site, the 1970s’ most famous ditzy blonde (not an easy title to win!) sells her own lines of beauty products, fitness products, weight-loss products, books, tapes, jewelry, and apparel. Somers promises she has “carefully selected and tested each item.” One can only hope she’s currently wearing a lab coat in her R&D department trying out the Suzanne Somers Home Enema Kit.
“CHANGE YOURSELF TODAY!” CULTURE
Understand this: There is something deeply adrift within your personality. Be prepared to chuck it away and start again.
The urge to start afresh seems particularly strong in the New Year. A few hours after the bells have chimed, anyone remaining unaware that they are polluted dipshits will soon be disabused of this by shelves crammed with books offering to Change Your Life in Seven Days. Or possibly Make You Thinner. Or Turn You Inside Out, if That’s Your Thing.
Newspaper headlines urge you to “Change Your Life for the New Year: Be Happier, Be Healthier, Be Richer. The Experts Tell You How in Our Special Guide.” Why are these writers so obsessed with cleansing their souls and starting fresh? What did they do over Christmas to mire themselves so thoroughly? Did they find themselves shouting racial epithets in the middle of an orgy?
In March 2006, the self-helpish magazine
Psychologies
included a special section called “Get Ready to Change.” It had the headline “Are You Ready to CHANGE?” Plus bullet points: “Your life map: what needs to change?” “ ‘How I got a new life’ ” and “Test: how will you handle change?” A subliminal message arguably emerges here. And it’s not: Stay exactly the same as you already are.
A change, it’s often said, is as good as a rest. We prefer a rest, ourselves, but there you go. The self is a tricky concept that has been the subject of anguished debate since time immemorial. Maybe the autonomous individual has a burning core of consciousness from which all else exudes. Maybe this is a myth to enforce positive feelings about ourselves and engender the illusion that we can determine our own way in the world. Perhaps we are merely the sum of our socioeconomic relations with other human beings. Or simply the totality of all the words we ever speak and think. Alternatively, we could just be a set of genetically pre-programmed desires designed to propagate the species, a trillion mindless robots dancing . . .
Whatever, it’s clearly a tangled affair. So thank the Lord we have Dr. Phil to sort it out.
CHE GUEVARA MERCHANDISE
Let’s not be negative about this: Che Guevara did help put in power a Stalinoid dictatorship that locks up gays and trade unionists—but, you know, fair’s fair, he did also have a cool beard. And Cuba can’t be proper Stalinism, like in Eastern Europe, because it’s really sunny there, whereas Eastern Europe is cold. Brr.
Che is everyone’s favorite facial-hair-motorbike-stood-for-some-stuff-but-I-don’t-know-what-it-was-and-don’t-really-give-one-check-out-the-beard-man revolutionary. Awesome. The sort of revolutionary you can safely put on T-shirts, clocks, and candles—yes, Che Guevara candles are available from a firm called Rex International. They also do candles with Elvis on them. Same difference. Che’s real name was Ernest, which is perhaps not so cool, but who cares when you factor in the whole motorbike thing?
Or maybe the kids really are into vague, trigger-happy yet hippie-ish developing-world guerrilla vanguard revolutionism tinged with Stalinism? Either way, buoyed up by Rex’s success, other companies are trying to float similar products, including a chain of North Korean restaurants full of images of Kim Il Sung (provisionally called Yo! Rice), and a range of sportswear called simply Gulag.
Rex is responsible for Che coasters and the Official Che Guevara calendar. How the red blazes do you get an
official
Che Guevara calendar? Presumably, there is a Guevara estate somewhere sanctioning all this crap? In
“CHANGE YOURSELF TODAY!” CULTURE
Understand this: There is something deeply adrift within your personality. Be prepared to chuck it away and start again.
The urge to start afresh seems particularly strong in the New Year. A few hours after the bells have chimed, anyone remaining unaware that they are polluted dipshits will soon be disabused of this by shelves crammed with books offering to Change Your Life in Seven Days. Or possibly Make You Thinner. Or Turn You Inside Out, if That’s Your Thing.
Newspaper headlines urge you to “Change Your Life for the New Year: Be Happier, Be Healthier, Be Richer. The Experts Tell You How in Our Special Guide.” Why are these writers so obsessed with cleansing their souls and starting fresh? What did they do over Christmas to mire themselves so thoroughly? Did they find themselves shouting racial epithets in the middle of an orgy?
In March 2006, the self-helpish magazine
Psychologies
included a special section called “Get Ready to Change.” It had the headline “Are You Ready to CHANGE?” Plus bullet points: “Your life map: what needs to change?” “ ‘How I got a new life’ ” and “Test: how will you handle change?” A subliminal message arguably emerges here. And it’s not: Stay exactly the same as you already are.
A change, it’s often said, is as good as a rest. We prefer a rest, ourselves, but there you go. The self is a tricky concept that has been the subject of anguished debate since time immemorial. Maybe the autonomous individual has a burning core of consciousness from which all else exudes. Maybe this is a myth to enforce positive feelings about ourselves and engender the illusion that we can determine our own way in the world. Perhaps we are merely the sum of our socioeconomic relations with other human beings. Or simply the totality of all the words we ever speak and think. Alternatively, we could just be a set of genetically pre-programmed desires designed to propagate the species, a trillion mindless robots dancing . . .
Whatever, it’s clearly a tangled affair. So thank the Lord we have Dr. Phil to sort it out.
CHE GUEVARA MERCHANDISE
Let’s not be negative about this: Che Guevara did help put in power a Stalinoid dictatorship that locks up gays and trade unionists—but, you know, fair’s fair, he did also have a cool beard. And Cuba can’t be proper Stalinism, like in Eastern Europe, because it’s really sunny there, whereas Eastern Europe is cold. Brr.
Che is everyone’s favorite facial-hair-motorbike-stood-for-some-stuff-but-I-don’t-know-what-it-was-and-don’t-really-give-one-check-out-the-beard-man revolutionary. Awesome. The sort of revolutionary you can safely put on T-shirts, clocks, and candles—yes, Che Guevara candles are available from a firm called Rex International. They also do candles with Elvis on them. Same difference. Che’s real name was Ernest, which is perhaps not so cool, but who cares when you factor in the whole motorbike thing?
Or maybe the kids really are into vague, trigger-happy yet hippie-ish developing-world guerrilla vanguard revolutionism tinged with Stalinism? Either way, buoyed up by Rex’s success, other companies are trying to float similar products, including a chain of North Korean restaurants full of images of Kim Il Sung (provisionally called Yo! Rice), and a range of sportswear called simply Gulag.
Rex is responsible for Che coasters and the Official Che Guevara calendar. How the red blazes do you get an
official
Che Guevara calendar? Presumably, there is a Guevara estate somewhere sanctioning all this crap? In
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