New TVs, kitchens and constipation

I walked into an electronics store the other day and found myself in High Density TV land, surrounded by a plethora of screens showing images so sharp and clear that, for a moment, I wanted to buy one immediately. I forgot all the evenings I'd spent scrolling through the 200-odd channels, bemoaning the fact that there was nothing worth watching. It now seemed that anything that clear and sharp had to be good. And maybe if I got one of those TVs, everything in my life would become clear too -- instead of fuzzy and incomprehensible the way it usually is.

I left the store and soon forgot about the TVs but then I began to imagine getting a new kitchen. I actually didn't want a new kitchen anymore than I wanted a HD TV, but our kitchen needs a major cleaning (beyond the daily wipe-the-counter, clean-the-sink kind of thing) and I don't want to do it. It all seems so tiring and I thought maybe if somebody from Ikea, or somewhere, came and put in a new kitchen, I could start over and everything would be so much easier. I was throwing away mouldy strawberries when I capapulted myself into a new kitchen reality where I would suddenly become a gourmet cook in a frilly apron, have friends over for brunch (more often than once in 2007) and I would serve lucious fresh food and I would never again have mouldy strawberries.

It all reminds me of a laxative commercial that I remember from the sixties which showed a frumpy woman with heavy black-framed glasses in an apparent misery of constipation. She took the laxative and in the next shot, her frumpiness was gone and she no longer had to wear her glasses.

Interesting how consumerism works, hey?