I Scream

So now we have “extreme” scratch ʼnʼ win lottery tickets. Bigger prizes in greater number, and it’s no longer enough to use a butter knife to reveal that “you’re not a winner”. Now you use a shark’s tooth—from a live shark.

Geez. Almost everything has been jacked to the max. Action movies. Contact sports. Rock concerts. Potato chip flavours. Even Mother Nature is getting in on the act with extreme weather. No wonder we’re prone to road rage and anxiety attacks. Man cannot live on adrenaline alone—but he’s making it nearly impossible not to.

Even online customer surveys are pushing it. Last summer (motivated, I admit, by the chance to win a $500 shopping spree), I filled one out after a visit to Pier 1 Imports. It was the most hyper-anxious set of questions I have ever encountered. “Good” was not an option. Neither was “satisfied”, or the fact that Pier 1 is third on my list of home décor retailers. My shopping experience had to be orgasmic or they weren’t doing their job.

How can we make Pier 1 your first choice for home shopping?

You can’t, I replied. I come here to buy candles.

It’s taken me a year to bother with a second of their surveys, and they’ll like my responses even less this time. The seasonal scented tealights I bought in June came in a pack of thirty for ten dollars. The seasonal scented tealights available for the fall come in a pack of twelve for eleven dollars—less than half the product for ten percent more money! An extreme ripoff if you ask me—and I am mightily vexed about it.


One might even say vexed “to the extreme”.