Of Heaven and Hell

I wanted to post up my Nascar pictures today, but as usual, the slow internet speed here didn't help much. So instead, to kill time, I looked through Amazon. I love doing online window shopping. It lets me discover many things and deals I never knew existed. This is different from going to an actual shopping mall in a sense that shopping malls these days are predictable, and uninspiring. Whatever I can find in one mall, I could probably find it in the next one. Secondly, it feels as if when mall planners planned malls, they forgot about people like me. People who don't go to malls to check fashion stores out or just to waste time. I don't have anything against malls, but I'm just not too big a fan of it. I enjoy malls that display something different. Something more of an alternative, non commercialized culture. I prefer seeing independent retailers, creators, artists and businesses based on a passion for a product rather than the collective need to just make money however they want by a board of directors, who while doing that curtail the many creative juices of their designers and retailers. And while doing that, create a culture so washed with commercialization that nothing is unique anymore. Everything is just like what the other person is doing, but only with a different brand. Online shopping is very much difference in this sense because I get to see stuff I know will never be in malls. Stuff I know that will never be put in the display cabinets simply because they are deemed to be vulgar and undesirable in building character and society. Afterall, who would want their kids to pick books up that have the words cocaine, drugs, backstage orgies and things like that? Realities of a culture that society often scorns at without even trying to understand its surface, what more its depths? Who in their right mind would want to buy an apparel from a designer who dresses in torn jeans, a faded shirt and has the smell of nicotine on him or a tattoo on her arms? One who designs based on inspiration rather than a need to please? Most would only choose to buy apparels from a store whose facade places pictures of naked celebrities. Who would want to buy items with alternative messages splashed all over them? Who would want to listen to music made by artists that speak of the everyday realities of life? Those who have lived, rather than played puppets to a hypocritical playwright? Exactly. Not many. But the weird thing is that this same society that scorns upon the alternative culture apparently loves to have their radios play music made by artists and executives that encourage teenage sex, female bashing and excess materialism, and still call it clean.

They often speak of a broken economy, a broken societal system, and if there is anything to blame, it is commercialization. A culture that creates and breeds the need for excesses, even if they are more than a person can afford or handle. Creating credit more than one can afford to service. Drawing from their future to feed their present. It may bloom initially, but it will one day, eventually fall under its own weight, crumbling upon its weak foundations. However, it is the ones who always seem to survive are the so called rats and pests that society has tried to poison into extinction. Street artists, independent musicians, people with alternative but non extremist ideas. Those who have gotten used to not needing much to survive.

Anyways, it's getting pretty late now, and I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow. I better get to bed.

Your hell just might just be someone else's heaven.