There are various degrees of hell on earth. One of them, hell-lite, is surely going shopping for a used car. We got an in your face sample of that yesterday from a used car dealership in Inglewood, run on traditional lines: the sleazy boss, the oppressed, near retirement age salesman, the attempt to pump your expressed desire (we'd like a cheap vehicle, please) into their desire (and this nearly new SUV can be yours for 18,000 dollars, cutting the price 30 percent!). And now for the part of the story that I'm not so comfortable with - as I know that those car lots are really parts of a popular culture of haggling that goes back to pre-capitalist days, and intellectually I find them interesting - but then we went to CarMax. Carmax is wonderful, I must say, for the simple reason that they sell cars as though they were commodities no different from aspirin or breakfast cereal, instead of horses being traded between nomadic tribes. So you go in, you say what you want, they show
“I’m so bored. I hate my life.” - Britney Spears
Das Langweilige ist interessant geworden, weil das Interessante angefangen hat langweilig zu werden. – Thomas Mann
"Never for money/always for love" - The Talking Heads