Posted in body, cliques, commerce, consumers, enmity, food, france, intuition, location, opinion, person, rants, society, tourism, understanding on August 1st, 2010 No Comments »
In the most recent LRB, Stephen Shapin reviews Michael Steinberger’s book about the fall of French cuisine. While Steinberger’s frankly bizarre neoliberal, uncontrollable-market afterwords can probably be discarded, the basic premise—that French cuisine is ossified and tedious—is one with which I can definitely concur.
I’ve suggested before that vegetarian food is a national cuisine’s “canary in [...]
Posted in body, commerce, consumers, discomfort, drink, opinion, organisations, person, politics, rants, society on April 1st, 2010 2 Comments »
Teabags with tags are a pain in the arse. I mean, the idea seems sound—a heat-resistant paper handle to lift out a nearly boiling teabag—and probably did have a function before the invention of the spoon. These days, though, a tag is largely redundant unless you’re the sort of person who finds their experience of [...]
Posted in commerce, consumers, consumption, cotswolds, environment, location, meta, past, reuse, society, time on January 31st, 2010 No Comments »
Two months ago, I said:
Witney’s branch of Cargo closed recently. Fair enough, I thought, but it did so only to reopen in a far bigger store space (where New Look used to be). I give it six months….
Now? FALCO: Witney Cargo. We walked past its whitewashed windows earlier today. Apparently it’s going to turn into [...]
Witney’s branch of Cargo closed recently. Fair enough, I thought, but it did so only to reopen in a far bigger store space (where New Look used to be). I give it six months.
Cargo’s an odd store. It’s like something between an expensive Ikea for people unnerved by how the Swedish can implement elements of [...]
Posted in advertising, belief, blogs, commerce, consumers, journalism, media, mind, nu-media, person, psychology, society, supernatural, understanding on October 4th, 2009 No Comments »
Blogging at The Sun – Tabloid Lies, D-Notice links to an article on the Sun’s website, where some woman was filming her baby and there’s odd sounds on the tape. I won’t say any more than that about the particular article: not because like D-Notice I want to let you decide about it for yourself [...]
Posted in commerce, consumers, diary, dickheads, efficiency, employees, experience, health, industry, injuries, location, money, near, opinion, person, rants, society, technology, wedding on July 28th, 2009 6 Comments »
We’ve finally spent all of our wedding-gift Ikea vouchers, thank Christ. Not that we weren’t grateful for receiving them in the first place, of course: the final bill was reduced by an order of magnitude, which was a welcome surprise. And not that I don’t on one level like Ikea: the remarkably well laid-out showrooms [...]
Posted in buildings, cars, commerce, consumers, decor, dickheads, industry, insurance, location, near, opinion, people, public, rants, responsibility, society, transport on January 31st, 2009 2 Comments »
An open letter to the staff at Rug Doctor:
Dear Rug Doctors,
Having just returned, boiling with rage, from a failed attempt to hire one of your carpet cleaners from the local DIY centre, I’m writing to tell you that you’re idiots.
I appreciate that one would require proof of identity and reliability before letting someone hire one [...]
Posted in body, commerce, consumers, crime, environment, far_away, food, location, nature, person, society on December 14th, 2008 4 Comments »
I forgot to keep a record of this. Dated 30 October:
Hi,
I’m a big fan of Dorset Cereals muesli, and we even have them available at work. However, I was reading the ingredients list on the “Sweet & Juicy: bursting with berries” muesli and came across a reference to palm oil.
Palm oil is implicated in rainforest [...]
Posted in commerce, consumers, consumption, hoi_polloi, industry, language, money, politics, scams, society, status, word_games on November 26th, 2008 No Comments »
… is present in the myth of consumer empowerment:
Capitalism is about power. That’s why so many elements of it are inexplicable. It is not, and has never been, about rewarding hard work. It’s about using a system that pretends to reward hard work in order to reinforce power relations between employer and employee. It is [...]
monkeyhands discusses real consumer confidence:
… When I hear about “consumer confidence” being low, I think that’s completely the wrong way of framing it. Shopping isn’t a confidence-affirming act.
Real confidence comes when you say “Fuck it. I know how to make bread, so I’m not going to cycle five miles going to three different shops in [...]
