December

I can't believe it's already December. Thanksgiving was later this year than usual and that's kind of throwing me off. I guess that means the Christmas shopping season is a little shorter than usual. I'm really not a huge fan of the shopping season. The malls are crowded and shoppers become crazed and impatient, as if they become possessed by demons. It's pretty insane. I recently heard that a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death during the Black Friday shopping spree.

I'm not a socialist or communist or anything, but I do find the degree of our consumerism to be somewhat disturbing. A person died because crazed consumers couldn't take a few seconds to walk around a person. Instead, they walked over and through that person on their way to grab a Nintendo Wii or whatever the hottest item is this season. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy gifts and toys as much as the next person, but I would like to think that I can draw the line at trampling someone to death. I absolutely hate the thought of Black Friday. I don't enjoy shopping, so the thought of waiting in crazy lines in crowded malls makes me feel claustrophobic.

I was talking to a friend who went to pick up a flash drive at Best Buy on Friday. He didn't get up at 4am to wait in line; he went in the afternoon. Despite going much later, he found the lines were still crazy and people were still in a barbaric and primal state. I hate situations where people act in an uncivilized way. I'm talking about normal people, who are very pleasant to be around in any other setting. There's something strange and powerful about consumerism. Like a Dr. Jekyll potion, it changes people.

What happened to good old fashioned values? What happened to getting into the holiday spirit? I'm almost positive that the holiday spirit does not include trampling someone to death. I feel like our society is spiraling downwards. People dying during crazed shopping sprees is a pretty rare thing, but there are daily occurrences that remind me of an earlier age of innocence. I was at the mall on Saturday to kill some time before seeing Quantum of Solace. I saw so many unaccompanied pre-teens sporting cell phones, smoking, and just looking like they were up to no good. And I don't think it only appeared that way to me because I'm getting older. I remember being that age and I was not doing what these kids are doing. I saw some kids that couldn't have been older than 14 messing with soda machine and climbing all over it. Where are the parents? Kids are starting to smoke and drink before even starting high school. Teenage girls are getting pregnant younger and younger. It's great that in 50 years or so, we're going to have the youngest and greatest number of great-grandparents around. But at what cost? The disentangling of the fabric of society? Lower and lower high school graduation rates? Higher frop out rates. I'm not sure how I got from consumerism to today's youth to the steady decline of out society, but there is obviously some connections. We don't teach and display the same values anymore. The values we treasure these days are consumerism and its ugly cousins impatience, vulgarity, and inhumanity.

I was also talking to my friend about a book called The $12 Million Stuffed Shark. It's a book that takes a behind the scene look at the economics of the contemporary art business. Anyway, he was telling me about some really bogus pieces of "art" that sell for ridiculous sums of money. I'd be curious to read that when he's done with it. I think it will make me even more cynical about our world, but it's a risk I'm willing to take. On the bright side, it's much easier to make an impact in a world is that is plagued by problems.