Costco. And I'm tall. I cannot even imagine how disorienting this experience must be for average heighted women.) Proportionally, 450 fl. oz. of laundry detergent doesn't seem like much when it's shelved next to 75 lb. bags of gerbil food. A mere case of Veuve Clicquot makes you wonder if just one case will be enough when it's placed next to birthday cakes big enough to be cut into 100 generous servings.
You roll the enormous trolley around, snatching up all the great over sized bargains. They have everything. Bicycles, cheese, booze, office supplies, clothes, computers, televisions (wide screened, of course), refrigerators (family sized, of course) live lobsters (I avoid the whole meat area, I strongly suspect they have livestock milling about somewhere in there, too. I see people with what appears to be entire sides of beef in their Costco trolleys. A = Live Lobsters, = B = Dead Lobsters in Trolleys, then by comparison, B = Enormous cuts of beef in trolleys, = A = Livestock), toilet paper, furniture (big, seriously massive furniture), condoms (I'm curious about a guy who has to buy condoms at Costco, is it the need for size or quantity which sends him there?), caskets, (I've only seen them online, so I'm not sure if they're economy sized, too, big enough for the whole family. Or available only in multi-packs) And even recently a Picasso. Yes. Real bona fide original Picasso was sold at Costco.
It's a merchandise carnival. And all those enormous sizes and quantities. And all those sample areas. They have all those people cooking and baking and brewing up goodies to try before you buy. This is not because Costco are great hosts or that they are concerned you might get hungry or thirsty while you shop. All part of the plan, my friends, all part of the plan. Because most of us will have a moment of insecurity and doubt before purchasing a jumbo sized package of anything we've never tried. It's one thing to buy a can of soup and not like it. It's another to buy 48 cans of soup and not like it. We might just roll that big trolley right past the display, admonishing it with, "eh, too much of an unknown, too much of a risk" if it weren't for the in store samples. "Here! Try one! See? It's good, really it is! Buy two cases!" This also serves as a way to entice people into buying something they would never otherwise purchase. I'm a vegetarian. Once, in a Costco far, far away, they were doling out samples of cute little salmon puffs. All the people trying them were oohing and ahing and grabbing up economy sized packages of the things. Caught up in the frenzy, I bought a box, too. So that I'd have something on hand to offer my carnivore guests. I served those things for months. Another smart move on Costco's part, they have a lot of frozen food which you can keep for up to six months in your freezer! And yes! They sell freezers! Big ones! Pick one up on your way to the check-out!
The check-out. Ah, the check-out. The moment of truth in most stores. But in Brobdinag, erm, Costco, the delusion continues. Still under the spell and seduction, I always find myself looking at the contents of other peoples' trolleys. I always see stuff in other peoples' trolleys I either: a) didn't see while shopping and want, or b) wonder what the swut they're going to do with that much of that. "Crazed, dazed and super economy size brainwashed victims," I'll tut-tut as I plunk my 40 can case of baked beans and case of Veuve Clicquot on the check-out conveyer belt. Also proportionally huge and heavy duty. Look under the check-out conveyer belt sometime - the mechanics rival anything Henry Ford could have imagined.
They don't have grocery bags, only boxes leftover and hastily cut into what is supposed to be carrying shaped and sized cases. But they're never sized or shaped to easily carry. They claim this is ecologically friendly and also helps keep their costs, and ultimately their prices, low.
These are lies.
If they offered grocery bags we would come to our senses at the checkout and return items which would not fit into a grocery bag to the shelves before purchasing most of the items.
So the first slap of reality hits doesn't hit you until you've paid your money (and look at your savings!), had your receipt examined and highlighted (I have no idea why they really do this other than to make us feel, well, I'm not sure) and you get to your car.
You see a lot of SUVs at warehouse clubs. And moving vans. Do these people shop at warehouse clubs because they have over-sized petrol guzzling vehicles, or do they have over-sized petrol guzzling vehicles because they shop at warehouse clubs?
The rest of us, who either own, borrow, rent or ride in regular cars, spend an hour in the parking lot trying to fit the six items we purchased into the car. "But I didn't buy that much...I normally fit a month's worth of groceries in here...four of us went on a three week cross country antique buying trip in this car and had room to spare...it's just one jar of olives..." If you can tear yourself away from your personal space and organizing dilemma, take a look around the parking lot. The same scene is being played out in cars across the lot. Arguments and even outright fights among spouses and friends are common. "What the Hell are you going to do with 80 rolls of toilet paper?" "What do you mean it's 'a good deal?' We don't even have a dog!" "I don't care if it is your membership, this is the last time I'm bringing you here! Get your own car!" Ahem. That last one hit a bit close to home.
I was strong on my last trip to Brobdinag. I went in for a jumbo size of Tylenol, and I came out with a jumbo size of Tylenol.
And a big jug of laundry detergent. And a bulk pack of CD-Rs. And two Gregory Peck movies on DVD. (Yes, even their swutting movies are in multi-packs.) Two enormous bottles of ketchup. (but I'm keeping one for a friend, really I am, as soon as he's home from out of town I'm giving him one, really) And that's it. Really.
