Calling Card

Yay! It's my 50th post, or so Blogger tells me. And to celebrate this momentous occassion, I'm going on a bit of a rant. Enjoy!

I hate buying greeting cards. It seems to get harder and harder each time societal conventions obligate me to do so. The reason for this is that the vast majority of cards out there are, in a word, lame. They either try to be funny and simply aren't (or, at least, fail to appeal to my sense of humour) or they try to be sentimental and are so over the top that it triggers a sort of gag reflex. There's not much of a happy medium. Occassionally it's possible to find the rare gem in a sea of crap - one of the best I've come across involved a dead elephant carcass - but it seems to be harder and harder to sift through all the junk, though it could just be me getting more and more impatient. And, of course, buying cards for people who don't share my sense of humour makes the ordeal harder.

The worst part is, though, that I suspect that the vast majority of cards are read once and are then never looked at again. I know that I seldom bother to look at old cards. I probably don't even remember anything about most of them. In fact, the only card that I can think of, off the top of my head, that I've looked at more than once was a home made one. I mean, I know I've gotten some amusing and bizarre cards at times, but they just seldom stick with me, so I tend to think that the whole greeting card industry is rather superfluous, at best.

And the whole industry is propped up on guilt, really. Because you'd feel guilty, or be made to feel guilty, if you didn't get someone a card. In the end, it's just a big ruse to part people from their money.

So what's my point? I'm not really sure. Maybe I'm just getting cynical. Maybe I should start giving out home made cards, or at least use the blank ones and write my own bad jokes or whatever strikes my fancy.

In the end, I hate buying cards and just wanted to complain about it.

Freak Out,
-TFitC