Hm. I seem to have just taken a 10-day family vacation. I’m shocked to discover that A) I can survive 10 days without being connected, and B) things keep happening even when I’m not paying attention.
Anyway, work has piled up, as have other things, so I may be a bit sketchy for the next couple of days.
In lieu of actual content, a challenge. Place this quote and I will give you a marvelous prize:
There is something self-destructive about Western technology and distribution. Whenever any consumer object is so excellent that it attracts a devoted following, some of the slide rule and computer types come in on their twinkle toes and take over the store, and in a trice they figure out just how far they can cut quality and still increase the market penetration. Their reasoning is that it is idiotic to make and sell a hundred thousand units of something and make a profit of thirty cents a unit, when you can increase the advertising, sell five million units, and make a nickel profit a unit. Thus the very good things of the world go down the drain, from honest turkey to honest eggs to honest tomatoes. And gin.
Later… oh, that one is Google-able. Hm. That sort of makes it too easy to get the marvelous prize, doesn’t it?
How about this one…
I know just enough about myself to know I cannot settle for one of those simplifications which indignant people seize upon to make understandable a world too complex for their comprehension. Astrology, health food, flag waving, bible thumping, Zen, nudism, nihilism–all of these are grotesque simplifications which small dreary people adopt in the hope of thereby finding The Answer, because the very concept that maybe there is no answer, never has been, never will be, terrifies them.
Damn, that one is Google-able too. I’m going to have to find some other way to give out fabulous prizes.
Hm.
