Category: Society

PETA vs Wool

wool

If you haven’t noticed, our society is going nuts.  We seem to spend our days wandering around Wonderland, looking for the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party — and last week we got a couple of steps closer.

PETA, a band of uber-bored rich people who think the rest of us spend our leisure hours kicking puppies and slaughtering chickens, has ventured out onto the last looney branch of the crazy tree.  They’ve decided that a village in Dorset, UK is promoting cruelty to animals because – and here’s the good part – its name is Wool.  Whoa!  That’s a bit much!  It’s kinda like saying St Louis, San Francisco and St Moritz are raising awareness for the Catholic Church.

Anyway, PETA wasn’t done.  They wrote to the parish council and promised 2,000 “cruelty free” blankets if the good people of Wool would kindly change the name of their village to Vegan Wool.  Publicity stunt?  Maybe.  Unfortunately, I have this nagging idea that the people at PETA actually believe the local bumpkins are spinning their wool into garments to keep warm.  Not only that, but I’m pretty sure PETA also thinks that by generously providing the peasants with a reasonable alternative, they’ll put an end to this cycle of agrarian abuse.  Woke is woke — right?  Either way, there hasn’t been this much condescension hanging in the air since Peter Minuit offered the locals a big bag of beads for Manhattan.

The problem is PETA, being PETA, failed to do its homework – again.  The truth is the village name Wool doesn’t have anything to do with wool — or sheep — or any other kind of animal husbandry.  The name is derived from the Old Saxon word “Welle” which means “flowing water.”  The original village took its name from that – a local stream.  Over the last 10 centuries (since the Saxons held sway in England) the inflection has been corrupted.  Thus Welle became Wool.  Oops!  It turns out the only thing the citizens of Wool are guilty of is mispronunciation.

Personally, I think it’s one thing for a multinational, multimillion-dollar organization like PETA to bully a pastoral little village, but I’d like to see them try this crap on a tough town like Buffalo, New York or HAMburg, Germany.  Then we’d see how far their 2,000 blankets gets them!

 

Image: Peter Trimming

Black Friday 2018

black friday

Unless you live on Jupiter, you know that today in America (and increasingly around the world) it’s Black Friday.  This is an annual orgasm of consumer culture that has psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and bloggers like me bursting at the seams with explanations of why ordinary people go nuts every 4th Friday in November.  The truth is people can’t help it.  We have culture, history and our own DNA working against us.

First of all, humans are essentially hunter/gatherers.  No matter how far out of the caves we think we’ve come, just go to somebody’s house and take a look around.  What you see is a lifetime of hunting for and gathering up loads of stuff that, for the most part, we don’t need.  The fact is, many of us have gathered up so much crap that we have to pack some of it in boxes and hide it in the basement.  Yeah, yeah, yeah: we all want to eat, sleep and watch TV out of the rain, but one of the main reasons we even have houses (the bigger, the better) is to store our stuff.  And we put locks on the doors just in case another hunter/gatherer wanders by and decides to add to his collection by stealing from ours.  Black Friday is just an elaborate hunting expedition where the weapons of choice are credit cards — not spears.

Second, humans are social animals.  We run in herds, and anyone who’s studied herd behaviour will tell you that, once the herd starts moving, it’s pretty hard to stop.  And … the difference between a meandering flock and a ferocious stampede is just a couple of boys in the back thinking they’re going to get left out.  Push comes to shove, and suddenly, Morgan, from your yoga class, is elbowing old ladies out of the way to get at the 60-inch TVs.  Black Friday is just the kind of limited time offer that triggers this herd mentality.

And finally, all human society is built on the bargain.  It’s in our DNA somewhere.  Even the most primitive, egalitarian, every-hand-in-the-pot people are looking for a deal.  Nobody, anywhere, has ever said, “Eddie Bonenose wanted two chickens for his daughter, but I talked him into taking three.”  Never happens!  And retailers know this, so discounts (real or imagined) are everywhere — sales, coupons, 2-for-1, Happy Hour – the only things that never go on sale, these days, are the Church and Apple Computers — and they’re both banking on religion to suck us in.  Anyway, Black Friday is the ultimate something-for-nothing day that satisfies this primitive urge.  No wonder people love it!

Personally, I think Black Friday, like New Year’s Eve, is basically amateur hour, so I don’t participate, but for those who do – I’m pretty sure you’re just fulfilling your cultural, historical and genetic imperative.  Good on ya!

Jobs In The 21st Century

jobs

Like the elves of Middle Earth, jobs are leaving these shores and they’re not coming back.  These days, if you are a travel agent, cashier, bank teller, journalist, or in any one of the other 1,001 person-to-person professions of the 20th century – you’d better start looking over your shoulder.  In the next decade, your paycheque is going to go the way of the dinosaur.  Quite frankly, blacksmiths will have better employment opportunities than you will.  Luckily, however, economics is a survival of the fittest science, and it’s already creating a shedload of new careers.  Here’s just a small sampling of the new jobs being created in the 21st century.  The crazy thing is – for the most part — these are real.

Harassment Officer –This is the only job in history that’s totally dependent on the employee NOT doing the job.  Think about it!  If a Harassment Officer actually puts a stop to harassment in the workplace, they’re out of a job.

Social Media Consultant – Apparently, there are still people on this planet who don’t know how Facebook, Instagram and Twitter work.

Millennial Generation Expert – Yes, companies hire people to try and figure out what makes their younger employees tick.  My best guess is they wander around the office telling everybody under 30 they’re “awesome” and then, once a week, they give out trophies.

Personal Shopper – This job has been around for a while, but it still amazes me that some people hire people to buy presents for the friends and relatives they can’t be bothered going to Walmart for.

Bikini Waxer – Back in the day, personal grooming was – uh – personal. Now we get professionals in on the plot.  My question is how do these people learn their trade?  Where are the schools?

Cloud Services Specialist – I have no idea what the hell these people do.

Activist – These are the people who make a career out of being pissed off.

Grant Writer – These are the people who convince rich people to give them money to pay the people who’ve made a career out of being pissed off.

Uber Driver – Simplest job in the world.  All you have to do is go to Uber.com and sign up.  According to one person I talked to, Uber doesn’t even check to see if you actually have a car.

Influencer – We used to call these people shills. They worked carnivals and sideshows, trying to entice the local folk into spending their money on rigged games and cheap gadgets.  These days, they prowl the Internet and confine their activities to promoting perfumes and overpriced designer clothes.

Ethical Sourcing Officer – These are the people who make sure the Asian sweatshops aren’t beating the children who make those overpriced designer clothes.

Jean Ripper – I don’t know whether this is a real job or not, but somebody’s got to be ripping those overpriced designer jeans.

But my two favourites are:

Content Creator – These are the people who have YouTube channels, podcasts and — the grandmother of them all — blogs.  Yep, people actually get paid for wasting your time.

Content Reader – These are people who spend their days checking the contents of YouTube channels, podcasts and — the grandmother of them all — blogs.  Yep, people actually get paid for wasting their own time.