Karol Newlin

As a 7 (9 being the highest), I turned my nose up at people, shook their hands briefly and with authority, and then quickly moved on. The 1s and the 2s wouldn't even look you in the eye, so down and out were they.

In the play, I am a 3. My city is burnt to the ground, my husband and baby are dead and I am waiting for the Greeks to take me away to a new land to be a concubine. It is humbling to say the least.

"Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them." Immanuel Kant

Anyway, please be my friend on MySpace. It is a scary new world but I already found some old friends I haven't talked to in forever. It is a cool way to catch up and network and blah blah blah.

"Oh my, I'm sorry #2, I wasn't listening to you, I was too busy checking my MySpace, YouTube and Blogspot messages..."

Best of all are the Life Magazines and their ads full of sickly sweet, forever-smiling happy people. Some of my favorites are the Camel ad which joyfully proclaims that "More doctors smoke camels than any other cigarettes."

Oh, you don't say! Not to mention the fact that Camels do not cause throat irritation. Lung cancer, maybe, but no throat irritation! Hurrah, pass me that butt!

And I especially love the bandaid ad which proclaims, "Never neglect a thorn stab." You would think the population was full of thorn stab holes! Perhaps we are? And of course, every fellow wants that "Just combed look all day long."

The great thing about these ads is that they are not all that different than the ads nowadays. It is all the same crap being sold: Coke, Bud, sugar, cars, bandaids, hair gel, underwear, shoes. And they are selling it the same way they always do: Your life is incomplete without this insert product here.




On that note, the junk shop is the ultimate weapon for the anti-consumer this holiday season. Junk shops collect all the worn out, long forgotten items that supposedly should have been thrown out long ago.

The old magazines, books, dolls, knick knacks and doo dads that you are supposed to replace with something new and shiny - if you are a proper Capitalist that is. I mean, COME ON, you want to get ahead, right? You want to be the successful envy of your neighbors - then get out your credit card Buddy!

As we shop ourselves to death this holiday season and buy bigger cars, smaller phones and even tinier IPods, you have to ask yourself, when will it all end?

In a big bloody Mad Max style oil crisis revolution? And long after this day comes, what will the residents of the future think of our sick consumer fascination with the "new" and the "better?"

In the future, perhaps only junk will remain. And the new things we currently hope so desperately to own will be piled high on our big pile o' junk. And the planet will be just one big junk shop with bartering and trade our only way of owning things.

The junk shop as revolution, dig it man:



Note to self, next time, bring my video camera and interview the cool old guy who owns the junk shop, or better yet, his neato wife!