Sapiblog – The Official Blog of Sapitot Creative

I read a rather disturbing article this weekend on the Huffington Post that for one reason or another spurred a lot of emotions for me over the Thanksgiving weekend. On Black Friday last week, a crowd of over 2,000 people in New York State stormed through the doors of a local Wal-Mart at 5am and trampled an employee to death in their rush for the early bird sales. I’m sorry, but where is the outrage over this? We’re talking about a guy who was working hard to provide for his family and then you have a crowd of suburban folks who are worked into a frenzy for a bunch of meaningless objects that are on sale, pushing him to the ground and crushing him. For what? Tropic Thunder on DVD for 9 bucks, a discounted TV, some cheap plastic toys for the kids? The report continues on that the mob became angry that they had to leave the store after the death was discovered.

I could possibly understand how this could happen in a third world nation where  one truck of food and water relief arrived for the whole village and it was a matter of life and death, but we’re talking about America here. There is absolutely no reason why something like this should happen in a “civilized” country such as ours, especially over some plastic crap that is by no means essential for survival. It’s another sad reflection of how we as a society have to purchase meaningless possessions to fill our lives with meaning and how deep consumerism is entrenched.

The stores who limit quantities on highly prized goods, drop prices dramatically and then offer no way to effectively control a crowd who are whipped into a frenzy also share some of the blame. There is no reason why Wal-Mart should not have allowed that many people to fall into mob hysteria. Very sad.

For me, this event has me rethinking my giving this holiday season, giving presents that have more meaning and originality than the latest deal at Wal-Mart.

After my recent move (hence the lack of updates to this site), I’ve made some large purges of my clutter that I’ve collected over the years, some of it dating back to the college years. After painstakingly going through it all, I’ve been able to whittle it down to minimum keepsakes and possessions (ok, I still have a lot of stuff, but I feel like I’ve really trimmed some of the fat). I have to say, it feels pretty darn satisfying to get rid of all that stuff I’ve been keeping in boxes and closets for years. To add to the happy feeling, almost none of it was literally thrown out, I’ve been able to either donate usable things to Goodwill or recycle it. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t done this in awhile.

I’m in the mindset that I need to do some new paintings. I’ve had some ideas bouncing around for the past few months for some abstract pieces and I’ve just unearthed rather large planks of particle board from my closet that are begging to become canvases. More on that soon, hopefully.

Currently listening to: Blonde Redhead – 23

So yeah, its been awhile since I last posted on the blog. This would either be because I’ve been too busy watching election coverage on CNN, playing Smash Bros, or had nothing to say. We’ll assume it was one of the formers, as this posting will only further an argument for the latter.

For those of you who haven’t seen me in awhile, up to this past weekend, I was sporting almost 3 month’s worth of facial hair growth. Of my own free will (mind you), I decided to shave it all off. I have to say it was somewhat satisfying cutting into it. Here I am pre-shave and of course, you can’t cut all that off with out a mid-shave pic as well. I should have kept the ‘stache.

Currently listening to: The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree