Thursday, November 15, 2007

A Kiss On The Hand...

I had intended to post yesterday's intended post here--yesterday, when I was sidetracked by my ongoing ire with the urban consumerist avalanche, pounding even harder these days with the impending holidays.

And again, I am sidetracked. Today there were those over-your-head ads on the Red Line, the insistent kind that are repeated all. the. way. down. the. car. These provocations were from some national jeweler chain to (I'm assuming single men) to just DO IT and ASK HER each featuring the image of a jaw-droppingly ugly platinum-and-diamond ring the size of the a baby elephant.

It can only be JAR-ED!
Actually, I think it was these gentlemen.

Maybe it's my computer, but that guy sounds like the Men's Wearhouse dude. Hell, he SHOULD work for these guys. Double-hell, James and his Sons should just hook up with MW and start selling their fat-ass rings to the poor guys shaking in their Vans who are picking out a new suit because she is not gonna let him show up at this wedding next weekend in a shirt and dark blazer and pants he's still managed to fit into since the one semi-formal dance he went to in college, why the hell not just grab a ring? I got a big bonus coming and she's been dropping hints like a Miami Dolphins receiver (GOD they suck bad this year. 0 and 9?! De-STROYING my fantasy team.) and it's gotta be the one thing that'll make her happy because it seems like nothing ever seems to keep her happy, not even when I got tickets for Josh Rouse and she was all like, I meant Josh GROBAN, I made you watch him on Oprah when it plays before Jimmy Kimmel, so you should know.
And here I thought women were suffocating under societal pressure to create an Acceptable Identity Through Better Spending. I mean, check out the detailed guide to not just choosing a ring, but proposing.
If you don't know how to propose to the person you're proposing to, then maybe you oughta rethink the proposal, guy.
As for me, these things don't hold much appeal. And I am not surprised at all that the diamond ring ascended as the "symbol of ultimate devotion," given that its popularity was basically engineered by what's pretty much the Rupert Murdoch of diamonds, DeBeers, the cartel that controls the market.
So, I give you something that I find much, much better than a diamond called "Hearts on Fire," sifted by poor dusky youth in Africa, laboring under a global monopoly, cut and polished by the small hands of children India for another monopoly, designed by a different monopoly, and sold to you in a strip mall by some guy with an initial before his first name (or a first-name initial, or whatever) wearing Mens Wearhouse and talking about "inclusions":
A private freaking Caribbean island.









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