I Am Bismark

spent the weekend in san francisco. i love the town. amazing atmosphere. soooo. mannnny. goooood. plaaaaces. tooo. eaaaaaaaaattttt!!!. we ate sushi at this hole in the wall chinese fish market. best tasting sushi i have had in years. and i found melon pan in little tokyo!!!

anyway.

molecularbond and i went downtown on wednesday because she needed something to wear to go to dinner with her boyfriend’s parents. it was the day before thanksgiving and everything was still rather packed. we went to urban outfitters and h&m. at both places i looked around, thinking there might be something i like. and yeah, there were some pretty cool things. i had a stocking cap and gloves in hand at h&m and i was slowly making my way to the line. suddenly, i stopped, turned around, and put the things back. every object in the store suddenly seemed very undesireable. i just didn’t feel the need to buy anything.

the same thing happened on friday. i have been saying awhile that as part of embracing my geekiness, i was going to buy a Nintendo DS lite and play it in public without caring what people though. I had it in hand while standing at Circuit City. but once again, i turned around and said i didn’t want it.

i don’t need stuff. i don’t know, i guess that is as simply as i can put it. i don’t want to just buy things for the sake of buying them. i should not get a high off of buying something. our consumerist society has conditioned us to do that though. and it sucks.

having what we need and also some luxuries is fine i think. but shouldn’t associations and experiences be what we remember most? instead of buying things this weekend, i went out on a walk with my sister. i played with my grandparent’s dog. i ate so much good food! i know those things made me happier than a new sweater.

i guess i shouldn’t be talking too much, as i write this on my Apple laptop while wearing my hollister shirt, guess jeans, and diesel shoes… but i do hope i remember this feeling the next time i think about buying something i really don’t need. money can be so much better spent than on filling our lives with objects.

black friday is idiotic. it will be my goal to never go out shopping on that day. my grandparents did take me to the mall on friday because they wanted to look for a gift for my great grandma. i went along to spend time with them. anyway, we met my aunt and uncle, both laden with shopping bags, who had been out since 5 am. i love them both, but man, it just seemed a bit sad.

and how about the stories of people fighting, pushing, shoving to get deals? there are only a few ideas that are truly worth fighting for, and extremely few things worth any such confrontations. i hope that i will never be angry at someone getting the last 60% off blender before me. i was incredulous when i read a quote in a NYT arcticle about friday. a woman at walmart said about one of the on-sale tvs something along the lines of “i have no idea if the tv is good or not, but i saw others getting it and that it was on sale, so i got it too.” sad.

if you bought stuff on friday, thats fine. but next time, try to think if you really needed that thing or not.