Subcontinental Divide

Beyond Plunderdome

We Don’t Need Another Logo

Subcontinental Divide by Ahsen Jillani

Yes, holidays are approaching as I compose this diatribe. I have heard rumors that there is some virus thing around, but we are not waiting another second to get out and purchase $400 worth of absolute garbage at Target, Walmart, Costco, Office Depot, Exxon Mobile, Tractor Supply, and Jimmy’s BBQ & Fertilizer Heaven.

Sometimes I sit for 7.385 minutes at my neighborhood exit because frenzied homemakers armed with their car horns, tablets and smartphones are trying to reach the nearest World Market for the BOGO deal. You know the one on made-in-China faux ceramic dishes made-to-look-like fine English China that Queen Victoria would eat her sheep chops in to gain another 15 pounds of cholesterol while ordering 25 people gutted and 77 people imprisoned for – I don’t know – breathing, or something like speaking in an obnoxious accent that nobody else on the planet can understand so the natives just surrender and drop to their knees saying, “We are not worthy of this cockney sophistication. Colonize us immediately.” Something like that.

I have spent the last several years in two worlds. My younger daughter even uses Kleenex tissue with a Gucci label on it. Recently I, of course, bought an electric dust blower device on Amazon, and turned on an ultra ionic, mega-UV, hyper SpaceX filter (also Amazon – also made in China, of course), and went hog (or at least Chihuahua) wild on my office.

Beneath the layers of dust that I stirred was an archeological find about as intriguing but also as tragic as finding the nose-ring of Queen Nefertiti. There, under piles of papers, tax filings, printing samples, and credit card offers that expired in 1998, were beautiful boxes with elastic ribbons on them. They had weird terms on them – things like Polo, Gucci, Christian Dior, Armani. I was puzzled.

I isolated the pile and stared at it from my office chair and felt deep sadness. My kids had little money back in those days; but there was this hormonal urge driving them to spend their last dime on buying daddy something with a logo on it. And if we were progressing in a positive direction from this nightmare in time, I would say, well, this pile of logos on shirts, shoes, pants, socks, belts, undies – it was worth it. We gambled. We lost. We learned. We grew. We are now superior beings.

Heck no. If you think you are about to exit this worm hole wellversed in the trickery of the Metaverse, ahem! They already had you by

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