why is it that there are always plenty of good reasons to buy something before you buy it and then once you have paid good money for the item and walked out of the store all those reasons disappear?
this morning i had to go to that most hallowed store “best buy” to purchase some minidisks for recording the view on wednesday nights. while i was there i decided i would look for a usb drive. now for the non-computer literate in the audience a usb drive is a 2 to 3 inch long device that you plug into your computer, transfer files to, and then use the drive to take those files to another computer. i actually have a need for one of these devices. while i was looking at the simple, cheap 128 megabyte usb drives my eye caught the fancy packaging of a creative labs nomad mp3 player/usb drive. this device is a godsend that will transform the world. it slices, dices, and will start your car on cold mornings so that it will be warm and toasty for you when you get into it. actually it is just a usb drive that will play mp3 files into headphones as well as transfer files from one computer to the next. oh yeah, there is one more thing that the nomad does that a simple usb drive doesn’t . . . it costs the buyer a lot more money to purchase.
anyhow, the packaging on the nomad was bright and cheery while the usb drive’s box was gray. the box of the nomad made great promises of how the nomad would not only play my mp3 files but would also change my life. the usb drive box just said it would hold 128 megabytes of info. the nomad’s package had a really cool looking guy on the cover, whose image shouted out to me “if you have a nomad you will be spiffy!” (and i want to be “spiffy”) the usb drive�s box said “pny” (who would name their company “pny”?).
suddenly the cost of the nomad didn’t matter anymore. i was convinced that the nomad would change all that i do at church, transform my family life, and maybe even fix the clicking cv joints on my 1993 mazda protege. i would be multimedia enhanced. no longer would i simply transfer files from one computer to another. no, i would do it with a soundtrack playing in the background. youth would look at me and want to follow JESUS all because i have a nomad. this was a “must have” device and i was a “gonna get it” buyer.
of course, all the reasons disappeared after i walked out the front door of the store. now i’m simply convinced that i paid too much u.s. currency for a usb drive with a fancy case and earphones that get all tangled up. i wonder how stores do that to people? it convinces me that we live in a society that is sick with consumerism and that i need to struggle against the sickness within my own life. pardon me now, i’ve got to untangle the earphones again.