Today WotN informed me of a new outrage. A marketing outrage. It seems that our cat Meems is no longer able to enjoy her favourite variety (Salmon and Prawn) of a well-known brand of cat food unless her owners - that is us, the Gerases - also buy two other varieties as well (Cod and Plaice, and Tuna), neither of which Meems likes or will eat. This is because the three varieties are now only sold in six-packs, containing two each of the three. So we have to lay out, whether in ready ruboolas or in plastic, three times as much on her food as we properly should, or else organize collective purchases with other cat owners in the vicinity, or else eat the Cod and Plaice and the Tuna ourselves - which is a bit much since, though neither WotN nor I are all that fussy, we do draw the line at cat food. It's a scandal well worth blogging about. Today I wish I had comments enabled, so that I could get the full sweep, a globally diverse wave, of cantankerous shouting and other such expression of electronic emotion mobilized in opposition to it.
What it reminds me of is this. In 1991 I had to become a subscriber to Sight and Sound, though I didn't want to be one, when that publication effectively absorbed the erstwhile Monthly Film Bulletin, to which I was then a subscriber, and had been for going on 25 years to that point. Now, please don't get me wrong. I am not, and was not at the time, hostile to Sight and Sound as a human enterprise or indeed as anything. It's just that the Monthly Film Bulletin had what I wanted in it, movie reviews and all the pertinent factual details (date, running time, credits and so forth) of the movies reviewed, whereas Sight and Sound had what I didn't particularly want, namely articles about movies, directors, trends, and all that. Don't ask me why, but although I love the movies, what I love is watching them, and remembering them and talking about them; but I don't much enjoy reading discursive articles about them. I could give an analogy here, but won't. The reading I do about movies is almost exclusively reading of reviews (usually after I have seen the movies that are being reviewed, so as not to be pre-thingied about them); and, aside from that, looking up filmographies and other such stuff. Anyway, for this reason, I've been getting Sight and Sound for 13 years now, and reading hardly any of it - just so as I can have the reviews and details that I used to get in the late and very much lamented MFB.
OK, so we're talking market transactions here, are we not? And if they can do it to us, can we not start doing it back to them? Otherwise, where's it all going to end? I'll get on the bus one day and be told 'Sorry, mate, you can only get a ticket to Piccadilly if you also take the digital watch and prawn sandwich that go with it. That'll be £17.50.' Or you won't be able to buy a copy of the Guardian without the 'It's all about oil' badge and Madeleine Bunting knitted pantaloons. Here, in any case, is my idea for combating this grave commercial abuse. I've already said: we start doing it back to them. In the supermarket, you tell them that with the price of the cat food they're obliged - because it's now your policy - to take a certain volume of your household waste. Today they're privileged to be able to have a broken old chair and a rusty garden spade. On the bus or in taxis, along with the fare you hand over some threadbare non-matching socks and a used lightbulb. And so forth. This should do the trick.