Last night whilst working i thought of something:
It's inexcusable laziness that makes us so fat.
There is a market with five hundred thousand unique products.
You learn to shop for convenience. We want quick easy meals.
We buy things to present an image of who you think you are.
I bought a two liter for $.53 and dude buys a 20oz for a dollar. Why? Was it because it's easier to lift a 20oz bottle to his lips? Was it because the taste of his name brand was so much better than generic that he paid over 400% more than what I did? I have a hard time with this question, but I'm sure the answer is for image. It's got commercials and that makes it taste better. Isn't true? Why are there commercials?
Other reasons why we buy what we buy include giving yourself a treat. Oh yeah, every time we get a beer, or ice-cream, or anything like that what is it that we're telling ourselves? I deserve a treat. Is that healthy? Have you seen that people that constantly are giving themselves treats? I don't want my butt to look like that.
I was once told that bottled water sold because of it's sophisticated name. I can't think of any reason that someone couldn't just use a bottle at home and get their own water from tap. Nope, I have to have my Avion, and pay a dollar a bottle for it. It's humorous! Free, or a dollar, I can't even give a percentile difference on that because the first one is FREE.
Why do we want quick and easy meals? Because we're spending time doing other things like working, shopping, watching TV, driving and sleeping in. We have a convenient meal that means that it buys us more time to do the things that we love. Eating is a secondary activity to these things. We grab some fast food while on break from work, that's convenient. We take so much time shopping that it will take a whole evening, after that it's good to have convenience. We don't even eat in the dinner table anymore, yet most of us have one, a dusty reminder of days past. We'll get a coke and some chips for a car trip, or we'll nuke that $1.26 2 inch by 2 inch biscuit and eat on the way to work.
Are these healthy eating habits?
And what about our kids? When we buy them single-serving nuke meals for $2.14, aren't we telling them that food should be convenient? These meals especially bother me, because children come home from school and their parents aren't home yet. So of course they nuke this meal and sit in front of the babysitter watching cartoons.
So I ask, why convenience? Because we have convinced ourselves that we have to eat convenient food. I wonder where the other 8 hours a day went to that one doesn't work. Are these hours so filled with chores that you have to grab a "quick bite?" What's worse is that we're teaching our kids about this earlier and earlier. How long can this system expand when it eats everything? Soon it will grow too big and eat itself I fear.
Itchy_turd - 2/19/2006 08:55:00 AM
Laziness as a primary characteristic of the American people is due to over the last 50 years a unique combination of capitalism, consumerism, marketing, culture industry,...
and more capitalism.
Think of June Cleaver taking a break from cooking one night while she, Ward, Wally, and the Beaver sit in front of their "new" TV eatin a TV dinner that they kept in their "new" freezer until she cooked it in their "new" stove.
Fast forward to Beaver's grandkid watching TV getting bombarded with commericials enticing them to buy the advertised products; he goes to school and the schools are pushing the snack machines so they spend less than what the state budgeted to the for the cafeteria and the school gets a kickback every time a product is sold from the machines; and when the kid gets out he is offered his choice of fast food or pre-prepared meals, sometimes as a reward for good behavior (more conditioning food=good, only the parent is guilt as opposed to big business) or simply because his parents won't bother to cook or may not know how.
There is a commercial now for KFC, the slogan says "Bring Back (family at the table) Dinner!"
The mom calls to her kids upstairs in their rooms "Dinner time!" and the kids then start screaming with excitement and run to the minivan (implying that's what they do everyday). The the wife looks to the husband and smugly says something to the effect "They'll get used to this new way" and they proudly stand over a bucket of chicken from KFC sitting on the kitchen table.
Nice fucking work bitch! You should be proud! But reheating the mashed potatoes doesn't make it a home-cooked meal.
I wouldn't say Americans are somehow inherently lazy, but that is the desired result from billions of dollars spent on behavior modification.
How long can this system expand when it eats everything? Soon it will grow too big and eat itself I fear.
Nah. It simply leads us to be too unfit to oppose our corporate and political masters, and to be pawns to the growing private healthcare industry.
Chuck - 2/19/2006 09:28:00 PM
And I for one welcome our new corporate and political overlords.
Itchy_turd - 3/11/2006 09:33:00 PM
Who knows, if we stay healthy we may even survive long enough to welcome our posthuman and/or strong A.I. overlords!
(I'll speak more on this shortly in one of your more recent topics.)
Chuck - 3/11/2006 10:06:00 PM
Odd that you bring up the technological singularity. I stumbledupon that a few months ago and it ties quite heavily with my current MnM campaign.
Itchy_turd - 3/12/2006 09:06:00 PM
"...'Someone should teach you to shut that nasty mouth of yours.' I then rubbed his face into the wall scouring off most of his lips. The national guard guys saw my lesson as I was teaching it and pulled their guns..."
I had checked out your MnM page last year before you started putting any logs up. Imagine my surprise to Carl's PC is "Jordan"! (I recognize his handwriting.)
LOL, I've read the PC/NPC bios, and the logbook up to halfway through "It's always that time of the month for Hard Drive". How was it in "Cake or Death?" after your OCC break James assumes the identity of Jordan? This wasn't elaborated on...
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