Personal

Every season in The Sopranos, Silvo becomes more and more of a parody of the stereotypical mafioso.

On Saturday, I went into Currys (uuuugh), to pick up a cheap DVD player for Cathy - so that she doesn't have to try and deal with mucking about with my Archos just to be able to watch a simple DVD - and I found myself confronted with a sales assistant who, apparently, is the greatest parody of the clueless, uneducated sales assistant who could care less about you ever conceived.

Me: "Excuse me please, I'm looking at DVD players. There are two here that I am interested in, but only one of them has a price tag. Could you please tell me what the differences between the two models are?"

Him: "Well, this one's more expensiver, innit."

On enquiring what the differences were other than which one was the more "expensiver", he simply walked off without saying anything, leaving me to try and figure out the differences by myself for 10 minutes. On his return, a series of blank looks and shrugs suggested that he had been unable to find out anything about either model in this time, so I simply asked for the "cheaperer" one, assuming that any place staffed by people this clueless would be easy to push about if I had managed to buy something that wasn't suitable.

The player is great.

Good news, I think.

There are reasons why giant companies crush the little guy, despite the fact that everyone likes the little guy, and wants to see him do well. It all comes down to giant companies being cheap, and convenient. That's why you shop at Tesco instead of the corner grocer, baker and butcher, right? It's got everything you want to buy, and it's cheap. No running about to different places to get everything, no wondering if it's going to be cheaper elsewhere.

Of course, if the giant can't get it right though, you'll go back to the little guy, because you'd rather see him do well, and if you're not going to get the benefits that come with killing the little guy off, there's no way you'll continue to do so.

So, with that in mind, today I say goodbye to Amazon. I got an email from them telling me they were unable to deliver my books. You're kidding, right? To me, at work? We have our name on the door, for crying out loud, with a little button beside our name that you press, and an office with 50+ people to answer that button when you press it, and let you into the building to come to reception, where someone will take packages from you and sign for them, even if I'm not in the office at the time. How can you possibly manage to be "unable to deliver"?

Right. I'm off to the local bookstore.

It's Monday evening. It was a long day, after a big weekend. You didn't get a chance to have your coffee. You're tired, and grumpy. You're arguing on your phone with your girlfriend. The streets are busy. I'm in front of you, and I'm annoying you, because I'm not going fast enough, but you can't get past because of the people.

Finally, there's a gap. You step around me, as I stop. You grunt, clearly even more annoyed now than you were before.

Somehow, despite all those distractions and annoyances, your brain does something remarkable. Your feet stutter, and you stop too.

But you ignore the amazing thing that your brain has done without you even thinking about it, and you override it, and you start walking again.

Luckily for you, the driver I've seen racing down the street, trying to make the green light facing him before it goes away, is paying more attention than you, and with a scream of rubber on asphalt, your life carries on.

When walking around town, try being more aware of the cars - the next driver you try that trick on might have had the same day that you just had.

I knew there was a good reason why I didn't carry on and get a PhD.