Shopping with Dinosaurs
Created | Updated Apr 7, 2004
It really, really pays to stick with the herd, you know.
Since the Dawn of Time, the wayward ones have been picked off by the predators.
Here I lie, the wreckage of my carcass supine, sun-bleached eye-sockets pleading to the sky. Ouch. A distant genetic memory echoes in my ravaged skull. Where once there were Tyrannosaurs, today there are double-glazing salesmen.
You'd think you'd get some respite, having just been eaten alive. You'd think this would be the one time that the flesh-tearing scavengers would leave you alone. Dream on, Dead Boy. Whilever there's a scap of protein left in your marrow, some disgusting nether-food-chain tag-along is slavering after the remnants of your dignity.
I was getting over it. The Soul of my Personal Finances might have flown to a better place, even if the corporeal substance had well and truly returned to the seething humus of the economy.
No such luck. They sent me this, and the pain begins again. Just look at it, I ask you...
Once upon a time, the supermarket loyalty schemes were delightfully simple. And almost innocent. Practically benign. A meagre wad of credit would accumulate year-long; just enough for a Christmas spent in alcoholic torpor, and comfortable self-delusion that someone else was paying for it.
But the carrion-eaters must learn new methods to delve the resources of their prey. The Marketplace must Evolve, and only the Fittest will Survive. Some astounding aberrations of nature have called themselves into being in this ozone-shot, mutation-crazy, end-of-the-line world of ours. Some of them are dropping through your letterbox this very minute.
This is a voucher entitling me to £3 off a toaster worth £30 or more. At Argos. Before April 13th.
I wasn't too discomfited by its arrival. Not at first. My dull-witted instinct for self-preservation kicked in. If I just follow the herd, they can't possibly devour all my kith and kin. Just plod on with this, as usual.
You know, I might be able to exploit this improbable bounty. OK, so I don't need another toaster, not now, not this year. OK, the damned contraptions last for decades, but I could still buy a few. A novel approach to Mother's Day, maybe? A bouquet of toasters. Or perhaps speculation in the Toasters Futures market. All my lifelong toaster-needs anticipated today, through a toaster stockpile, an investment proof against the vagaries of an uncertain world.
And then I turned the voucher over. Through my tiny-minded horror, the small print shrieked out. This voucher can't be used to purchase double or triple toaster multipacks.
The feeble ganglion of nerves in my thick herbivorous skull glimmered. Perhaps that was the very moment that the meteorite crashed to earth, far away in Gondwanaland.
It's over, guys. Our extinction event is upon us. Our predators, the terrible carnivorous foul-breathed Marketeers have evolved into pitiable, unviable freaks.
You can see it all around you if you only look. The wheelie-bin lids no longer stand up right. Consumerism is wasting away. The Vermin of Retail flourish no more. The Parasite of Commerce has almost exhausted its host.
In its weakened state, all that this ecosystem needs to precipitate total collapse is a taste of my poison.
It's not so bad here after all, quietly dessicating out on the plain, amid the buzz of the flies. There's no shame in being eaten alive; no need for self-torment over my carelessness.
My Nemesis has eaten something that disagreed with him. Big Time.
See you in 65 million years, Sales Boy. You're not going to look so slick when they chip you out of the rock...
