Item: 33 advertisements

I just counted the stack of ads that was delivered along with this morning's paper.  Generally I don't pay attention to them, other than to reflect what a giant waste of natural resources they are.  Numbers vary, but it's clear that Americans are exposed to tons of ads every day.   Why on earth would a person voluntarily spend the morning looking through more of them?

But these are mostly nice and colorful - some thought has gone into making them something people want to look at, and get the idea of buying a computer, Easter toys, coffee, shoes, phones, vitamins, DirecTV.   Especially when they have coupons.

Well, there's nothing wrong with using coupons to buy things you need, and probably many people don't have the same antipathy to a pile of advertisements as I do, but I'll bet that almost every American consumer has also experienced the weariness of shopping, where you're tired of something even before you've finished buying it.

Yet you can't get away from it.  Go into a store on a Saturday and see people of all prosperity levels loading up on stuff as if compelled.  I sometimes think that the American urge for shopping is a manifestation of a kind of hunger, and the real missing things we don't even know how to talk about.  Deep down, we understand full well what's happening when we fill up the cart and leave still hungry.