Catherine Deveny

Age journalist Catherine Deveny is glad that Australians are suffering:

AM I the only person terrified by everything getting so big?

Yes.

Is anyone else feeling that the bigger things get, the more soulless they are becoming?

No.

Mega-meal deals devoid of nutrition complete with a stuffed cheese crust, chocolate Bavarian and 1.25 litres of fizzy emptiness to wash it down.

We, here at PeakStupid like to enjoy these things occasionally. Deveny, howevery, dosn't like our personal choices. But enough of our take. Here is what James Lileks has to say about Deveny:

There’s so much twaddle in that piece it’s hard to know where to start – it’s like a bucket of depression larger than a human head, flavoured not with reason but panic-flavored fear-sauce – but there is one telling line:

“Abundance takes the value from everything.”

Ingratitude takes the value out of everything. I can easily imagine the columnist complaining about the abundance of a civilized frippery like toilet paper, and wishing we could go back to corn cobs, which would get us back in touch with nature. Literally. If you needed any benchmarks about what the apogee of comfort looks like, there you are: a newspaper columnist paid to worry about the size of other people’s popcorn purchases.

Hold on: after reading more, I discovered that she does complain about bulk toilet-paper purchases, which one can obtain at that imported American horror, Costco. I belong to Costco; I go there a few times a year. I like it. I like any store where you can buy a 48-pack of shaving razors, a piano, and lettuce. She says: “it encourages a mentality of fear, famine and greed.” Well, at the 1930s Soviet Inner Party Costco, yes, but ours is rather cheerful. She says:

“It encourages people to consume more than they need. Eat three chocolate bars for the price of one. I’ve opened that kilogram bag of chips, so I may as well polish it off.”

Speak for yourself, ma’am.

“Because it’s cheap people feel they’re getting value for money. They’re not. It just means they’re eating more, spending more and feeling emptier. Instead of going to the local supermarket to buy what they need, they’re driving kilometres, taking 20 minutes to park and buying stuff they don’t need, because it’s cheap. And it’s there.”

I can’t speak for Australia and its parking lots so wee it takes a third of an hour to find a spot; around here I find a spot in 30 seconds. But I will admit that I drive actual kilometres, or miles as we Yanks call them, to get there. But why do I go where, when the local supermarket has what I need? ecause it doesn’t, or because it costs too much.

Because Costco sells large deli trays for the party we’re having, printer ink at low prices, great barrels of gummi vitamins the kid likes at half the price, and great bolshy bags of dog food I can store in the basement so I don’t have to walk to the common market and buy a half-pound bag every other day.

I know she would prefer that I slump to the People’s Distribution node every afternoon wearing sandals made out of old tires and walk home with a farking bag of Purina on my head and two hemp sacks of produce nurtured in night soil strung around each shoulder, but that sort of rich, community-building, soul-enriching experience is usually reserved for people who have to pause on the way home because a soldier butted their ear with a rifle butt for sneezing in front of a picture of Mugabe, and it still hurts.

Deveny is essentially a sanctimonious blowhard who presumes to know whats best for the common man (and woman).