Have you noticed this really obnoxious sales technique where salespeople skip parts of the pitch to rope customers in more effectively? Like, for instance, instead of “Are you interested in buying these magazines?” the salesperson says “How do you prefer to pay for these magazines?” Or instead of “Would you like to switch Internet providers?” the salesperson says “Can I make an appointment for Wednesday for our representative to come over and install our service?”

Since this sales technique is used a lot, I’m  guessing it works. My question is,  why does it work? My reaction to it is that of extreme rage that makes it hard for me to breathe. And OK, I know it’s not a normal reaction and I know why I react in such an intense way to people enacting the show titled “Your consent is immaterial” in my presence.

I’m not suggesting that rage is the most appropriate reaction here. But I’d expect people to stop any conversation with a salesperson who employs such a manipulative and disrespectful technique. Why don’t people do that? Why does this sales technique work so well?

You know what’s a real abomination? Olive oil in plastic bottles. 

And manufacturers know that they are doing something very wrong, so they mask the plastic bottle as much as they can. I usually have to palpate up to 15 bottles until I find a glass one.

Of course, we have a specialty olive oil store in town that sells real olive oil in real glass bottles made out of darkened glass, but I can only afford to go there every 3 months.

And in the warm and fuzzy news of the weekend:

At the Fourth of July parade Hillary Clinton marched in Saturday in Gorham, New Hampshire, reporters following the candidate were kept — and at moments, dragged — behind an actual moving rope line.

It’s very pleasing to hear that idiot journalists – the most degraded profession in this country that is a dumping ground for lazy idiots – have been shown their place.

An article in The Atlantic chides Hillary for being “inaccessible, unforthcoming, uncandid, and highly entitled.” The author of the article is obviously unequipped intellectually to appreciate politics as anything other than cheap tabloid melodrama.

As Zygmunt Bauman says, we live in an age where the private has colonized the public to such an extent that we don’t really have a public space any longer. This is why the linked journalist is so pathetically eager for candidates like Jeb Bush who keeps treating us to the distasteful melodrama of his boring relationship with his father and brother.

Hillary Clinton is trying to turn the conversation towards actual political issues and away from Daddy drama, puppies, tuna salad sandwiches, mugs of beer, and other insanely irrelevant stuff. And it’s sorely needed in a culture where people are so incapable of distinguishing between a TV personality and a politician that Donald Trump is not only running but actually doing quite well at the polls.

We should all be eternally grateful that there is at least a single candidate who isn’t treating us to the tasteless candid camera shows to which politics has been reduced.

Why is it that a tomato tastes so much better when you eat it whole, like an apple, without cutting it up?

Here are some hilarious slogans for college majors:

Chemistry: Where alcohol IS a solution.

Biochemistry: Spend 4 years aspiring to discover the cure for cancer, and the rest of your life manufacturing shampoo.

Archaeology: If you don’t know what it is, it’s probably ceremonial.

Information Technology: Let me google that for you.

Linguistics: Studied 17 languages, am fluent in none of them.

Criminal Justice: We’re here because of Law & Order reruns.

Photography: It’s worth a shot.

Astrophysics: “Eh, I’m within an order of magnitude.”

Creative Writing: Because job security is for pussies.

Latin: Because useful is overrated.

Physics: “Everything you learned last week is wrong.”

Nursing: Learning to save other’s lives while struggling not to take your own.

Accounting: Selling your soul for money.

Finance: “Accounting was too hard.”

Journalism: Learn how to construct an argument that no one will pay to listen to.

Art History: And you thought MAKING art was pointless!

Music Performance: If you don’t hate yourself, you’re doing it wrong.

There’s more at the link!

In Spain, there is a whole genre of the literature of the crisis, and writers are producing great works of literature that readers are actively discussing. There is very a vibrant and rich cultural life happening around the literature of the crisis.

And here in the US there’s nothing of the kind. All we get is either sensationalist garbage or novels about bratty rich people endlessly nitpicking their way through extremely trivial problems. Even Toni Morrison ‘ s recent novel is about rich people. Always and forever, rich people.

Of course, our recession was nothing like Spain ‘ s crisis but let’s look at the big picture. We are all undergoing an enormous societal transformation. The nation-state is crumbling for Americans just as much (and actually more) as for everybody else. But where is our literature about real lives of real people? Hello, literature, where are you?

But no, there’s nothing but boring old escapism here. I’m very happy I didn’t choose to specialize in American literature because I would have perished of tedium.

I never considered the possibility that the idiotic Fat Acceptance Movement might be sponsored by corporations that peddle junk food but the idea makes a lot of sense. There is so much cynicism behind the movement’s tenets that somebody has got to be making a packet from it.

Of course, this whole problem started when it occurred to some idiot to invite Greece into the Eurozone. Greece was obviously not prepared, either economically or ideologically, for being a responsible member of Europe. And now the entire EU is trying to coddle and pacify the stupid Greeks while Putin rejoices and celebrates.

What a stupid debacle this is.

And I only wish that Spain uses this as an example of a very dangerous road that is to be avoided at all costs.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a brilliant writer but his most recent article in The Atlantic made me cringe. People who are incapable of approaching their family history critically should just abstain from mentioning it altogether, in my opinion. Otherwise, it all becomes about justifying Mommy and Daddy (whom nobody has even accused of anything), and the whole piece turns into a dialogue of one’s terrified five-year-old persona with an older version of the self that is still too scared to break free.

Here are the paragraphs from the article that I’m referring to specifically:

My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that is exactly what was happening all around us. . . What I know is that fathers who slammed their teenage boys for sass would then release them to streets where their boys employed, and were subject to, the same justice. And I knew mothers who belted their girls, but the belt could not save these girls from drug dealers twice their age.

You’ll say that the essay is not about this at all. But for me, the second I see child abuse mentioned, everything else fades away. And if you can’t find it in yourself to say “My father was a stupid piece of garbage who brutalized kids because he derived pleasure from torturing human beings,” it’s better not to mention it at all. These snippets poison the entire long article, making me think that it is all about justifying the child-beating daddy, and everything else is just fluff that hides this tragic truth.

I also hope that the article’s title of “Letter To My Son” is just a rhetorical device and isn’t directed to a real child.