On Drifting Apart

     A letter to the mavens of American marketing:
     Dear Mavens,
     I tell you this with a heavy heart. In fact, I have avoided saying it for quite a while. But a time comes when we should be honest. And so I must tell you that ...
     You may be losing me.
     There is no animus in this. No collection of festering grievances. I am not angry, only confused. I no longer understand how you want me to respond.
     It began with the cars. I am baffled by the naming of the models. When they were called Impalas and Firebirds, I got it.  I caught the spirit of your temptation.
     But now?
     I found myself in traffic the other day with an Elantra. It crossed my mind to wonder: What am I to  make of a car that could have been named for the heroine of a comic opera? (Furthermore, while I was woolgathering over that, I missed the light.)
      And what about those alpha-numeric designations? They are everywhere. In the established lexicon of letters and numbers, the letter X seems to be big. My own car is an XC60.   I have no idea what this means. Am I supposed to  feel that I have a better model than one called, say,  AB29?  Or should I yearn to own an XX1000? I don't know because I have never asked. I have never asked because I don't care. For your purposes, alas, I am simply numb to the appeal of the letter X.
     In other examples, naming mysteries have reached into the restaurant trade.  After all, what should I expect of the fare at a place called The Rusty Onion?  At The Purple Pea,  I'm probably not interested no matter what the offering.
    And so on. You get the idea. I have episodes of being unsure what I'm supposed to want.
    And do you know what makes them worse? The flashbacks.  Browsing through a catalog not long ago I was arrested -- stopped cold -- by the Fat Max Extreme AntiVibe Rip Claw Nailing Hammer.
     The telltale thing here is, I don't really need a hammer. I have a perfectly serviceable hammer. I have never known it to vibrate.
     Not so far.
     But you see, the people who named the Fat Max knew how to get to the Guy Thing. One of the enduring tenets of Guy Nation is: You have to have the right tools for a job.  And if you don't -- well, who knows? The ad for the Fat Max awakened in me an urge to get right with Guy Nation. To repair something. Perhaps even to build.
     Now, I can hear you saying,  Oh yes, but this fellow is some kind of rube. He is not a marketing expert.  This is true. I am not a marketing expert. I am, however, one of your customers. And let's face it: The economy depends on your stimulating us to buy goods and services that we don't really need. Yet here am I, suffering bouts of Stimulus Interruptus.
     It's sad for our relationship, but it's true. I had to tell you.
     A time comes when we should be honest.