This week I'd like to take a moment to write about some bad people. These people are so lowly that they vacuum semen from Brazilian favela whores with their lips. I'm writing about the people who designed, manufactured, marketed, and sold my beard trimmer.
A certain equilibrium develops between producers and consumers. In the market, there's always an interaction between profit and perceived value. Consumers generally go for the cheapest product they can find. Producers want to maximize profits and so make things as cheaply as they can get away with.
For example, a consumer may need a new garlic press. When he goes to the garlic press store, he's presented with an array of garlic presses. Despite the selection, he doesn't see much difference between the high and low ends of the pricing spectrum. He passes up the $15 tool for the $5 model. Two years of infrequent use later, after buying three different $5 garlic presses, the consumer is more likely to consider the $15 press, hoping that the higher price tag translates into higher quality. He has learned the producers of the $5 garlic press are fucking him up the ass as they cut every corner possible in order to still make a profit, the most common ass fuck being cheap, press-in hinge pins that loosen and fall into garbage disposals and dish washing machines. One consumer in particular would just love to take all those ass-fucking bastards, cover them with honey, and drop them into a pit with a pack of starving sorority chicks.
So on the consumer side of the equation, all that most consumers are looking for is their money's worth. They understand that what they buy is basically disposable. Most consumers accept this because they hope that they'll get good use out of what they purchase and, when their purchase finally does give up the ghost, that a replacement will be better and cheaper.
On the producer side, a constant, frantic quest for profit goads the producers like the Ring to so many little Sméagols. With some mature, traditional, boring products, the only thing the producers can do is cut corners, as in the garlic press example. With many other products, such as computers and cars, producers are constantly adding new features to catch the consumer's attention, therefore forcing the previous version of the product into obsolescence. The pitch goes something like "Remember that 2 GHz chip we promised would make the Internet faster, make Windows run less like a quadriplegic pig, and get you laid? Well, that's crap now. What you really need is our new 3.4 GHz chip with Quadraphonic sound built in!" Thus consumers respond in a sort of Moore's law fashion: You need to buy a new computer every year, or a new car every three years, or the latest games the minute they're released, etc.
This situation works to the advantage of frugal consumers (A.K.A. "cheap fuckers") like me. I'm totally ecstatic when I get a chance to plough through a stack of old games on my less-than-cutting-edge computer, I'm perfectly content listening to my CDs, even though they're an antiquated mechano-optical format. I don't feel that I'm missing out on any clarity in my music, that I'm suffering from a lack of air and space around the instruments, or that my soundstage's noise floors are not black enough. I don't lust after the new DVD-Audio or SACD formats. In fact, when I read the hyperbolic pitches behind these latest scams I just chuckle. I don't give one festering rat's ass if DVD-A's dynamic range extends up to 100 kHz. Most non-genetically/radiationally enhanced humans, the non-superhero sort, have their hearing top out at around 20 kHz. So unless you're planning to disrupt the flight of local bats or sonically blast your dog into a coma, what use is paying for that extra range? Sure, it gives something for audiophiles to masturbate to in the blue glow of their cryo-cabled components, but in the meantime, I'll use my money for other things.
The producers are growing wise to the likes of cheap fuckers. One strategy that's grown more popular is subscription. The only way to continue using their product is to continue feeding them money. Do you want that sexy new phone? Sign right here for a two year service contract with a hefty penalty for early termination. Do you want TiVo? How would you like it up the ass: every month at $12.95 or in one big, clenched fist for a $299 "product lifetime" subscription? What in god's hairy balls is a "product lifetime" subscription? Well, it's exactly that. When the product warranty runs out, your subscription lasts as long as the TiVo box lives. As they say on the TiVo site: "Of course, hardware products don't last forever and their lifespan will vary among individual products. TiVo makes no representations or warranties as to the expected lifetime of the product aside from the manufacturer's warranty." In other words: "Please bend over."
Another tack that the producers are taking is battery power. Why in Hera's neglected clitoris are people so fascinated with cordless doodads? Some are cool, such as cordless phones and drills. The vast majority of other products are a cruel joke.
Say you're in the market for a weed whacker. A battery powered model catches your eye. Sure, it may weigh half again as much as the other models, but then you don't have to worry about fuel and noise or an annoying extension cord. Everything works fine for a while and you're whacking away with gusto until the battery craps out. "That's odd," you think, "I just took it off the charger."
See, battery technology sucks hot donkey balls. The typical consumer battery has an average lifespan of charge/discharge cycles. This is something that is not mentioned anywhere in the packaging or documentation. Given a certain amount of use, your whacker's battery is going to die. It will no longer hold a charge. Of course, finding a replacement battery is an exercise in cruel futility. If, by some miracle of chance, you do find a replacement, it will cost three times what you originally paid for the whacker. So you're stuck. All the other components might have years of use left in them, but without that battery, that weed whacker in just a collection of metal, plastic, and lead/acid junk to hand off to a friend with more curiosity than sense.
Then there's the iPod. It makes me laugh. Legions of bright-eyed fools line up to be anally violated as only Steve Jobs can anally violate. The Apple faithful lay their wad of cash at the altar, receive their sexy technology, and within a year or so their battery life drops from 11 hours to 4 or less. Apple's customer friendly solution? Turn in your dead iPod for a new iPod for $50 less than you paid for the unit. For heavy iPod users, this would mean $250 a year. That's sounds a bit steep. Of course, these ridiculous circumstances have given rise to a whole cottage industry of iPod replacement kits and services, allowing devoted iPod fools to pay only $50-$70 a year for their precious lump of plastic and semiconductors.
Finally, we come to my original inspiration.
Who is the Brazilian-whore-sucking, fart huffing, microcephalic Barbra Streisand fan who thought a cordless beard trimmer is a good idea?
If I'm taming the fur on my face, I'm in my bathroom, right next to a GFCI outlet. I don't take my trimmer camping. I don't take my trimmer with me when I travel. If I did travel somewhere long enough to need a beard trim, I'd have to bring along the charger and an AC adapter anyway.
So why for fuck's sake do I have to suffer the indignity of getting halfway through a trim and having the trimmer crap out?
Why not keep it perpetually charging? Well, NiCad batteries are now famous for their charge memory. Doing anything other than a full discharge/charge cycle is likely to shorten the usable life of the damn thing. I've already replaced the battery once and that was only because I happened to have a Batteries Plus location nearby. It has since closed.
If anyone tries to sell me a cordless anything in the future, there's a good chance I'll tell them to ram their cordless wonder in an orifice.
Pakeha