CD copy of the Long Blondes' new album ''Couples'': 9.99
Various Groceries: 4.25
Not buying an iPod: Priceless
I stand in three Worcester stores salivating over a black MP3 player juggling the economics of the foolhardy in my brain, wondering how hard it could be to live on the remains on your already beleaguered wage packet, exactly seven days in.
Normally I would have done it - I would have taken my chances... maybe skipped going out drinking this weekend, next weekend and the weekend after... maybe try to get by on the half a bag of a bag of frozen chick peas and a few packets of nine pence ramen noodles for three weeks.
But this time, something quite different and unexpected happened: some chemical messenger or other lit a gas hob at its ignition point in my brain, illuminating a light show that spelled out
Normally I would have done it - I would have taken my chances... maybe skipped going out drinking this weekend, next weekend and the weekend after... maybe try to get by on the half a bag of a bag of frozen chick peas and a few packets of nine pence ramen noodles for three weeks.
But this time, something quite different and unexpected happened: some chemical messenger or other lit a gas hob at its ignition point in my brain, illuminating a light show that spelled out
'BILLS'
'I'm trapped in a flood but it isn't raining/I have a tendency to get bored too quickly/Recently my dull life seems to have no meaning/I am stuck with someone and we're not communicating/ I want to buy/Have you not been affected/I want to buy/You could be addicted'
Normally I would have done it; pointed to what I wanted, handed a piece of plastic to an overworked and underpaid cashier and typed a series of numbers known to me and no one else, into a machine with excited hands. I would have taken a shiny black box with shinier contents home on the bus, taking it out of the bag to make sure it's still in there... thinking about what I was going to copy onto it first; how I could fit onto it every album, single, B-side, live version, remix, demo, forgotten song - with ample room left for full episodes of TV shows, maybe even the odd movie - I would imagine watching a Clockwork Orange sat in a regular class train carriage, en route to places like London, Manchester, Hereford.
Just whose fault is it anyway?
Is it their fault for having a bottomless safe of money to spend on advertising in order to blanket my consciousness?
Is it my fault for buying the corporate shit?
Is it just the way we've evolved?
'Retail Therapy' is a term often banded about by skinny girls, showing mock/real/mock concern for a credit card bill that probably won't even fit through the letter box when it arrives, weilding countless carrier bags carrying logos... Gucci, Jimmy Choo, Chanel No. 5.
There's something in it. I don't have to feel terribly low to feel the need to go out and buy something new for myself. I too often feel the urge to replace my brain with a certain happy substance that is found only inside inanimite objects; electrical goods... clothes... shiny flat round discs in translucent boxes...
It's now new cure either. One of the reasons I fell in love with an an all-female post-punk band called Slits, (as well as the fact that they posted naked in mud on the cover of their debut album 'Cut', of course) is their song 'Spend Spend Spend' which is probably the best song ever written about 'Retail Therapy'.. as long ago as 1979, no less:-
Just whose fault is it anyway?
Is it their fault for having a bottomless safe of money to spend on advertising in order to blanket my consciousness?
Is it my fault for buying the corporate shit?
Is it just the way we've evolved?
'Retail Therapy' is a term often banded about by skinny girls, showing mock/real/mock concern for a credit card bill that probably won't even fit through the letter box when it arrives, weilding countless carrier bags carrying logos... Gucci, Jimmy Choo, Chanel No. 5.
'Dave and I had, like, this major fallout, so y'know, thought I'd go for a little retail therapy'
There's something in it. I don't have to feel terribly low to feel the need to go out and buy something new for myself. I too often feel the urge to replace my brain with a certain happy substance that is found only inside inanimite objects; electrical goods... clothes... shiny flat round discs in translucent boxes...
It's now new cure either. One of the reasons I fell in love with an an all-female post-punk band called Slits, (as well as the fact that they posted naked in mud on the cover of their debut album 'Cut', of course) is their song 'Spend Spend Spend' which is probably the best song ever written about 'Retail Therapy'.. as long ago as 1979, no less:-
'I'm trapped in a flood but it isn't raining/I have a tendency to get bored too quickly/Recently my dull life seems to have no meaning/I am stuck with someone and we're not communicating/ I want to buy/Have you not been affected/I want to buy/You could be addicted'
But then, as I mentioned before, I wasn't terribly miserable today. That means at some later date, maybe after a difficult day at work, or during a hangover that leaves me feeling pretty sorry for myself, I can't promise I'm going to see something and not want to take it home and hug it. It's just a risk I'm going to have to take.
But right now I am hungry, so I'm going to eat some of those groceries while I still have them. I might even listen to the new Long Blondes record while I cook.
But right now I am hungry, so I'm going to eat some of those groceries while I still have them. I might even listen to the new Long Blondes record while I cook.
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