On Tuesdays I go to a bar and hang out friends. (Did I tell you this before in another post? Sorry. If so, or if you know this already, skip to the next paragraph). We used to meet over coffee, but out favorite coffee place started closing early (“What, no caffeine after 7 PM? But this is SEATTLE!”) so we switched to a bar. Then that place changed owners so we switched to another bar. We still call it our weekly “coffee” meeting, though. It’s like AA but inverted.
Last night one of us brought up this Sci-Fi podcast he was listening to, about a store filled with scanners. As a person shops, a smart computer watches them, figures them out based on their patterns, and then starts reshaping the store, and products and packaging, to suit their needs and play into their desires.
I want this to be real. I want to go into a store and I want the computer to scan me, and realize that I have bought many car stereos over the years. And that it always seems to take me the same amount of time to buy each stereo. I want the computer to look at the radio stations I listen to, figure out the time differential between what was playing on the radio and the purchase, and realize that the radio breaks right around the time “The Little Drummer Boy” comes on.
And then, the store would be smart enough to bend sound waves around me such that when I am shopping between, say, September 30th and January 2nd, there’s no way I am able to hear that god damn song. As I shop, a cone of comfortable, blissful silence is always around me.
People who walk by me in the grocery store or at Target will drift in an out of this wonderland of quietness. Some of them will realize what is going on. Soon they will start following me. They’ll buy what I buy and eat the way I eat and wear the sort of clothes I wear. They’ll time their shopping to coincide with mine.
Eventually I’ll become a Moses of Xmas shopping, leading my people away from the evil pharaohs of The Little Drummer Boy into 40 years of wandering. We’ll worship something golden, maybe a copy of People with Miley Cyrus on the cover, and then I’ll ascend into the hills (the upstairs café at Nordstroms) and come back with some commandments:
- Thou Shalt Not Decorate Stores for the Holidays before December 11th.
- Thou Shalt Not Force Me to Partake in a $5 Secret Santa Thing Because I Have Enough Wine Charms As It Is.
- Thou Shalt Not Jack Up Airline Ticket Prices to Gouge People Who Are Guilted into Visiting In-Laws.
- Thou Shalt Not Regift Fruitcake More Than Twice.
Et cetera. But this is just a dream. It’s the “fiction” in “science fiction,” isn’t it. I’ll just have to get used to getting a new car stereo once a year or so. I’m not saying I agree that there’s a war on Christmas, I’m just saying, if there is, I want to be in the battalion that attacks The Little Drummer Boy. I’m talking scorched earth.
