Modern Annoyances

The BooksInq blog led me to an interesting site the other day. It regularly does.

This site - called LitHub - had an article about 'voice' on it, written by someone called Tony Hoagland. In his article, Hoagland quoted a poem by Naomi Lazard. It is a poem that conjures up the sense I often have that shadowy figures somewhere in glass offices are making perverse decisions about all sorts of things that affect me, but without reference to whether I or anyone else might object:

We are sorry to inform you
 the item you ordered
is no longer being produced.
It has not gone out of style
nor have people lost interest in it.
In fact, it has become
one of our most desired products.
Its popularity is still growing.
However, a top-level decision
has caused this product
to be discontinued forever.
Instead of the item you ordered
we are sending you something else.
It is not the same thing,
nor is it a reasonable facsimile.


While not as poetic - it is that 'forever' that I think makes the poem - my first experience of this particularly annoying aspect of modern consumerism came when I travelled to England from Australia to visit my brother. A friend in Australia had been to England many times and each time she had bought a new pair of a style of shoes that she liked in Dolcis. She asked me if I would buy her another similar pair when I was there.

I said I would, so when I spotted a big branch of Dolcis, I went into the shop and asked if I could find another pair of my friend's shoes. The assistant looked at my picture of the shoes and shook her head. She said she recognised the shoes but they didn't sell them any more. "Why not?" I asked. "They were too popular", came the reply