frgdr.com Blog

Now in its 17th year, Buy Nothing Day is celebrated every November by environmentalists, social activists and concerned citizens in over 65 countries around the world. Over the years, Buy Nothing Day has exploded into a global movement, inspiring the world’s citizens to live more simply and buy a whole lot less. The festival takes many shapes, from relaxed family outings, to free, non-commercial street parties, to politically charged public protests, credit-card cut-ups and pranks and shenanigans of all kinds. Anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending. “It’s our culture of excess and meaningless consumption - the glorified spending and borrowing of the past decade that’s at the root of the crisis we now find ourselves in.” says the co-founder of Adbusters Media Foundation, Kalle Lasn, “A simpler, pared-down lifestyle – one in which we’re not drowning in debt – may well be the answer to this crisis we’re in. Living within our means will also make us happier and healthier than we’ve been in years.”

Tel-Aviv - 28/11/2008

10:00-15:00 - Meir Garden - 054-8119941 / 050-8361907

Really Really Free Market

a time bank

companionship mats

DIY workshops

12:00-24:00 - Online - Lonely Boy Records’ free music downloads
13:00-15:30 - Hamedina square - 050-2005411 - Fur Free Friday
13:30-16:30 - Rabin square - 057-8165055 - Critical Mass Tel Aviv

14:30-17:30 - Salama st. by Washington st. - 03-6297734

jam session

dumpster diving

15:30-18:30 - 50 Salama street - 03-6297734

Really Really Free Market

cruelty-free free vegan food

anti-consumerism films screening

Jerusalem - 28/11/2008

11:00-14:00 - Sergei’s Courtyard, 13 Heleni Hamalka street - 050-7717378 / 050-8434826

swap market

Food Not Bombs

T-shirts DIY

In the last couple of years it became common practice for Israeli newspapers to stuff themselves with supplements which look at first like genuine newspaper addition, but are actually just advertisements posing as articles. This is an effort, I assume, to give the inherit deceitful nature of advertising an air of objective news coverage.

There is one such monthly supplement about cell phone models, one about office equipment, and a few that feature an array of products, linking fashion trends with things you can purchase. A new supplement which fits the latter is titled: URBAN – GET A LIFE STYLE [sic].
When I first laid my hands on it I thought I was reading it wrong, as I myself often feel the uncontrollable urge to tell people searching for style to get a life – and so having the very source of evil inadvertently tell the same to its readers, thinking it is a clever play on words – well, that just brightened up my day.

I started flipping through the magazine and had to really fight my gag reflex. The pages were filled with pseudo-new-age mantras, one nauseating mantra before each of the magazine sections [emphasis and capitals theirs]: It’s not who you’re sleeping with BUT where in the lodging section, Food is like desire. It’s much better in a PRETTY package! in the dining section, It’s not who you’re talking to BUT what you’re talking with in the cell phones section, There are two ways to achieve HAPPINESS: Be in love or drink fine wine in the wine section, There’s electricity in the air GET IT! – yes, you guessed it - in the electrical appliances section.

And then I hit the mother lode in the accessories section:

You see, it is quite rare to be able to summarize a critique into a single sentence, much rarer to be able to summarize it to a single word – but to find one such word published by the very people the critique speaks against, well that is as close to force majeure as you can find.

Yes, excessories is exactly how I would spell the unnecessary daily purchases done by people trying to fill the void in their soul, and here it comes from the advertiser’s mouth. Oh! The humanity…

Epilogue:
When I first stumbled upon the website Engrish.com which meticulously documents the Japanese’s futile attempt at mastering the English language, I laughed so hard at ‘those stupid Japanese’. I assume this is exactly what non-Israelis do when they look at us, as we also show the same negative correlation between how cool the natives revere the English language and how poor their actual English-language skills are.