The Steep Price of Novelty

My favorite example of old-school waste of resources was the "cricket", that cheap little Japanese made clicker made from used soda and beer cans. Of course, the examples of metallic thing-a-bobs the Japs used to make and send to us by the metric ton is legend, most of it involving springs and wind-up keys, much like that sick little alter-ego of Tims, the cymbal playing monkey. At least they were taking our surplus metal and making stupid toys and distractions instead of what they used to do with our scrap metal, ala Pearl Harbor.

Today, plastic has mostly replaced metal as the most wasted resource in the world. And today, my favorite, for lack of a better word, squandering of our ever dwindling supply of metal and plastic is the novelty pen. Everybody custom orders these things in every shape and function imaginable, mostly as a medium to promote their products or services, while Books-a-Million sells a large variety of novelty pens that ironically don't serve their basic function very well. Right now, on my desk in front of me, are two pens that were given to me as gifts or prizes for something or another at work. One has something that is supposed to resemble a lava-lamp, in appearance if not in actual functionality, that lights up the water filled endcap with differing colors, while the other pen simply flashes different neon colors in a pulsating light show near the business end. These things seem hefty and built to last, but they actually make piss-poor writing instruments and I never use them for that purpose. They really ARE nothing but novelties.

The pens I depend on the most for the limited use I make of a writing instrument are the cheap little black sticks that I usually get from work. I use these things all day there, and I use them at home. As pens, they work as well as a pen needs to, without all the flash and overblown style. To many times I have dished out some serious cash for a "quality" pen and have lost the damn thing almost immediately. And I can't remember noticing that the quality pens I have actually spent money on writing anything any better than the cheap sticks do. I wish this concept applied as well to automobiles and computers, but unfortunately it doesn't. You usually do get what you pay for.

The garbage I see in these vending machines lining the front of cheap supermarkets and K-mart type stores is the worst of it. The quarter you waste in these machines get you something that never should have been made to begin with. There will come a time, when the petroleum begins to run out, that plastic ware becomes to expensive for the common man to spend money on. However, there are so many things that plastics are made of now, from drug syringes to automotive interiors to drugs themselves, which have no other raw materials to base them on, that we will lament the waste we incurred in allowing all this garbage to be manufactured for no other purpose than novelty.

The whole concept of a "consumer" based society is what's going to kill us and/or the planet in the end. We consume raw materials and build the most asinine things not for some practical purpose that lends true value to our lives, but simply because it is a vehicle for producing this thing we have created called "wealth". We used to make things to either make our lives easier or for artistic pleasure, but now we make things simply because we can. Our opposable thumb coupled with our intellect were probably the two worst things that happened to us, all things considered. Common sense apparently was something that was bred out of our collective species. Our search for meaning, for pleasure, for purpose in our lives have taken on a rote method that doesn't truly hold up under sensible scrutiny, and does not serve the vast majority of us as we toil in our jobs, elect our leaders, and allow a select few to take advantage of us in ways that in serious retrospect should challenge our tolerances. Thus, we are programmed to consume, and that seems to be the one thing humans do better than any other life form we know of. Really think about what I just said and ask yourself why this shouldn't make you sad.

It doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, both stratas of society are equally guilty of surrounding themselves with junk, all those stupid little things that haven't truly improved their lives to any degree, and are destined to litter the landscape or occupy the landfills. I would be willing to bet that no one, regardless of how rich they are, having bought themselves all the toys they can avail themselves of, are any happier than any monk of any denomination who has given up all the trappings of consumerism, owning nothing but the robes around their bodies. Happiness is a state of mind that no amount of "stuff" can achieve short of what goes on in the brain. When the poorest peasant families can, simply as a matter of course, take in complete strangers and share their meager meals with them, you have to ask what it is that they know that allows them to totally ignore the math that says they probably can't afford to be so generous. I would like to know that, and if I ever find it out, I don't think I will have to live another life on this Earth to collect all my points, pass go, and collect my $200.