The Wealthiest Generation

Recently I have seen a number of commercials for the new Toyota Venza.  These all consist of adults in their young-to-mid 20's going on about their parents being older and less fun.  Meanwhile, the older parents are out having the times of their lives, going to concerts, mountain-biking, or horse-back riding.  The 'children' meanwhile are living hum-drum, if not outright boring, lives while they worry about their elders.

So, Toyota has made a couple of interesting marketing decisions based on these commercials.  Firstly, and most importantly, the users of the vehicles, and therefore the likely buyers for the Venzas, are these aging adults of what is likely the baby-boomer generation.  It shows them still being active and having fun.  But secondly, it portrays the current growing population of up-and-coming adults as being not nearly as exciting.  What this does to me, as one of those 20 somethings, is say that this commercial is not meant for me, and they don't expect me to buy such a car.

But why am I not in the proper demographic of buyers?  One would think at my age that a new car would be what I want.  I have a nice job, a couple of years out of college.  But then I look at my generation, and realize that we are not a good target demographic right now.  What with the economy being low, and tons of people coming into the workforce without their being new jobs, while my generation wants a new car as bad as the next guy, that doesn't mean that my generation can afford one.  Alternatively, my generation still needs cars, but we are maybe more likely to go and by used cars and older models, things more within our price range rather than a brand new car.

So, why say all this about a car commercial.  Mostly because it shows a lack of trust in our generation's spending power, and more importantly, in between the lines of it all, a sign that my generation will not be spending like our parents, and though it may look boring to investors and big business, I consider that a very good thing.

Planet of the Apes

So I have just seen Rise of the Planet of the Apes in theaters, and enjoyed it immensely.  Before I get into the details, I'll let it be known that I have only seen the remake of Planet of the Apes in its entirety.  While I'm sure the originals movie series is excellent in its own way, I fully admit to preferring modern-day graphics and acting to earlier works most of the time.  With all that in mind, and the
*Spoiler Warning*
to ward off people who want surprises from the movie, let me present my thoughts.

The biggest process to causing the Planet of the Apes is that the 'make you smarter' chemical is really a virus, and apparently communicable through at least blood in humans.  Secondly, it is eventually fatal in humans.  However, the same virus makes Apes smarter by leaps and bounds.  The end of the movie suggests that the virus goes international quickly via plane flight.  This would likely cause any place with Apes and humans in close proximity to have the humans die and the apes grow smarter over time, suggesting a strong initial growth in areas with native ape populations and large captivity areas.

To establish the true form of Planet of the Apes, humanity would need to develop an immunity to the disease in some form, and the apes would need to keep Caesar's  tolerance of humanity vs. the hatred of humanity displayed by the 'evil' chimp (who lacked a name as far as I could tell, but the one that writes Jacobs).  I could easily see a sequel explore the idea of the apes saving humanity by taking them in as pets, and a showdown between Caesar and 'Jacobs'.

For the longer reaching philosophical and sociological impacts, the introduction of another intelligent specie is always huge news, sadly downplayed during when it would be best (the testing phases), and then irrelevant in a practical way with a virus running amok threatening to wipe out the human race.  The known aggression apes can show can be scary to people, but is it any worse than what humanity already does?  Would they be less violent if more aware of their long term actions, or revel in it?  Dolphins have been shown to enjoy violence against natural enemies like sharks, long after their foe is dead.  Dolphins enjoy casual sex, but will also perform it on the unwilling when they want it.  These known factors in the real world should make people wonder about what intelligence does for morality, and should make people think about what really 'separates us from the animals'.

The Beginning of the End

Greetings everyone,

 I thought I'd start this blog with the big (but not all encompassing) event affecting my life and many other book enthusiasts:  The closing of Borders.
  As someone currently employed at a Borders Bookstore, it saddens me greatly that the place is closing.  I am not saddened at the business model of the store going away, that had plenty of issues.  What I am saddened by is the loss of all those bookstores from our cities and towns.  We already had a preview of this earlier this year when some of the Borders locations closed.  Now that they are all going away, I worry that this will lead to a domino effect, and that even when they get the Borders customers, Barnes & Noble might be next on this track.
  Then what are we left with?  Online orders through Amazon and the remaining small bookstores that learned to survive around the big chains?  Great for the little bookstores, but it will take time for people to find them, and none of them will try to maintain the atmosphere of sitting and browsing their books in the coffee-shop style the chains did.  And worse yet, with the competition wiped out, I seriously doubt Amazon will keep all the book prices as low as they do now, so we'll basically be paying full price again for books we'll never see in person until they've been shipped to us.  None of this rubs me the right way.
  To help lighten things up after that rant, I'll  examine some odd purchasing trends I've seen at our store.  First off, be warned these are not national trends, but just what I've seen.  Obviously some of the bigger books that have come out recently, like The Help in paperback.  Others are surprising, like how we got cleaned out of Ayn Rand at only 10% off.  Meanwhile genre fiction and most of the rest of Fiction is generally untouched at the same discount.  Computer books are still there in large amounts, but business books are flying off the shelf, though that is less surprising as we are located in a business district.
  Next time, I'll post something a bit more geeky and a bit less melodramatic.