All true, but ya gotta admit, ever more of our experience is bought, no? In the last month, the world's major sporting event (that'd be the Euro2000 soccer to you Yancqui philistines) went from fta to pay-tv; my kids spent the majority of their waking hours at user-pays child-care facilities; I hired some old videos (pre-McCarthyist film noire - lovely stuff) because no-one had the time or energy to get together for the traditional end-of-semester knees-up; I spent a fortune on ISP fees to have mailing-list 'conversations' with people I've never really met to make up for the fact I've ever less opportunities to converse with the people I do know; was asked to leave a regular haunt, at which venue I'd been happily and loquaciously spending money for some hours, because a band was coming on to drown out our conversations and I didn't want to pay for that particular service ...
... during the ensuing racket (death metal ain't my thing, although it does speak to my mood at times), voice-ectomised youngsters identified themselves and executed ersatz conversations via brand-names pasted across their salient bits ('fwaur ... Benneton tits atop Calvin Klein hips ... be still my Levis,' gyrated one bepimpled Asics/Mambo/Russki arrangement as he affectedly disported past me in the forlorn conviction that Ms cK Benneton would make like the chicks on rudegirlsdotcom, hitherto his only source of education on matters social and sexual ... ).
Well, mebbe I did embellish that last bit ...
Sigh, Rob.