Fashion, stupidity and the superfluous

I suppose that one could say that the first two are synonymous, to a point.The third being a frequent corollary and companion to both. The reason for raising this topic is a recent short article that I noticed in today's edition of the weekend magazine supplément of what I consider to be regularly the best French daily newspaper, Le Monde. However this supplement, recently renamed M, has unfortunately become pretty much a fashion catalogue, the majority of it's pages, formely full of in-depth articles, now being polluted with totally uninteresting stuff about of "trends", "fashion icons" and other superflous crap. The newspaper istelf continues to be good, but this is pure decadence, and uninteresting decadence at that.

a past cover of the M magazine, which I consider to be unworthy of its parent newspaper Le Monde


Flicking through the pages of this latest edition, which is usually the most I feel inclined to do with this thing before stuffing it in the waste bin, I noticed a short piece on the recent rush by fashion victims in the USA to purchase the latest model of sneakers produced by the Nike brand under the Air Jordan logo. Put on sale on December 21st, this shoe apparently caused some idiots to queue up all night and then fight for places in the queue. I don't know what the price of this useless object is, and I don't care, but I find something quite revolting about people going to such extremes for soemthing so totally superfluous and, probably, over-priced. There may be good reasons for standing in queues, like getting food when you are starving, but doing so (and all night!) for something you don't need seems the ultimate in consumerism gone mad.

former basket player Michael Jordan with one of the shoes made by Nike that use his name and, probably, bring him even more money


Why does this get my goat? Maybe I just felt like a little rant. Who knows? I know that this is not the most serious sign of madness in this world, but it is definitely one of them and I hate it.