Boredom and Theft

Well I got bored with the old look blog and as usual spent too much time fiddling around with the new look. And as I needed something meaningful too make the whole process feel worthwhile, I've added theft to the sin of idleness and pinched two quotes I found on Matt Hosier's blog

Hopefully Matt you'll forgive me and take it as a compliment because the quotes are excellent. I'll return to being more original soon...(possibly)

"I work very hard, but never have any money. Every choice I make seems stupid as soon as I’ve made it. I have a chronic case of consumer melancholia: objects which, when they’re on the shelf, promise to remedy problems of self-worth turn out to be, well, just objects. I spend hundreds of pounds a year on books I never read, on clothes I never wear. I’ve spent years believing that retail is the way out of existential angst. I make wrong choices, stupid purchases, but at least there’s always another purchase around the corner to remedy everything (for a price). That’s what I love about retail: its so forgiving. It always lets me back. I haven’t yet worked out why, if there’s so much choice, we’re all wearing the same logos, all bringing home the same Ikea lampshades. The pushchair (now called an ‘integrated transport system’) my nephew in Parma uses is exactly the same as the one I bought in Bristol. We delight in diversity, whilst actually becoming production-line consumers."

From "Utopian Dreams" by Tobias Jones

"We live in a time when technologies and ideas (often the same thing) are adopted in response not to need but to advertising, salesmanship, and fashion. Salesmen and saleswomen now hover about us as persistently as angels, intent on “doing us good” according to instructions set forth by persons educated at great public expense in the arts of greed and prevarication. These salespeople are now with most of us, apparently, even in our dreams."

From "Sex, Economy, Freedom & Liberty" by Wendell Berry