*sigh* today is a day like any other where I steadfastly have to fight the almost overpowering urge to waste lots of money on something very very silly...and i've been doing well so far, for the last month in fact...i'm just taking it day by day and so far my resolve hasn't crumbled like it has so many times before (of course my resolve *has* crumbled where other things are concerned but I can only resist one thing at a time damnit!)...but I don't know how much longer I can hold out against this item's ungodly pull...and what is this wonderful new obsession of mine?

A Katana

Not just any old piece of cheap unsharpened tin for display purposes only, no no no, it's a traditionally made samurai sword with a 'live' blade (that means it's unbelievably sharp folks...when the swords are finished they test them by seeing if it can cut through a 7" thick tree trunk in one easy stroke!...eek!) that was made for fighting with! And what, exactly, am *I* going to do with such a ridiculously dangerous thing? Um...well i'm not really sure...i'm not trained in it's use and to be perfectly honest I think if I ever actually drew the thing i'd be absolutely petrified of accidentally lopping a limb off, so it'd probably just sit there on a nice stand in my room and look really dangerous!...if anything though that makes me want it more!...confused as to my logic (or lack thereof in this case) well then let me explain a concept to you...it is the simple concept of 'marketing to foolish boys with too much disposable income' and is *very* simple:

1 - It doesn't matter what you're selling...make it expensive...not prohibitively expensive you understand, you obviously can't sell a bag of crisps for £3000 (although i'll bet that'd be some bag of crisps eh?), but expensive for it's particular niche. If it's expensive it's automatically better...it can be made of the same bits as something that's 1/10th of it's price but that won't matter, all you need to do is make it *sound* expensive, bump up the price and hey-presto idiots like me will think it's amazing!

2 - Make it look cool. Again actual content or subject matter is *completely* immaterial here, you could be trying to sell a cheese sandwich for all I care, but if it looks cool, it is cool...and then i'll want it!

3 - Make it either very very dangerous or potentially fatal. This is your big selling point, even little pussies like me can't fight the allure of something that's highly likely to kill or maim us...perhaps it has something to do with our 'danger-free' modern lifestyles perhaps not...who cares to be quite honest!...if it's lethal then I want it....it's a boy thing I think.

And there you go...simple as that...*whatever* it is if you make it one or, good god hold me down!, *all* of those things then any silly young chap like me will quite easily convince himself that he just *cannot* go on in life without...well, whatever it is that week. And why is this so? simple...for some stupid reason we believe all the things that attracted us to said item...expensive, cool, deadly...will magically transfer over to us through mere ownership...yes that's right, deep deep down it all just comes back to the fact that we all want to be James Bond and (stupidly) believe that owning pricey, sleek, deadly pieces of crap will do it...*sigh* yes we can be quite simple at times can't we?

God I want that sword ;)