My Christmas Wish

I wish that every company or club or open source software project or political affiliation or web site I’ve ever had anything to do with didn’t think it was necessary to have a newsletter, and send me this newsletter in the email. Nowadays in America there’s always somebody in every group who wants to have a newsletter and will cheerfully produce one per month. This person needs to be eliminated.

I also wish that every catalog merchant or club or political group or vendor of any conceivable or inconceivable product or service did not feel obliged to have a special Christmas promotion and to let me know that their commodity (motor oil, newspaper website, tiny flashlight, flour, stupid Internet dating service, literary magazine, refrigerator) is the perfect Christmas Gift, and even if they have no tangible product or service that a membership in their organization or a gift certificate for some totally inappropriate product or service (vasectomy, ammunition, pro-cremation pressure group) is the perfect Christmas Gift.

There’s a point at which capitalism becomes bizarre ritual rather than actual money-making, and there’s another point at which these bizarre rituals all arrive in my email inbox at once and make me stabby.

However! Points to my DSL provider, who while fixing an outage played to me, on their hold music, the Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties” rather than any Holiday Music.