Now that you’re an adult and actually know how much a box of ziplock bags costs (and that you don’t get like 100 in a box, you get like 16 or something) you use less of them, don’t you? When you were a kid, you’d have a single cookie or something like that, and you’d use a bag without thinking. Even if it was just to take it to school and eat right away.

Same goes with cereal—5 bucks for what can only be called 3 bowls of cornmeal?!—razor blades, and of course batteries. Them shits are expensive, and totally taken for granted when you’re ‘little’.

Well, add one to the list: Greeting cards. Greeting cards—in addition to being totally lame, but I’ll get there in a minute—are anywhere from 4 to 7 dollars apiece. For a card. A card that you give away. Even as a person who—clearly—has more discretionary income than he knows what to do with, this strikes me as ridiculous. It makes every thrifty nerve in my body tingle a little bit. And no, not in the good way.

As mentioned before, not only are greeting cards super-duper expensive, but they are, on the whole, super-duper lame. They don’t—for some reason—put things like Calvin & Hobbes or Godzilla or even AT-AT Imperial Walkers on the things, so why in the hell would I ever care about them?

Well, Greeting Cards Have Redeemed Themselves with me. For Now. Nothing—and I mean nothing—says Happy Birthday like a 7″, glossy, embossed Slobulus staring up at me.

It does make me take pause, however. To empathize with Cornbluth (whose last post is now gone for some reason, weird): why does getting one of these IMMEDIATELY make me want to go out and get more/all of them. Why is this one, meaningful, impulsive item that simultaneously communicates birthday wishes AND a gentle, knowing glance at my innermost personality unable to stand on it’s own?

Probably too deep for the Bloglin, but yes. A greeting card made me do it.

- Hateball