Along with today being the 34th anniversary of the premiere of Doctor Who, as I mentioned,
today is also Buy Nothing Day.
Buy Nothing Day is the brainchild of a group called Adbusters. I've been following
Adbusters for ages. Lately, though, they've been pissing me off a bit. Nothing to do
with September 11, . It's
the ignorant half-truths they use to perpetuate themselves. The
bane of the whole anti-globalization movement, really.
(Incidentally, GDP is a measure of all economic activity in a country. Military mobilizations boost GDP because
governments dump resources into the military. Duh. This is economic growth, but it's unstable. This is bad. Repeat
after me: stable growth good; unstable growth bad. Military spending increases launched to fight the war in Vietnam sent
the US economy spiralling into 25 years of inflation, which is a very bad thing, and which was only really brought under
control with the recession at the start of the 90s).
I'm down with the whole environmental consumer thing, and I don't like the spectacular amounts of waste in our society.
But these guys are going about it the wrong way. It's the typical "Let's have a revolution and then figure out what it's
for" mentality that I'd hoped we'd done away with 20 years ago. They propose to bring down the Western consumer society,
but propose no alternatives. And when they do propose alternatives (like "buy nothing") they're a little short on
convincing rationale as to how it would actually work long-term.
There are less wasteful and less harmful ways to get by just as well in our consumer society. The problem is, right
now at least, they're more generally expensive. That means, unless people can be convinced that it's worth it, they're
going to buy the wasteful thing instead. "Buy Nothing" targets the very people who might believe that it is worth it.
But they're busy buying nothing, so the alternatives go unsupported and the harmful, wasteful products continue to rule
the marketplace. They should be telling people to buy better. To create commercial incentives to companies to produce
goods which cause less damage. They should also be working to push governments to strengthen environmental laws—to force
the cost of goods to better reflect the real cost to society (which, despite what people might say, is the right role
for governments to play in a free-market economy).
They'd rather burn cars and doodle on posters, I guess.
Okay, yes, I should have saved my pennies, learned to drive standard and bought an Insight. I went half-way, which isn't
bad. It's too bad more people don't do even that...
It looks like November will be another month of few updates. Last week I did roughly nothing at work. I could have done
updates then. I didn't, obviously. I'm left wondering what, exactly, I did do. Strange that.
This week, I'm really busy again. I didn't mean to be. They're making me do something I told them I really didn't want
to do. (The thing in question involves primarily writing a Java wrapper for a library that was written (badly) about
five years ago). This makes me unhappy. There's a challenge in there, but it's a fairly boring challenge. Once I get the
main points figured out, it's all just really boring and repetitive. I can only hope I'll be hailed as a genius when I'm
done.
Today, as of course you're all aware, is the thirty-fourth anniversary of the premiere of the greatest television show
ever, Doctor Who. Traditionally, I mark the occasion with a marathon (I have
about 30 serials—roughly 60 hours—of the series in my video library). Unfortunately, the last few years, things keep
cropping up to make this difficult: CTRL-A shows, trips home, exams and the like. This year is no different. Tonight
is our annual company Christmas party. So the marathon will have to wait.
In preparation for the Christmas party, I went out yesterday and bought a couple startlingly attractive
Christmas-patterned ties. A couple because I couldn't decide which would go very well with my blue
not-entirely-formal-but-still-quite-nice dress
shirt. And I didn't want to buy another shirt, if for no other reason than I couldn't remember my neck size. It turns
out neither go very well, but for no fault of their own. Ties most often seem to tend towards very dark. Which is good,
I suppose, if you're wearing a white shirt. I would have liked something lighter. Oh well. The blue tie with little
Santas running across will do well enough.
Also, as you're no doubt aware, Harvest Moon: Save the Homelands
comes out this week. Which means, of course, I'm going to have to buy a Playstation 2 this weekend. I was thinking about
getting a Gameboy Advance to play HM:GBC3, but that seemed a little
silly. Then again, it does let you build irrigation channels. And you can have a pet pig.
Only two entries in October. Not for wont of things to talk about, really. I guess I just haven't been motivated. Right
now, sitting at work without a whole lot to do (which feels wrong after being really busy for a couple months), I'm just
kind of tired.
I got lots and lots of candy over the weekend. They were leftovers from CTRL-A's post-Hallowe'en extravaganza. I use
the term "extravaganza" loosely, of course. I had fun, though. Alas, I can't help but think that all that candy had
something to do with it. Especially Rockets! I love Rockets. Sugar is a drug.
Hm. Now there's an interesting American cultural oddity (along with
the first place blue ribbon). It turns out that Rockets are actually
called Smarties down there. This of course, led me to wonder what they
call Smarties (The little chocolate candies from Nestle, known as they are
throughout the civilized world). The realization is slowly donning that Americans don't actually have Smarties. This
notion seems proposterous, however. It's like saying they don't have childhood. M&Ms seem a poor substitute. As much as
I prefer them now (peanut only, please), I can't imaging growing up without Smarties. It's just inhuman.
This does explain why Smarties TV commercials are so dumb, though. They're probably European. Or Canadian. Canadian ad
companies are really bad at doing kids commercials. Beer commercials, sure, but they can't seem to do stuff like candy.
![[That's a nice trowel you've got there]](/img/gn-LyRIp67-200.webp)