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March
17, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Tipping
in America
Tariq
Ali
The
Left's New Empire Loyalists
March
16, 2002
Chris
Floyd
Ashcroft's
Secret Snatches
March 15, 2002
Doron Rosenblum
Israel's Settler Warlords
Alex Lynch
Rhetorical
Attacks On Iraq
Norman Madarasz
Neo-Con Propaganda
and the National Review
Paul-Marie
de La Gorce
Making
Enemies
March
14, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
RIP
Danny Pearl
Francis
Boyle
Bush
Nuke Plan Violates International Law, Again
Wayne
Saunders
Memo
to Paul McCartney:
There Are Two Kinds
of Freedom, Sir
H.P. Albarelli
Anthrax
Cover-up?
March
13, 2002
Amira
Hass
Are
the Occupied Protecting the Occupier?
CounterPunch
Wire
National
Review Editors Suggest Nuking Mecca
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Personal
Responsibility
for Corporate Elites?
Robert
Fisk
Arabs
Don't Want US
to Strike Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
When
Billy Graham Wanted
to Kill One Million People
March
12, 2002
Kay Lee
Dangerous
Changes in
California's Prisons
John Patrick
Leary
The
Return of Otto Reich
Wole Akande
US
is Being Discredited
in the Eyes of Africa
March
11, 2002
Hani Shukrallah
This
is the Way the World Ends
Tommy
Ates
Bush's
New Nuke Policy:
Target Allies and Enemies
Lidia Andrusenko
The Great
Chicken War:
Bush v. Putin
Dave Marsh
10
CDs Playing On My Desk
John Chuckman
Footprints
in the Dust
Norman
Madarasz
Max
Steel in a Time of Chaos
March
10, 2002
Thomas
Croft
Year
of Living Dangerously
March
9, 2002
Bill Cook
Sharon's
Bulldozer
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Nightmare in Israel
March
8, 2002
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
When
Business Men
Make Boo-Boos
CounterPunch
Exclusive
Enron's
Spooky
Image Consultant
Rep. Ron
Paul
Stop
the War on Colombia
Andre
Achong
The
Failed War on Drugs
John B.
Kelly
Michael
Moore and Me:
Disability Rights and
a Big Stupid White Guy
March
7, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Congressman
McInnis Equates Enviros to al-Qaeda
Mike Rogers
Will
the Battle of Shah-i-Kot Become the Taliban's Alamo
Walt Brasch
Patriot
Act and Free Speech
John Jonik
Insurance
Scams:
Who Are the Scofflaws?
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Bumper
Crop: The Politics
of Afghan Opium
March
6, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
A
Beautiful Mind:
Another Dangerous Lie?
Tom Turnipseed
War
Is Wrong
David
Vest
Billy
Graham and Nixon:
Tangled Up in Tape
Patrick
Cockburn
The
Bombings That
Made Putin a Hero
CounterPunch
Wire
Berezovsky
Fingers Putin
in Bombings
Edward
Said
Thoughts
About America
March
5, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ann
Coulter At It Again:
Race-Baiting Norm Mineta
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
Delkhasteh and Wright
What
Should We be Fighting For? An Open Letter
to Pro-War Academics
Mariya
Tsvekova
Putin's
Georgian Gambit
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
INSIDE
EXCLUSIVE
TO
COUNTERPUNCH
SUBSCRIBERS
Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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March
17, 2002
St. Patrick's Day
"If
Design Govern in a Thing So Small"
The Inner Politics of Packaging
By David Vest
In the mail today comes a flyer for a new bookstore
in my area, complete with coupons for 10 per cent off books
and music, free coffee and a free CD opener.
This last gadget provokes me. It heaps
me. It makes me want to have a "user experience."
Don't get me wrong: I am glad they are
giving them away for free, despite the fact that I recently
paid a dollar for one. It is the need for the device, not its
existence, that churns my spleen. It represents the fact that
the recording industry cheerfully admits it has designed a product
that the average person probably cannot open without a special
tool.
It does not work, by the way. I can get
a CD open with it, without hurting myself, but I am still left
with the ugly, messy and infuriating task of trying to get the
magnetic product tape off the plastic jewel case, not to mention
the clingy cellophane that sticks to my fingers like the Enron
scandal to the Bush administration.
Once this stuff is on you, you can't
get rid of it until you've done some really weird hand jive,
danced a little dance and made yourself sorry you went anywhere
near a music store.
No wonder people prefer to download music
off the Internet. For one thing, they can get what they want.
For another, it works (most of the time), giving people a more
positive experience than they are otherwise accustomed to getting
from computers.
The compact disk has a rich history of
packaging ineptitude.
At first CDs appeared in long boxes,
for display in old record bins at stores slow to re-fit. Of
course, people ripped the mainly empty box apart, clawed their
way to the CD within, and threw the cardboard away in the parking
lot.
Next, they broke the hinges on the jewel
case trying to get the little booklet out, but let's not go
there.
Appalled, or at least embarrassed, by
all the wasted cardboard, companies did away with the boxes
and began selling CDs as a product reduced to the size of the
jewel case, at which point people promptly began shoplifting
them.
Just as the long box had been designed
not with customers in mind but for the convenience of stores,
so was the shoplifting solution: the horrible magnetic tape
that renders the product not only hard to steal but even harder
to open after you've paid for it.
A particularly fiendish component of
the design is the tiny little "pull here" tab, which
serves no purpose other than to mock you and break your fingernails.
If you want to get all the stickum off your purchase, prepare
to spend some time with a razor blade and perhaps a scouring
pad.
Ever tried to drive while opening one
of these babies to pop it in the car stereo?
The original metaphor, CDs are LPs, was
simply wrong. The new metaphor, customers are thieves and must
be punished, is simply vile.
Many people have obviously put up with
the indignity. They wanted the music, and CDs were the source
of it. A few hardy souls among us demanded that store employees
"filet" the CDs before money changed hands.
Employees, however, preferred teaching
us to fish to cleaning our fish for us.
"It's easy," chirped the typical
clerk, "you just run the spine down the edge of a counter,
like this, crack the whole thing open, no, at the other end,
break its little back, see, leaving the magnetic tape intact,
take out the disk, throw the case away, and store the disk in
this handy thingum we have on sale."
These people grow weary of being asked
to open CDs for customers. They have better things to do, like
taping the price sticker and the store logo right over the song
list or the picture of the artist. The free opener is being
distributed for their benefit, not ours.
What does this tell us about ourselves?
If we're thieves who can't be trusted with music, do they really
want to put these CD openers, little box-cutters, into our hands?
What's the next metaphor? Customers are
terrorists? If you don't think they're already seen as the Enemy,
to be conquered, captured, taken, you haven't worked on a corporate
sales team lately.
Yes, there are some interesting things
going on in packaging. The contents are kept air-tight, but
the meanings leak out.
It's not just CDs. I can't get into bags
of cereal anymore either. If I manage to get the cardboard box
open without destroying it, the bag inside resists all pulling,
tugging, ripping and even teeth-tearing. If I really pull on
the bag, with both hands, hard enough to open it, it explodes.
What's the metaphor here, food's a bomb?
This stuff we eat will blow up in our faces?
On a recent road trip, I bought a pack
of cheese and peanut butter crackers. Same thing. The cellophane
wouldn't tear and I couldn't even bite through it. All this
time we've been fretting about drivers being distracted by cell
phones. We should have been worried about people trying to gnaw
through packaging at high speeds.
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch. He is a poet
and piano-player for the Pacific Northwest's hottest blues band,
The Cannonballs.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com
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