Catalog people.

I've known for a long time that I'm in the wrong line of work -- really, the wrong line of life. I know I need a change. So I've decided to become a catalog person. 

The influx of get-ready-for-summer catalogs is nothing like the volume of Christmas-shopping catalogs, but unlike those festivity bombs full of decorations and gifts for others, summer-themed catalogs are all about your own life. Or, in my mailbox, my own life. And everyone in them is living a much better life than I am. 

No fooling -- look how nicely dressed the ladies are to go shopping! How pleasant and rain-free the day! Look at the guys at the barbecue! No spilled sauces, no ratty T-shirts, no spiderwebs! Nothing about that big ol' wood-burning pizza grill thing would remind you of my grill. Theirs is big, it's new, it's spotless, it doesn't look like it may have had an opossum sleeping in it at any point.

And no one in these catalogs is worried about the mortgage; no one got too fat for his old Bermuda shorts; no one is about to get stung by one camel-humper of a hornet; no one's kid is addicted to drugs or surliness or both; no one thinks that the doctor's office is going to call with bad spleen-related news; no one is holding a fifty-year grudge against someone who once occupied the same womb. It's all smiles and sunny days and great casualwear that fits perfectly. Look at Gramps! He even has all his hair! It's grayin', but it's stayin'!

Sadly, I cannot become a catalog person. The image is not real. Besides, I don't have enough hair.

People think that shopping (and thus capitalism) is all about envy of those who have more, about advertisers creating desires for things we don't need, about the mindless consumption of stuff by stupid automata. I believe it's really all about that moment of pleasure in purchasing a bit of this image, an image of ease and comfort, where everything is all right.

When you have the thing you wanted, it can provide a little or even a great deal of satisfaction. After all, we all need things -- food, clothing, shelter, tools. And we want to buy those things in an atmosphere reflective of a good life. But that image of ease and comfort never becomes reality.

We gotta have the things. We just can't let the illusion make the decisions for us. That's how we wind up with maxed-out cards, bankruptcies, bad relationships, even really bad tattoos. Lucky for me, I'm a cheapskate.

Don't blame capitalism. Blame the human condition.

Ah, catalogs! Ah, humanity!