I don't often see the NYTimes Sunday magazine, mostly by choice since it is so full of commercial plays to all the worst and most selfish of human impulses. But somebody dropped one in my lap, and as I occasionally do with gun-nut magazines ("Handgunner," "Shooting Times," "Guns&Ammo,") I dipped down into the darkness to see what innovations are in the works on our way to Armageddon.
In among the ads for Very Special Dwellings, and Perfect Privileged Spa Experiences, and Coffees Better Than Orgasm, was the full-pager for the Audi Quattro. The headline kind of says it all, if you have any love for your fellow humans:
The roads are underfunded by $450 billion. With the right car, you may never notice.
If you want to see the whole ad, you'll need a paper copy of the NYT Magazine, unless you're better with Google than me. But here's a part of it, and some similar expostulation to what I'm typing here: http://media.tumblr.com/... in http://www.tumblr.com/...
This is all echo chamber stuff, it really doesn't add anything to the discourse about our descent into NeoFeudalism, but for anyone who needs a prod to get their bile flowing again, there you are.
And for you folks who are the new Masters of the NeoShrinkingKoskulture, here's a chance to slam a practice that some of you find offensive: taking a little bit of NetText, adding some snarky comments, and daring to publish it as a DIARY, which I guess is supposed to always and everywhere consist of something SUBSTANTIVE that "helps elect more and better Democrats."
I wonder how many smug nominal Democrats drive Audis, maybe purchased under the advertising-induced, car magazine-hyped notion that ownership of such a Status Symbol will bring them closer to Consumer Nirvana, yet another example of the problems that arise when the NeoLogists succeed, on the way to that holy-moly of Manufacturing Demand, in detaching words from their antecedents: http://buddhism.about.com/...
Oh, and never let us forget that it is us Po' Folks who are Waging Class Warfare on them Rich Folks, poor dears.