A Sad Podcast Update

[peristaltor]

I went to lunch with The Wife the other day. We're both (kinda) still on vacation, and decided to burn a gift card to one of those national eatery chains. Food was good, but one thing nearly ruined the experience: the menu. It was a large spiral-bound number with laminated pages, but only two-thirds or so of those pages described the eating

Comments

[nebris]

The Hologram does not care about your life, Consumer.

~M~

[anaesthete]

Ads in a menu? That's a new one on me. I'm still reeling from the bigasss TV screen they put up in my neighborhood deli. Thankfully, it's almost always muted.

I visited Maine awhile back and rode along the coast from Portland to Acadia, and it was wonderful. No billboards are allowed along the freeway. I was surprised by how much more enjoyment one gets without these unnatural distractions and mood disturbances. Sadly, this haven may soon disappear.

[bill_sheehan]

Cheesecake Factory?

I am not a consumer, I'm a citizen, damnit. Advertising bugs the socks off of me, and I won't willingly expose myself to more of it than I have to (which is quite a lot already, thank you very much). When I see ads for other things than the dessert trolley, I immediately think of Pohn and Kornbluth's "Space Merchants", where the Fowler-Schocken advertising agency invents the spherical trust. One advertiser's products creates a craving for another advertiser's products, which in turn sets off a craving for a third...

[peristaltor]

Cheesecake Factory?

He gets it in one!

[peristaltor]

On the citizen/consumer topic, one of The Wife's shows was doing a "humorous" bit about celebrity branding, and decided to ask non-celebs what brand they would be. I was shocked that people took this seriously.

Me? I decided I needed a stock answer I could whip out if confronted by a TV crew on the street: "Cattle are branded. I am not."

I might make it a T-shirt.