Fuck Consumerism, or: Eyelid wash, and other brilliant ideas

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Last weekend, in a pharmacy in a small town in Alaska, I saw a box of "eyelid wash".

EYELID wash

For FUCK'S sake!

So, I picked it up, thinking there might be some obscure disease that might necessitate such a product [added]… and there is! The eyelid wash people just forgot to mention it.[/added] Apparently it's good for "dry eyes" (which seems odd, since you're not supposed to put it in your eyes in the first place`), and ingrown eyelashes. I can't help but think there are other products out there are that maybe … just might … allow you to acceptably wash your eyelids and the rest of your face at the same time?

But hey, what do I know? Apparently brooms and mops are no longer good enough for cleaning floors. While the former cleanroom janitor in me tips my hat to the Swiffer's design, I wonder what happened to the washable microfiber cleaning cloths we attached to our swiffer-style floor sweepers? I also wonder where the "Swiffer Pro" with stainless steel construction and a longer handle is … I couldn't find one on the shelf.

Oh, but that's right. Where's the profit in that?

If you don't buy the individual boxes of disposable refill cloths … dry cloths for everyday sweeping, and special pre-wetted cloths with scrubby edges for heavy duty mopping … how will Proctor & Gamble ever make enough money to stay in business? And if they made a stainless model, they'd have to charge $500 for it, to make up for the fact that you don't need a new one every year … and that would scare people away, even though they'll end up spending a heck of a lot more for their disposi-Swiffer in the long run.

Walk down the cleaning product aisle at the store sometime, and you'll find a different fucking bottle for every possible cleaning job in the house. You can't wash your bathroom sink with the same cleaner as the kitchen sink, after all. And you need an entirely different product to clean the goddamn shower, of course. You'll need different dishwasher soap depending on what kind of dishes you're washing. And if it's too much trouble to wet a sponge to wipe the counter, you can get Clorox Clean-Up disposable wet wipes instead … like diaper wipes for your kitchen sink!

See, that's the problem … all this bullshit consumerism leads two places, and two places only: greedy fuckheads selling the gullible masses crap they absolutely don't need by inventing a "need" never before seen by the human race, then helpfully creating products to take care of it; or taking good ideas and turning them into disposable crap, just to squeeze some extra pennies out of people without the financial acumen to realize they're being taken for a ride (or lazy fucks who have more money than sense or motivation).

I procrastinated right through Buy Nothing Day and the BND post I was going to write, but this is a reasonably good stand in … and possibly, even better. Instead of spending the biggest shopping day of the year sitting at home in symbolic protest, why not take an everyday stand against the mountain of rotting garbage that is modern consumerism? Buy peanut butter and jelly in separate jars, instead of mixed together in a plastic squeeze bottle. Get reusable microfiber cleaning rags to snap onto your Swiffer. Make it a habit to ask if that shiny new product really does anything better than the old standby … and do you really need to buy the thingie in the bulletproof plastic packaging, instead of the unpackaged generic model?

But it's not just the lowbrow disposi-crap that I'm talking about. I'm not discriminating against the trailer-park set here, no sir. Fucking snooty yuppie types are just as bad. You don't need a different fucking set of pretentious wineglasses for every different style of wine you drink. Get one set of large balloon glasses, and call it good. You don't need five different goddamn cheese knives, and a different handcrafted rare-wood cutting board for each food group. Fuck your 25-knife woodblock set … you only need four knives in the kitchen: Large and small chef's knives, a bread knife and a paring knife … throw the rest of 'em away, you prick!

Now, I know there's some room in everyone's life for having silly things that you just love, even if you don't need 'em. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the shit backed by multi-million dollar ad campaigns, with focus-group engineered packaging, and no potential for accruing any sentimental value due to its egregiously mass-produced character (even when hiding under a polished veneer of "style and class" or "old world charm" or whatever … just look around for the "made in China" label on the box).

Fuck your eyelid wash … I've got some plain ol' cold cream on the counter, and it works just fine.

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