Stupidity

Is there a statute of limitations on stupidity? If not, then I’m going to forcefully prosecute my case in the style of a barrack room lawyer. This lunchtime I wasted a unhappy chunk of what little life I have left, searching the Strand for that simplest of staples “ shoe polish.

Having passed 13 themed pubs, a thousand Starbucks and every third shop selling overpriced tourist tat, I stumbled into a foot cladding emporium specifically in business to separate the rich from their money. Once we’d established that even if I’d horrifically lost both feet in a shaving accident, I still couldn’t afford any of their main product line, we embarked on a insanely complicated treatise on the exciting advances recently made in “lifestyle shoe grooming

At the end of which I wore a glazed expression and held no recognisable polish. Instead I was dispatched streetwards with a polish quick, deep shine applicator guaranteed to improve my sex life, deliver untold wealth and as a trivial aside relieve me of dirty shoes Also relieved my wallet of about twenty quid.

This got me thinking – what happened to the normal rules of selling before marketing went nova? I was eating a yogurt that enthused significantly more fruit; more fruit that what? A sausage? And then this morning brushing my teeth with a paste – sorry formulated cleaning agent – trumpeting 30{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} more cleaning power? Compared to string?

Tell me it is not just me that sees this as nonsense. Marketing is pervasive and intrusive and I’d just, for once, like to buy something I want to buy not something that someone with braces and an overegged view of their own importance wants to sell me. Obviously, pining for halcyon days is inextricably linked with being prodded past the end of the thirties gangplank, but it does give me a fine excuse to post this shop which shall be receiving my patronage should I ever fiscally recover from the debts imposed by modern marketing.

And let me leave you with this. Those of us with a certain wisdom earned through the University of hard knocks and honed by windswept age know that marketing will never affect us. We’re too life-savvy, to clever by half and too old by three quarters to fall into those crudely baited traps laid down by people who lie for a living*. For us, it’s function over form, product over piffle and no one who air kisses and uses finger quotes is every going to convince us differently.

Tell me again, what does Beans Mean?

* this is marketing people I’m talking about. Not politicians. They’d be rubbish at marketing because we know they are lying all the time. It’s the opening of the mouth that gives it away.

2 thoughts on “Stupidity

  1. Nuggie

    Yep, same problem trying to buy some humble shoe laces in Canary Wharf – fe****g impossible. After 45 minutes I finally found somewhere only to have a slanging match with the idiot behind the counter who tried to ignore me because I was only buying some laces and not half the bloody shop like the pin-striped, braces clad *anker behind me. There’s something to be said for those Scottish towns still stuck in the 60’s (like Peebles) – at least you can still buy something useful 🙂

  2. Alex

    Yes but because of the average age of around 100 of the Peebles populace, “useful” is zimmer frames and coffins 😉

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