Give and Take: For All or Nothing

In New York, I remember seeing the "give a penny, take a penny" dish in front of cash registers at some local shops, when I was younger. Slowly, more and more of these little dishes began appearing, and I never really understood the logic, but I knew that sometimes I could use one or two coins to round up my change, and get back some "real change"/ "actual money," and other times, I would have a bill that added up to x.99, and I would just drop my own penny in the dish for someone else. It didn't really phase me that at the end of the day, the pennies themselves meant no more and no less to me than they did to the next customer, and yet to the shop owners, they were adding up and up and up to "real change" and "actual money," as .99 cents and other random prices were craftily calculated to work against the consumers, but it didn't really in New York because we had our dishes, and we got our change- we worked together, in this sense.

In Amsterdam, it's different. I don't see the little dishes, but I do realise that very few shops or stores even accept one and two euro cent coins. So why do they have them?

Yesterday, in Aldi, the cashier offered me four 1 ¢ coins, and I turned them away, simply because Aldi is the only store that will take them back. When everyone else rounds up and down to the nearest 5 cents, why do they even calculate to the penny? I realised, soon after, that we should all watch Office Space again because some sketchy calculations are taking place and without our little dishes, it might not only be credit that can seem a bit crunchy, in my opinion.

Makeover: Cultural, Gendered and (un)Real/Believable

Take me over, Make me over
Fake me over

It's amazing to consider how many different ways people today are willing to let "experts" come to their rescue and re-vamp various aspects of their lives. This isn't new, but the extent to which this is ongoing and pervasive certainly speaks to our expressive and extensive need to be a part and parcel of the action- or a form of the functionality of the world around us, so to speak. If that's not clear, maybe Marshall McLuhan's aphorism "the medium is the message" speaks most lucidly and pertinently to today's makeover culture, where cars, homes, relations, lives and our corporeal selves are subjected to the media's gaze, as all these become objects of today's Makeover Culture, seen on screen:

The Medium is the Message, so what is it saying about how we conceive of, receive and perceive our real, social and ideal selves, lives and worlds today?