A nectarine is not just a nectarine

 We’ve made time a commodity and chained ourselves to its regimen. It tries, and fails, to regiment that wild side of our nature that says “sod you”, “I'm off”, “stick it up your jumper” or “I'm having sex from now until the 12th of Forever”. But we settle for “me time” or “quality time”. Let’s have a little quality time. I can't afford the time.  Consumerism appropriates colour. That most traditional and divine game of cricket (chess on grass) and its house of the holy, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, have been branded yellow and black; the colours of the Commonwealth Bank, which used to be “the people's bank”, before it was privatised.

Consumerism depends on persuading customers that their “wants” are actually their “needs” and, further, that these needs are primal. Such as the need for food. Bargain "hunters" is a telling phrase, but the hunting instinct is revealed in subtler ways. Hunters circle Myer or David Jones the day before the sales begin - and the sales are always beginning.

If sales are always beginning that means that they must never end. Once there would be the summer sales and maybe a stock clearance sale. Now it’s continual sales of slashing prices, mark downs and liquidation sales. And I thought inflation was rising. To quote Billy Bragg, I never thought shopping was a metaphor for life.

Consider the humble shopping trolley and trolley-rage at the checkout. Why do people get so twitchy there? It's the moment recognised as the climax of the hunt, the nervous thrill of the kill at the till. Maybe, or maybe you've counted that the woman in front of you has 12 items in an eight-item express lane.

Buying a Nike T-shirt is an act of advertising. You’ve paid hard earned money (measured in time) to wear a product that is a walking advertisement for itself. And you’ve paid for the privilege of being a walking biological billboard. Canny purchasers should demand an advertising commission from Nike for wearing their product. Say $20 per day. That seems fair. I mean, it’s me you’re using as an outdoor billboard.

Products are packaged so that they are not only visually appealing but also tactile. Touch me, feel me, they say. Pick me up. Then walk me over to the counter where I’ll be wrapped again and then put in to a carry bag. The products brand is wrapped in another brand and then carried out in another brand. It’s a form of the Russian doll game that you only play once.

The ultimate consumer is consumerism itself, and the things it consumes are us: our rich varieties of human expressions and relationships, our music, our colours, our time, our resources, our nectarines.