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Shamefully enough I had to purchase my way out of a mild depression-slash-psychotic tiny robot syndrome today. Buying to feel better about yourself... how did it come to this? Ah right. We've been convinced to attribute value to items of conspicuous consumption, and now we have the option of buying our self esteem one silver necklace at a time. Or DVD. Whatever. It's worse when you can see the fantastic mechanism at work, churning people into consumers, and then proceed to jump right into the gears yourself. And yet I still feel better.

I can't imagine what it must be like to have to buy a $500 purse every time you feel like shit. I got off easy by grabbing two books I've already read, making sure my ego knows I'm buying for display and ownership and not for, y'know, knowledge. I wasn't sure it would accept its consolation prize if I bought anything suspiciously approaching usefulness.

Just to make sure, I also ordered this iPod video thing I've heard so much about using the legendary impulse-buy power of the internet. With that kind of social capital, no depression could survive. An iPod could probably make you feel better even after just watching your family be barbecued and eaten by giant seagulls. In my case this purchase was frivolity, but also necessary: the iRiver I purchased roughly HALF A YEAR AGO has died in some sort of hard-drive-clicky-click mishap. Goddamn. The new iPod comes with a touching eulogy engraved on its back:

3 years, 3 MP3 players
What the fuck?

I am kind of hoping the engraving guys at Apple see this and add an extra line:

That's profitability, sucka

or

Why don't you go cry about it on your blog?

which I already happen to be doing.

Posted by Chris at 06:52 PM >> Commentations (9)