As I have become less and less entertained with the standard myraid of bullshit on MySpace, bulletins and other such nonsense, I have been checking out the featured books when a title catches my attention.  This evening my interest was definitely piqued.

First, it seems that J.R.R Tolkien had been working on a prequel to the lord of rings series and the hobbit before he died.  Now, his son Chrstopher Tolkien has put together this new book from his father’s original writings.

The new book is called “The Children of Húrin” and it takes place in the same galaxy, a long long time ago, before the hobbits found the ring. This is kinda like when they released that new Beatles song from recordings John Lennon made before he died!

Maybe we’ll see another 3 hour Peter Jackson film in theaters soon… then released to DVD, then released to DVD again as a 4 hour Extended Version, then released to DVD again as a Platinum Series Special Extended Version!

Speaking of which, the next book I noticed was a book called, (and I love this title), “Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole”.  This is brilliant. It’s basically about how capitalism used to be good for democracy because it accelerated growth in “need based” businesses, which are basically businesses that produce stuff that people need to survive like food, water, and steel for making weapons to kill communists.  But now, capitalism has become so full of itself that it essentially has been creating the need in people to buy the new shit they are selling, the shit they don’t need, but they think they need in order to survive.  This practice has always been around, like the door to door salesman selling the vaccum cleaners and late night infomercials, but now it is in the mainstream, and affecting people at younger ages so that they grow up dependant on these things.  I experienced this first hand recently when offering to help a friend out, the things she made be buy… iPod, Big Screen, etc, and she was in a crisis situation and was absolutely convinced she would not be able to survive without them… unbelieveable.

Among the usual incomprehensible comments from your average idiot MySpace users, was this gem of a comment:

“I’m not sure the author is scapegoating corporate America, though the consolidation of power through wealth and surplus is historically a BIG warning sign. Whether you read this book or not, free-will and independent action are pretty rare things, and those that think otherwise ought to try viewing their life and desires with a little more incredulity. It’s not as simple as better priorities or spending less money; our sense of worth and adequacy depends entirely on our successful integration into a social schema built more and more on accumulation, fetishism, and the constant enticement of upgrade. To actually step outside of this system is not easy and can bear serious consequences. The illusion of consumer choice is one of the most insidious devices that market capitalism has yet offered.

Seriously, I can’t believe how many people take MySpace book reviews as a chance to congratulate themselves on their own wage-slavery.”

So beautifully stated!  That made my night.

Then it dawned on me… this whole new world we live in, PodCasts, InternetTV, iPods that hold 20,000 songs (because the bus ride home is really that long, or maybe you just like to play the first 20 seconds of each song and then change it because you are ADD and got bored, in which case you still wouldn’t need 20,000 fucking songs you idiot), is a world where entertainment is a Need!  Not just a hobby, not just something to enjoy from time to time, but a serious part of people’s life and actually something that is nessessary to maintain one’s existence in this new world.  The important news of the day is what new band is hot or what new movie just came out, or what new gadget lets you maintain your access to your entertainment better.  It used to be if someone was classified as poor, it was because they didn’t have the money to eat.  Now, poor people are defined as people who can’t afford cable.  Entertainment is the main focus of our entire culture….   There is another civilization that behaved very similar to this just as it began to collapse…. The Roman Empire…

That’s it… I’m moving.