Just in case I was in any doubt of the seriously stupid direction our civilisation is headed in...

I utterly found confirmation of it while visiting our local supermarket this morning.

Positioned within the aisle, or rather, entire island given over to Coke and all its associated fizzing death beverages, there was this. A sort of DJ booth without music at which, apparently, you could have your own personalised plastic Coke cup made while you waited - and, of course, having spent the required amount on aforementioned drink.

It was only 9:00 am and as the plastic cup craftsperson was absent until 10:00 I couldn't hang around to see the action - I had a dog to walk. Rather a shame as I was curious to see if the marketing outfit had seriously researched their demographic for this particular hanger of nightmarish goods of which probably 85% are completely unneeded. Most of the clientele appeared to be over fifty, wheeling trolleys about and gently moaning about the fact that certain types of cheese were missing. It seemed unlikely they would queuing up at 10 o'clock for their red plastic cup to pack in their rucksack for the next music festival. 

What was I doing in there? you may ask being so obviously suspicious of all grande surface. Well, I do like the 'anti gaspi (no waste) section - stuff going out of date, unsold as its a bit weird etc; and there are a few luxuries to be bought from time to time - a certain type of square fat cakes that our growing colony of blue tits adore, a bar of soap for B and B guests, root ginger, etc . . .

I did feel an urge to glue myself to the plastic and cardboard Coke construction, or perhaps attack it with a rather aggressive spade I'd noticed in the garden section called a 'root slayer' but then the dog would be stuck in the car and the B and B room wouldn't get prepared and Mark needed the car. Maybe I'll go back another day. It'll be interesting to see how long the thing stays there before being replaced with Christmas crap or whatever the next consumerist money trap device that one of our planet's mega-corps have thought up.

There is no hope

Well, hopefully there is hope, a bit anyway but at moments like this - when I went in to a hypermarket earlier mainly to use their loo - one does despair. A glass of freezing coke from a frosted bottle on a boiling day is a treat I indulge in maybe three times a year, knowing that my teeth and in fact the rest of me will thank me for not washing down the thirty-nine grams of sugar contained in the mysterious brown liquid more frequently than that.

But that's just part of it. No one needs to drink coke, or any other soda. Look at the sheer enormity of the plastic used to fill just one supermarket's allotted coke aisle. A massive aisle of it! Just this one product. Plastic bottles, plastic packaging, sugar, colouring, caffeine, landfill. Ignore the science. Ignore the warnings. Just keep raking in the money.

Rant over. I'm going to sit down with a book and a lovely glass of tap water.

before autotune

I was going to have rant after watching THE Rhianna vid, but (yawn) I can't be bothered . . . when did popular music become so un-music, so sterile, humourless and narky about . . . what? nothing much. So, her accountant had a problem with his Casio calculator and lost her a few million - which she then went on to get back with serious knobs and bells on, no doubt - so what?
I had a quick trawl to try and find some R and B/rap with something to say, and typed in Rap/future - i.e future of mankind. I found a great video of someone singing about gardening - Home Grown, but sadly not shareable to blog, then came across a very angry person, weighed down with gold, called Future. Not sure what he was angry about but his song entitled Honest (autotuned to death) seemed to be about having as many languid-looking females as possible, wearing more than two watches, gold, white grand pianos, coke, planting out seed potatoes (no) cars, pools . . . yawn.

Anyway here's a favourite film clip with real music.