I'm a simple man. I don't require a lot out of shopping experiences...heck, or life itself. I just want a good meal, a good conversation and the love of a beautiful woman. But sometimes, I do want a little more. Like a good book. However, when I went to the cash register to use my gift card, the girl behind the counter asked if I wanted to use what was left to buy into the discount program. A simple up-sell. I can respect that. I declined.
She pressed, "are you sure?"
I replied, "I am, thanks anyway, I appreciate your effort."
"But you can save every time you come in."
"No thanks, I just want to use my gift card."
"Well...(at this point I kind of tuned her out.)."
You can see where this went. I had to say no 7 times. I really understand the drive to get the up-sell. I work retail. I know how much pressure they put on you to do that. I don't fault the girl in this experience. She was friendly. I fully blame the bastard who said "don't let them leave with saying no." or "Make them say no at LEAST 3 times." It's aggravating, and had I been paying real money, I might have walked out. So that sucked. And that was just 10 out the 30 dollars of the gift card, so I had to go back. The second trip was even more disappointing. I have to say, I don't know if it's because it's the 2 weeks after Christmas, but this particular bookstore is a lesson in chaos. I found some delight in seeing a Glenn Beck book(An Inconvenient Book) in the Fiction section, but mostly, you couldn't find a book you really wanted in this place if it were cooing your name seductively and had a neon sign on it that said "look here." So, I moseyed. As you do when you don't really know what your looking for. Kind of like how this story has started. I found myself digging through the discount section(this is something I've learned from Maranda). And that's when I saw that first thing that made me a little sad with humanity: a Jersey Shore Sticker Book.Yes.A sticker book. I guess it shouldn't be surprising, considering the "talent" of that show, but really? A sticker book? For kids? Do REALLY want our children "learning" about Snooki and that douchebag with abs...via stickers? You know, when I was a kid, I had a sticker book. It was about baseball players. I collected and learned all I could to hopefully one day grow up to be like my heros, Will Clark, Jose Canseco, and Mark McGwire. Sure, 2/3 of that list wound up being drug addled, performance enhancing, monsters who sullied the reputation of the game and their careers...but it's not like they flaunted their flaws on a daily basis on television and I certainly wasn't told to be entertained by how many "bitches" they nailed. I can't believe I'm only 30 and wishing for the good old days. It's just sad. Pitiful. Remarkable. But, you know what made this even worse? I decided to walk away from the discount bin and laugh it off. I was bound to not be infuriated by the stupidity of this. So, I walked over to the Philosophy and Religion section. I really wanted to re-buy Blue Like Jazz. One of my favorite books that I let someone borrow and then kind of moved and never got it back. Anyway, they didn't have it, so I thought, "well, Josh, let's look at the philosophy books, maybe find something challenging to make us think a little bit." And so, again, I moseyed over, and lo and behold, what met my eye was...discouraging, I guess is the best word. There, on the shelf next to Plato, Soccretes and the like was 2 rows of books whose titles were all like this: "Stupid pop-culture icon" & Philosophy. Some prime examples:Iron Man & Philosophy,Sex And The City & Philosophy,Homer Simpson & Philosophy,House & Philosophy, and my personal favorite: Twilight & Philosophy
I'm pissed just having typed those 5 titles. And there were TWO shelves of this crap! I really want to believe that this is just a way to get the younger ones to think and create ideas about life using concepts and characters they are familiar with to help them get into the material more easily and deeply. I'd really like that to be true. But I have to say that what it looked like was just another stab by corporations to cash in on the things that made them rich to begin with. I can't imagine what this world will be like in 100 years. Will anyone come along and invent something so radically new and different from what has come before it? Will any new ideas emerge that we can't even try to imagine now: like imagining a 1955 Chevy 2 door post in the middle of the Civil War? Will there ever be that kind of leap again? Or are we just going to live out the rest of the time we hold dominion over this rock making things that already affect too much of our lives faster, easier and cheaper? Who are the geniuses around us? Why can't we hear more about them instead of Snooki? Will we ever have an original thought again? I'm going to go read George Carlin and Jimmy Carter now. read more