Jessica Alfieri

writes everything you see here.

Posts from December, 2009

  • $$$ / 2br – ELEVATOR/LAUNDRY BLDG CONV2BR GREATLOCATION

    Dec 2, 2009 tagged as apartments, stupid ideas

    We’ve been searching for a new place for about three weeks, and my brain is already so fatigued with the process that I’m now ONLY DREAMING APARTMENTS.  Nothing else.  No pretty parks with green grass and colored balloons or frolicking across the ocean to strange places or revisiting childhood memories in the classroom.  Just layout, windows that look out upon brick walls, ooh, a terrace?!, and what’s the closet space like?

    Square footage-obsessed dream torture is almost worse than event planning dreams just before a big conference or moving dreams about forgetting to pack and the movers breaking the couch in half.

    Here, it’s just constant lists, requirements, moving money for deposits and application fees, climbing stairs that seem to get smaller as we go up and up, padding through uninspired layouts, and evaluating endless pro/con lists.  If we give up this, we could get that, and it’ll be worth it to take that if we can save the money with this.

    Sounds relaxing, right?

    Now if we only had another two thousand per month… Actually, think about that — two thousand extra dollars every month would be life-changing for almost every household.  Perhaps instead of the public option, we could just do that.

    ($2k x 12 = $24k per household per year)

    ($24k x 80,000,000 (75% of total US households) = only another $1.92 TRILLION per year.  Obama’s budget team can handle that for sure.)*

    *Or this is my sleep debt talking.


  • Bombardment

    Dec 1, 2009 tagged as Holiday

    For the past six days, my inbox (something tells me your inbox too) has looked like a who’s who of desperation.

    “Get Free Shipping + over $1000 in Cyber Monday savings”

    “Enjoy 25% OFF & Shop Our Top 10 Gift Ideas”

    “Today only: Great pricing on exclusive accessories.”

    “Site Wide Event Continues… Last Days… Shop Till You Drop Cyber Monday Sales Event”

    “Last Days to Save: Buy 2 Bras Get 1 Free, 25% Off Sleep, Plus More Great Deals!”

    They range from simple to verbose, from stating the facts to obnoxiously begging for our attention (and dollars).  But they’re all designed to do the same thing.

    I like a good deal, and were it not for my bank account, I’d use the coupon codes I find much more frequently, so at first I was looking at these things thinking, ohmygodthatisagooddeal, until I got a little screen fatigue and realized I was letting them whip me up into a full-body rabid foam.  (I don’t know about you, but I prefer life as a solid.)

    I’m so overloaded by my inbox right now I’m actually feeling a little sick at the sight of it.  But I don’t think that’s uncommon; it’s just so easy to be disgusted with the race to SAVE FOR THE HOLIDAYS.

    I wonder what it would look like if every copywriter had to switch “save” for “spend” — “LAST DAY TO SPEND!” — would it change the behavior or encourage it?  OhmygodtheymustknowsomethingIdon’tIreallyshouldbuythis.

    Picture 6


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