Mar. 18th - Weekly Buy Nothing Day
On this Buy Nothing Day, I would like to call your attention to an article I happened upon in the worst of worst newspapers, The Red Eye. It doesn’t have much to do with consumerism, unless you take into account the mass amounts of money we Americans spend on gas for our polluting automobiles.
For those of you not from Chicago, the Red Eye is the Chicago Tribune’s dumbed-down daily paper aimed at the 20-30s set. Actual news is pared down to a few sentences and the rest of the paper is focussed on sports, entertainment, hollywood gossip and horrible relationship advice.
Take this column by Gina B for example. It starts out well and good as a column about the warning signs that women should look for in a potential mate. Some of the “red flags” are common sense such as “does not follow through with anything” or “has no ambition.” Some of them are lame attempts at being funny. Then, we get to the one that bothered me: “Has no means of transportation except his bike.”
Woah woah woah! I know most women want a fat lazy rich man who drives a block in his car to get a frappe and not a man who is healthy, athletic and in shape, but what is wrong with a bicycle? I don’t own a car or motorcycle and get around on my bike quite well, thank you very much Gina! If you lived in the rural country, I could forgive you, but you are writing for a newspaper in one of the largest cities in America. Do you really want all of the available men clogging our streets any more than they already are rather than gracefully zipping by on two man-powered wheels? C’mon, I mean, a lot of those dudes wear those annoying spandex shorts that women seem to like so much!
In fact, just to prove her wrong, today, I am going to bike around town, not buy anything and pick up a lot of women… If that’s okay with my girlfriend… I have to check.
See you tomorrow.
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