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Given the surplus of most advertising budgets in this country (which speaks highly about Capitalism's importance within this society, and what our true priorities really are), it's no surprise that the average American thinks "shopping" equals "fun holiday vacation". It is, in fact, what my disordered aunt tried to sell to me as damaged goods for my entire young life, in her constant bid to have a co-dependent partner with her during her disillusioned mall-based fantasies; a meeting of a certain key demographic with one's core audience, if ever there was.
Her late best friend filled up her mother's Bronx town-home with her hoarding disorder to live in a tiny rental, choosing instead to die from a bad surgery done cheaply, and one we all warned her about, so much so, that it was actually a form of assisted suicide. All she had to do was go through the contents of her own home to find the money for the top cancer hospital in the country, which is in New York and a subway ride away. Their hobby that began as a conduit to creative expression over any real discernible talents hardened with time, effort, and near-constant practice into a brain disorder so bad, it has become synonymous with heroin usage and alcoholism, with one of the lowest cure rates in all of psychotherapy.
Shopping has become so prevalent within our society that even our supposed higher institutions of learning devote entire curricula to it. You can degree in "Shopping 101", which is thinly disguised behind marketing and sales, but not by much. Asian/Asian-American preferences for goods and shiny objects are so well-known, that Manhattan's F.I.T. actively recruits makers of widgets and experts in object lure, touted as "Toy Design", a weird variant of Industrial Design marketing solely for children, and "Merchandising", which is typically a female who seeks to buy for stores. Oh, you can dress it up in holiday wrapping, but that's essentially the gig: score with a major supplier like Macy's, and that's the ticket into your shopper's paradise. In reality, it is a hellhole of a Christmas experience, like sweating with thousands of fat middle Americans who seek the ubiquitous brown paper bag, rubbing elbows with Mid-westerners who are too lazy to go uptown for Tiffany's better blue one.
And those are the high achievers in this particular sport: majoring in the big city retailers, minoring in the outer circles while awaiting your call-up to New York City, as a symbol of your advanced pocketbook pride. How glamorous! Shopping in "The City"! It's a rather sad and provincial characteristic naive out-of-towners have, wide-eyed with their recent fix, but "Shopaholics" (cutesy marketing term, don't you think?) are not new to me, as evidenced by my own family and their crippling dysfunctional patterns. Feel sad? Buy food! Instant fix. Feeling bored? Graze at the mall, until your identity reaches out to you in the form of some useless tchotchke with no real value, except the one the purchaser breathes into it, instead of loving the human they're with. "What's love got to do with it?" Exactly.
I worked with a typical Eurasian model at the city outpost for a rich German family, and within a week, she let me know we all had big targets on our backs (because she "made it" by working here at some company I'd never heard of before, until I interviewed for the job), and that she was "too cool for school"; meaning she was so inept, she actually failed out of a SUNY school known for "Fashionistas" who loooove to spend their rich Japanese daddy's money. Très chic, n'est-ce pas? It touts "worldly" in a bottle, like the trendy Eau de Parfum du jour, but unlike their skinny frames hidden underneath overly (but artfully) designed clothing, carefully nipped and ticked to disguise their boyish frames, talent wasn't something my viciously bitchy co-worker knew how to shop for. Not well, at least.
Oh, she positioned herself as the "Queen of Greeting Cards", based on her brief tenure at Boston's art museum gift shop, and it was enough to get her the cheap gig in the city, which (on the surface, if you squinted hard enough) passed for a somewhat respectable firm, if you overlooked it's inception as the NYC outpost designed to amuse the short handsome rich German playboy who is the second son to a family that crowned the older brother as the sober C.E.O., because they like the nobility that money can by. That, and the strength of the German Mark before Europe's unification process. Unfortunately for her and the rather pedestrian German-American guy (Hi, Harald) who managed the U.S. product line, I knew all about Deutsch Bank's tactics from my ferociously financial brother, who did his apprenticeship on their sweatshop trading floors, no veal pen divisions included. I know, because I visited my brother at the company when he worked there, to see it for myself. A little short on trust with American financiers and infamous Wall Street trade, I suppose.
Ditto with their group manager as it was with his head shopper. He shorted out when I presented him with numbers on purchasing a reconditioned color printer (why not squeeze the locals when you're an overseas firm, right?), asking me to flow the numbers into columns based on his type of accounting software, because he lacked the ability to comprehend numbers if they were presented outside of the casing he was used to. That's a serious kind of dyslexia, so I asked him again via em-mail. He responded dreadfully. Yes, please. For me? Oh. I guess when you have all the German money in the world backing you, you don't need to master reading and writing early on like I did (for publishing in New York, in English). When I told my brother about his peculiar behavior at a family holiday, he huffed derisively and said, "Yeah. That's classic for a typical 'Deutsch Bank' accountant". Indeed it was, because that's exactly where this manager began his career.
I guess that's why I sit here typing to you on a public library's company for pennies a week (for your great success), and why my brother lives in a very large (and rather well-appointed, or so I'm told) home in one of the rich, hilly, horse country towns of New Jersey; because me and my brother do a heck of a lot more in business than shopping and bean-counting (Hello again, Harald. Still living in New Jersey? How's work?) Everything I needed to know in business, I already knew, and do you know what, my dear followers? Because I wasn't a programmed, brain-washed tool like they were (and still are), in the exact same illiterate ways, they never saw me coming. Herr, Fuhrer!
That, and the fact that the Edward Hopper Foundation (a famous Hudson River Valley painter with his home museum right here in Rockland County, within the town of Nyack's borders), does not sell the licensing rights to most of his work, as was mandated by his will. We are (and will remain) staunchly: by the people, and for the people. Always. Because there's nothing to buy-and-sell here, ami. Snap! I'll bet you didn't see that one coming at you, did you?
