Unpacked: A Walker Returns Home

Why should I shop till I drop?

A better question: Why would I shop till I drop?

An even better question: Why would a store want me to drop?

Perhaps I am dropping to the basement, where there is a special sale? A nutrition stand where I will be given an infusion to give me a second shopping wind?

Because otherwise, how does my dropping benefit the store? Why does not the store realize that if I drop, I will not be able to come back tomorrow?

And I wonder- who was the first to tell potential costumers to drop?

The honest truth is that sometimes after going shopping, I do feel like I want to drop. But I’ve never been like “Wow! I haven’t dropped today- but I’m almost there! Maybe I’ll go shopping tomorrow and see if I can actually drop this time!” Usually, it’s more like “I don’t care if I have to sew together bedsheets in order to make a shirt. I am never going shopping again.”

I do enjoy shopping sometimes- for example, put me in a backpacking gear store and I’m in heaven. Book stores are great, too. And music stores? Ask my wife how hard it is to convince me not to buy the whole store. But these are the few shopping opportunities in which I do not wish to drop.

Ikea in Oslo actually took shop till you drop to a new level, and in order to facilitate easy dropping, provides beds for customers who are tired in the middle of their shopping day.

City-life sometimes encourages us to “shop lest we drop,” i.e., shop to stay happy, or to “shop when we drop,” i.e., shop to cheer us when we’re sad (with shopping representing the unlikely (absurd?) savior of a lagging self-confidence.

One might implicate consumerism in global climate change and the dwindling potential for human survival- and therefore argue that we have shopped and as a result, have dropped, or are dropping. I recently saw a sustainability-minded site asking the very question, “Why shop till you drop?”

But I’m venturing a guess when I say that the mall is not implicating us in global climate change when they tell us to shop till we drop.

And yet, shopping-dropping is still often employed to describe the consumer experience (”shop till you drop” lands 799,000 hits on Google). Fascinatingly enough, there is a shopuntilyoudrop.net, which pays people to shop and review purchases. I wonder if there is an insurance policy if I sign up and actually drop.

So I leave this post without having figured out the mystery of shop till you drop.

But as a pretty word-obsessed human, I am going to deposit these shop-drop thoughts into my bank of nutty phrases, ponder the fact that we describe shopping with such a sense of urgency and continue to try and be more accurate with my words.

I will take advantage of this momentary inspiration to commit once again: Besides not telling people to drop, I will be careful with the following: I will not say that I am starving when I had a meal three or six hours ago, I will not say “I’m dead” when I accidentally misplace a document from work, and I will not call myself retarded when I find a typo in one of these blog posts.

Words will be a theme I return to often in Unpacked- without trying, words come up, in and out of my mind uncontrollably. I have been like that for a long time, but even more so since our trek. So I’ll continue to share. Conscious words represent a conscious mind, and whether advertising, writing a letter or an email or speaking with friends, speech is a direct reflection of our measures of individual, national and global integrity.

So if you’ll excuse me, I think I will run to an advertising agency to present my new phrase, Shop till you’re done.

It might not have the punch of shop till you drop, but it makes no suggestion that we expire, and rhyming is overrated, anyway.

I know there are tons of ridiculous ways in which we describe things. Can you think of any more? The same way political correctness refines speech-patterns into thought-patterns into action-patterns, refining inaccurate or insensitive phrasing makes us better, too. Please share!

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I read news headlines every morning. This is how I get informed on what goes on in the world.

In the post, Always Trust Strangers, I made the assertion that “It is ironic that I base my impressions of the world on the news, when newsworthy events are by definition out of the ordinary.”

So as a follow-up, I wanted to explore with you the question: How relevant, in fact, is the news to “what is going on in the world.” (more…)

Hi everyone,

First off, a soundtrack with which to accompany unpacking the week:

Click here, and you will open up a new window and the The Wailin Jennys My Space page, from where you can listen to music as lovely as any I’ve heard. If the Jennys are yet unknown to you, give ‘em a hear- if you are a sucker for pretty things like me, I dare say they will not disappoint.

In the previous post, Blogging: And Humanity Breathes a Sigh of Relief, I discussed my experiences in the blogosphere, the world of blogging.

Through a brief exchange with my aunt Judy, I realized I might have been assuming a lot about what people know of blogs. So the following is just some blogging background, what makes blogs unique, why they are different from regular websites, and how to search them out. Hope you find it useful! (more…)

Disclaimer: I am wary of writing this post. I fear that someone published a similar article in the 1440s, when the printing press was invented.

But as most of you were not around in the 15th century, and if you were around your memory probably left you 500 years ago, I’m going to write it anyway. So here goes:

I have never met a boring person.

In 26 years of earth, I have yet to encounter someone who was not in some way interesting.

For much of human history, individual interestingness was suppressed- limited media of communication, societal hierarchies and few profitable daily occupations left much human value confined- and unshared- in the walls of imagination.

Enter the blogosphere. (more…)

There is an in idol in the Jewish Temple.

I am not talking about Roman emperors or infiltrations or even forced idolatry. I am speaking of the golden statue of two children with wings, called Keruvim, that stand right on top of the Temple’s ark of the covenant. (more…)

It’s not that we should trust people. It’s that we do.

I’ll explain.

While waiting for Saturday night’s concert to begin, the man sitting next to us placed his coat on his seat, and got up to buy a drink.

His wife passed her coat up from the aisle to us, through the hands of a dozen people and asked that we place it in her seat. The couple then went off to the bar, without any apparent worry that their seats or coats would be gone when they returned.

And it hit us: What a wild thing that this couple trusted a dozen strangers with their stuff!

We got to thinking: Functional society only works because we are trusting. I trust the weatherman, I trust the guy driving next to me, I trust the waitress that brings me coffee and I trust the little man carved into the door of the men’s room. (more…)

It was recently my birthday (I am a proud Aquarius, but we shall discuss that another time)

In honor of my birthday, Chana took me to a traditional Irish music concert by the band Nabac.

The best way I can explain my relationship with Irish music is that I hear it and wish to join in its travels; to ride the sound of the flutes and whistles and the fiddle and pipes to the enchanted places towards where they are headed.

Chana and I spent roughly a month in Ireland, and had a magical time, indeed. The air is piercing and crisp, the people friendly and real. And music is less a performing art than a shared pastime. (more…)

I am always very excited to go to the bathroom these days.

The bathroom, you see, is where we keep Bill Bryson. (more…)