The Scourge of Triviality
Ever have an experience where you're just so disgusted with humanity's obsession with triviality that you wanna hop on a rocket and go personally lead the search for intelligent life in space? Yeah, I had one of those today.
Ladan's car needed some service done so I took it to the Volkswagen dealership in the sickeningly affluent Scottsdale area. VW shares the complex with BMW, so as I arrive, the service entrance is overflowing with trendy suburbanites dropping off their $100,000 cars.
I spent the next three-and-a-half hours in the BMW waiting room, sharing the space with assorted tools and toolettes. All of them were glued to the TV, which was on MSNBC. The entire time I was there, I kid you not, they only presented three news stories:
1. The Anna Nicole Smith trial, and the controversy surrounding who the real father is;
2. The 13-yr-old boy abducted in Florida and then found safe by himself a few hours later, and the subsequent manhunt for the abductor;
3. Live coverage of a construction worker trapped in a trench collapse at a new house being built north of Atlanta.
And at least half of the commercials, I might add, were either terribly corny weight-loss ads or depressingly sad and surprisingly alarmist ads for LifeLine, an emergency phone service for elderly people who live alone.
At one point the woman next to me, who gave one of the dealership employees such an unnecessary attitude that I wanted to slap her, called her girlfriend and spent 20 minutes talking about the Smith baby's father issue and then this season's American Idol contestants.
Meanwhile, I sat reading Stephen Kinzer's Blood of Brothers, a book he wrote fifteen years ago about his experiences over a number of years as the Nicaragua bureau chief for The New York Times during the '80's, trying desperately to block out all the pointless drivel around me.
Once in a while I would take a stroll around the showroom, checking out cars, just to stretch my legs, and I was continually dumbfounded by what could possibly make a car be worth $130,000. What kind of person needs such a car? Isn't it clear that a person with such a car is making too much money? How many people could that money feed, or give medical treatment to, or provide housing for?
So by the time I was allowed to escape at 1:30, I had pretty much had my fill of this race of idiots called humans. It's times like these where I want to just move away into the jungle, or a cave, or a mountaintop, and just be done with it.
Ladan's car needed some service done so I took it to the Volkswagen dealership in the sickeningly affluent Scottsdale area. VW shares the complex with BMW, so as I arrive, the service entrance is overflowing with trendy suburbanites dropping off their $100,000 cars.
I spent the next three-and-a-half hours in the BMW waiting room, sharing the space with assorted tools and toolettes. All of them were glued to the TV, which was on MSNBC. The entire time I was there, I kid you not, they only presented three news stories:
1. The Anna Nicole Smith trial, and the controversy surrounding who the real father is;
2. The 13-yr-old boy abducted in Florida and then found safe by himself a few hours later, and the subsequent manhunt for the abductor;
3. Live coverage of a construction worker trapped in a trench collapse at a new house being built north of Atlanta.
And at least half of the commercials, I might add, were either terribly corny weight-loss ads or depressingly sad and surprisingly alarmist ads for LifeLine, an emergency phone service for elderly people who live alone.
At one point the woman next to me, who gave one of the dealership employees such an unnecessary attitude that I wanted to slap her, called her girlfriend and spent 20 minutes talking about the Smith baby's father issue and then this season's American Idol contestants.
Meanwhile, I sat reading Stephen Kinzer's Blood of Brothers, a book he wrote fifteen years ago about his experiences over a number of years as the Nicaragua bureau chief for The New York Times during the '80's, trying desperately to block out all the pointless drivel around me.
Once in a while I would take a stroll around the showroom, checking out cars, just to stretch my legs, and I was continually dumbfounded by what could possibly make a car be worth $130,000. What kind of person needs such a car? Isn't it clear that a person with such a car is making too much money? How many people could that money feed, or give medical treatment to, or provide housing for?
So by the time I was allowed to escape at 1:30, I had pretty much had my fill of this race of idiots called humans. It's times like these where I want to just move away into the jungle, or a cave, or a mountaintop, and just be done with it.
posted by GregP at 12:39 AM
2 Comments:
The stupidy of the human race has become white noise to me. I just don't notice it and/or I avoid it so it doesn't really piss me off anymore. Granted, I'm sure you do the same it's just you were stuck in the auto shop for hours.
Yeah, I'm usually pretty good at blocking it out too, and it helps that I rarely watch TV and never listen to any radio other than NPR.
But having it engulf you for hours on end, yeah, it got to be too damn much.
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