STUFF I GOT

You could argue - quite rightly - that far, far too many of my recent posts could be clustered under the sub-genre of "stuff I've bought" and, in these cash-strapped times, blathering on about forking out cash I don't have spare for stuff I don't really need is tantamount to rubbing the nose of the entire world in it.

Sadly, of course, this is what I do... It's what my life has been reduced to...

So I apologise profusely for going on about things in a "Ooh! Look what I bought!" kind of a way, because it's tactless in the extreme and really doesn't do anything to further the life experience of any of us, no matter how much any of us going out on a little shopping spree might allegedly (if you believe all those economists and, to be frank, why would anyone do that?) boost the economy and apparently potentially lift up the lifestyles of every single one of us...

No, don't thank me yet.

Perhaps I ought to give some thought to the topic of "Retail Therapy" especially as it tends to be one of those things which a lot of people do, perhaps at a time when they can least afford to do so, and Chrimbletide is that time of the year when there's the most pressure to splurge, even when the splurger hasn't got anything to splurge with, and justify it to themselves with a pragmatic and weary "Well, it is Christmas..."

But even when it isn't, during that increasingly tiny "non-festive" window each year, the desire to make yourself feel "better" by buying yourself a little something, before feeling much worse because you couldn't really afford to buy yourself a little something, is one of the constant pressures of living in a consumerist and capitalism-led economy because the adverts are constantly persuading us that our lives are not quite perfect and would be better if only we had this, that, or the other, of the many available pointless nick-nacks in them.

Interestingly, it's often the people who've got the most stuff and are the envy of all their circle of acquaintances who turn out to be the most miserable, but I digress because it's always easier to be miserable with a few quid in the bank than when you haven't got a pot to piss in.

And yet that strange notion that buying ourselves more stuff will make us happy is one which persists and even pops up daily on various websites with the simple message "Get yourself a little something" with that strange, unsaid subtext of "...because you're worth it..."

Why shouldn't we try and buy ourselves a few precious moments of artificial happiness....? If it's the stuff we have which defines us and makes us happy, why the hell not...? After all, it's not as if it's going to turn out to be so much worthless junk that we're leaving behind ourselves after we've gone is it...?

"You can say one thing about Auntie... She had good taste in mobile phones..." [Sighs] "Just chuck it in the bin bag with all the other junk...!"

Meanwhile, another of those ghastly "non-words" (alongside the brainlessness of a moronic "here-today, gone tomorrow" pop word like "selfie") which has apparently finally sneaked its way into the O.E.D. is "showrooming" which is the process by which we go out, look at the stuff on sale in a High Street store, find out whether we like it, and then go away and buy it cheaper online.

Because that kind of thing really helps the economy when all of those local shops go out of business, doesn't it...?

You can understand why it happens though.

Only an idiot forks out all of the extra money that they can ill-afford, just to make a point of principle, and why should you spend the that extra fiver that you haven't got simply to help them out. It's easy enough to have principles when it comes down to what other people are spending their money on, but when it comes to our own, well... That's another matter entirely.

I could, of course, tell you an outright lie now and claim that all of those posts about my shopping were all leading up to something like this posting, as if I had some kind of a long-term master plan to discuss basic economics with you, but, sadly, that's not the case. I'm just a sad, gullible wretch who's trying to make some sort of sense of his own compulsions and obsessive behaviour when it comes to the pointless acquisition of stuff.

That said, the great and the good who lurk inside the Temples dedicated to Mammon such as John Lewis don't seem to have any issues with paying far over the odds for something just because they can, whilst the rest of us try to decide whether to fork out the extra for  a better class of  sausage, because, when you look around yourself in an outlet like that, you very quickly realise that it is still the wealthiest who are running the place and ensuring that they can keep that wealth at the expense of the rest of us.

After all, if you're just going to assume that anyone who claims any kind of benefit at all is the lowest common denominator and must, by assumption, be trying to cheat the rest of us, before going out and paying out enough money for that one extra ham that you didn't really need (but you want to have in "just in case") to feed another family for a week, it seems less that charitable to then refer to them as parasites over your next over-priced Latte in the coffee shop afterwards.

Such people will quibble about an over-payment of about a fiver that made someone able to eat for a couple more days and then go out and blow hundreds of pounds on the makings of a Christmas Dinner that the bloody Ritz Hotel might have considered far too lavish for its customers, and try to salve their consciences by putting an extra quid in the Sally Army collection box as if somehow that will put the entire world to rights.

'Tis the season, my friends... 'Tis the season...