But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.
We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.
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Next time the ice cream truck comes around…
It’s funny how you can hate the idea of something but love the actual thing so much.
(Source: dontjudgeamingebyitslips)
It’s funny how certain words can have such vastly different connotations to different people. For example: to an education researcher, the word “gap” probably brings to mind the space between the level of education in wealthy areas and impoverished ones, but to an anorexic girl “gap” refers to the (way too small) space between her thighs.
It’s funny how people seem to think that sitting in a waiting room makes one extremely thirsty.
“Can I get you something to drink while you wait? Water? Coffee? Tea? No? Are you sure!?”
It’s funny how technology has changed our vocabulary. Following someone is no longer creepy, it’s twitter. And speaking of twitter, thanks for taking away the best verb to describe the noises made by baby birds. I bet there has been a sharp decline in baby bird poetry since twitter came along. But at least we can see which club Paris Hilton is partying in on any given night. Technology is really a give and take.
It’s funny how sometimes Tumblr doesn’t post your posts.
It’s funny how different things can seem at different times. Like the difference between the feeling of city block during the day and at night, or the smell of cigarette smoke on the wool coat of a lover versus a stranger.
It’s funny how often I discover a cut or a bruise and have no idea where it came from. So much is going on in our bodies at every second, for the most part unnoticed. Sometimes I stop to think about it and it boggles my mind… why did my hand just ache for five minutes? Why is there a tiny red mark on my left cheek? Why does my stomach hurt? But after the pain stops, or the mark fades, I forget about it. But somewhere inside of me there are tiny cells that have been changed, perhaps forever.
It’s funny how we fail to notice what’s right in front of us. Those are grains of sand. Grains. Of. Fucking. Sand.
Do you know what these tiny treasures are? It’s the sand beneath your toes on the beach!
Micro-imagery of sandgrains by Gary Greenberg
Greenberg has compiled quite a few books which you can purchase here.
“It’s funny how people don’t give that much thought to what kids want as long as they’re being quiet.
It’s also interesting how hard it is to be depressed around a three-year-old, if you’re paying attention. After a while, whatever you’re nooning about begins to seem like some elaborate adult invention.”
—The Bean Trees
