Unite and Consume

"There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less."

- G.K. Chesterton

While I would be the first to admit to liking to get and have "stuff", I am very concerned with the degree of consumerism that abounds in our world. Previously mrs tsuken and I have in fact been extremely dutiful consumers, but now we are much more ready to wait, or simply not buy "stuff" - though I won't pretend we don't get things we want; we just don't go to malls and browse around, buying crap we didn't want until we saw it, and got hoodwinked into believing we wanted/needed/couldn't live without it.

This is Blacktown Westpoint shopping centre. It's not a Westfield, which is a good thing, but essentially there's no discernible difference. I was taken by the large signs on the right: "Unite. Share. Enjoy. Get together." ... But of course there's the unwritten: "and consume!"

I think in part it was having just recently seen this blip by mycity that primed me to notice these signs. (I couldn't locate the blip again when I posted mine, but managed to find it today).

"If thou art rich, thou art poor,
for like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey,
and death unloads thee."

- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Measure for Measure, Act III

In other news, I was dive-bombed (again) by the magpie a little way from home. This time the little basket knocked my glasses out of my pocket, onto the road. I didn't notice until later (when looking with my neighbour at the bower and surrounding shiny blue things collected by the Satin Bower Bird I blipped on Saturday. Nek minnit, when I got back up to the scene of the dinosaur attack, I found my glasses all pieces and bits, having been run over. If they had cost me more than $12 or so, I'd be very annoyed. ;-)

In Filterstorm I converted the photo to B&W, with blue filter 100%, red at 0 (iirc), and green at 50%; sharpened, added an S to the luminance curve, and pushed the contrast a little with a gradient mask around the signs on the right. Oh, and cropped to 3:2. I had the camera set to 3:2 for a while, but now have decided to use the full 4:3 sensor, and just crop however I see fit.

Lumix DMC-G10 : f/6.30 : 1/250" : 20mm : ISO 100

Large version here.

Uploaded with Blipfoto iPhone app.