Most of my blog posts are poorly written ramblings I write for my English free writing class. this week's installment:

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I don't think of myself as a very good consumer. I don't think I've bought anything from a store in over a month, and I don't have any intention to do so any time soon. Advertising doesn't work very well since I always look at it as a test for the companies. A general rule is that the less a commercial has to do with the product they're supposed to be selling, the less I trust them. If you have to try and be funny to sell whatever it is you make I'll just assume that you have to compromise for the fact that it's terrible. So far Geico is at the absolute bottom, they've shifted away from the direction of saying anything about their insurance and instead made their ads about modern day cavemen and talking geckos. At least it's not surprising to find out that the company is run by people that fit into the collective idea of "they," and that they buy speed cameras for the police so that drivers get tickets and have to pay more money for Geico insurance.

It's too easy when there aren't any companies that are trustworthy anymore. I think I'll just sit here and write about why I don't trust these companies based on the ads they make.

Countrywide Home Loans - There are too many businesses in the world that don't do anything other than shift money around. The friendly looking spokesman talking about how low the interest rates are and how easy it is to borrow money from his company isn't going to get rid of the negative image of loan companies. The basic formula has always been to give people money and then cripple them with interest to the point that it takes them 50 years to pay it back and end up paying five times the initial amount when it's all added up. Keep on smiling and saying how great you are, I'll trust you because you're wearing a suit and look professional.

Truth - Non-smokers are far more annoying than smokers. We already know that smoking causes cancer, you're not giving anyone any new information. I doubt that there's a single person out there who's going to see this and suddenly have a revelation. "Cigarettes cause cancer? You've got to be kidding me. I'm going to stop smoking these things right now." I'm almost tempted to start smoking just to spite these people. Walk right up to them while they're throwing dolls into a trash can to make a point about infant mortality or something and blow the smoke right in their face. "My god, these things are fucking delicious."

WIN THIS PS3! - Answer this question that everyone in the world can answer and win this free video game system. All the credibility of spam emails and pop up ads on internet sites. At least they're more tasteful than the "How many people died in the Virginia Tech school shootings?" one that I saw the day of the Virginia Tech shootings. I guess it doesn't take long for the brilliant minds in marketing to jump on a national tragedy. "A bunch of people just died at some school in the east, let's capitalize on this!"

Perhaps I'm just too cynical. Maybe there are some companies out there that have basic human decency, but none of the big ones seem to show it. One of the few fantasies I have is a world that manages to function without money. There's certainly no need for any of this intentional deception, but without the motivation of monetary gain I figure it would sort its self out completely. No stocks, economy, corporate fraud, nothing.

I've distanced myself so much from the consumer society that it doesn't even make sense to me anymore. Feeling that I'm obligated to get a job, I went down to the Thousand Oaks mall for the first time in about a year and can't figure out how any of the stores maintain their existence. There are about seven stores that are devoted entirely to selling sunglasses, about nine that sell nothing but diamond jewelery, and the majority of the other stores sell clothing. I didn't know there was enough of a market for sunglasses that there could be more than one sunglasses store in any given location that could sustain its self. Does this mean that there's some massive demand for this specific, obscure item that I don't know about? Buying a pair for five bucks at a pharmacy isn't good enough, so it's necessary to get multiple pairs and buy them from fancy stores where all the employees wear black business shirts with ties and slick their hair back. There must be a high concentration of oculophiles living in my general area that stroll around on the streets with a pair of shades hanging around their necks, wearing another, and a third pair pushed up on top of their heads, and I can only wonder why I haven't seen any.

I've had a long running hatred of diamonds. The idea that you only love someone if you're willing to buy them a small, useless rock is completely absurd. If the argument that being shiny is the reason it's symbolic of love, buying a cubic zirconium for $10 should be just as valid, but that's never seemed to work quite as well. The only reason diamonds are significant is because they're expensive, and the idea of attaching a dollar sign to what's supposed to be one of the greatest and most pure human emotions is disgusting.

Becoming the model consumer has no appeal to me. I think I'll continue to get my kicks from human interaction rather than attempting to gain happiness by surrounding myself with things that I don't need. A billion dollars and all the fancy gizmos that technology can produce are never going to be acceptable substitutes for the fundamental things that make a life worth living, no matter how much the materialistic viewpoint disagrees with me.

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WALL OF TEXT. PEOPLE? MORE LIKE SHEEPLE, AMIRITE LOL? My aim is to scare away the two or three people that might actually read this. The joys of being irrelevant to the new generation of Newgrounds users.

If that wasn't enough, PHYSICS JOKE!