Archive for January, 2008
Thursday, January 31st, 2008
One problem with writing a blog on anticonsumerism is that there are certain non-essential consumer items that I couldn't imagine life without.
I'm not talking about iPhones or about Starbucks coffee or designer clothes (Blain's Farm and Fleet is designer, right?). I'm talking about toys.
As a child, I was the proud owner ...
Posted in Consumer spending, Protest | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008
How confident are you as a consumer?
It's 87.9. That's it. That's the answer, at least according to the Conference Board, the group that compiles the Consumer Confidence Index cited in articles like this Associated Press article to tell us, the consumers, how confident we feel.
So we're at an 87.9. That's down ...
Posted in Consumer spending, Credit debt | No Comments »
Monday, January 28th, 2008
Sorry about the misleading headline - just trying to get more hits. But that does lead us into a discussion of the Internet and misleading information.
The Internet is an amazing tool for communication, research and buying lots and lots of crap. Although I am quite proud of some of my ...
Posted in Advertising, Business practices, Consumer spending | No Comments »
Saturday, January 26th, 2008
America is big and bad in terms of the junk we buy and the amount we go into debt to get that junk. But what's going on in the rest of the world?
Showing the colonies that they can still beat us at something, British personal credit card debt is even higher ...
Posted in Consumer spending, Credit debt | No Comments »
Friday, January 25th, 2008
I woke up yesterday craving cheeseburgers. But not big gourmet cheeseburgers or homemade, fresh-off-the-grill cheeseburgers. I'm talking greasy, lard-infused fast food cheeseburgers.
Don't worry. I'm going somewhere with this.
I went to McDonald's and got one of those value menu double cheeseburger things which, at 440 calories (210 from fat), disturbingly did not sate ...
Posted in Business practices, Consumer spending | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.
Yeah, that's four links to the same thing. Who cares? It's awesome.
The links are to BigBoxReuse.com, a project documenting what becomes of those megastore and big box companies that swore, swore, swore to municipal planning officials that the stores would be bringing in jobs and sales tax ...
Posted in Business practices, Protest, Waste | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008
I seem to have a knack for coming across interesting information years after a lot of other people did.
Take for example, this article from 1999 by Juliet Schor.
It's a bit long and a bit academic, but there's a lot of meat to chew on there, even if it's almost nine years later. ...
Posted in Consumer spending | No Comments »
Monday, January 21st, 2008
They say that by the time a spirit is named, it's dead. And by "they," I mean that guy who wrote that in a comic book I remember reading once.
For some reason, that line sprung to mind when I read this article about the band Gruk. I've never heard of ...
Posted in Protest, Waste | 2 Comments »
Friday, January 18th, 2008
I called him. He called me. I forgot to call him. He forgot to call me. It just never worked out.
But now, after all this silliness, I finally have my interview with Brandon McCormick, director of Consumerism! The Musical, the first anticonsumer satire I've seen in years that hasn't made ...
Posted in Consumer spending, Credit debt, Interviews, Protest, Waste | No Comments »
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
It's time to talk about garbage. Why not? If you're an average American, you produced about 4.6 pounds of it today.
To be fair, that 4.6 pounds (which, technically, was a statistic from 2006), is before some of that trash was recovered to be recycled, composted or combusted for energy. Only ...
Posted in Waste | No Comments »