Snatching
up my keys and wallet to head out to work the
other day, it was the perfect morning for a detour
to the nearest vending machine to buy a genki
drink. You all know the product im referring to;
the tiny bottle, the hint of vitamins, the repugnant
taste and those ludicrous testosterone charged
TV ads - marketed by some hard rockin’ sweaty
guy dragging a canoe up a cliff.
Those commercials would be far more dynamic and
entertaining if gravity made a cameo. If I made
the ad you’d see the sweaty guy plummeting
down a sheer cliff with his trusty canoe crashing
down on top of him. Coming to our hero’s
aid would be a pair of genki holding yokels straight
from Deliverance. Genki – Cooler
than a freshly sheared sheep.
Whatever
it was, something convinced me that this little
drink with its barely containable caffeine potency
was instrumental for a bright start to the day….all
I needed was some loose change and a canoe…
As I proceeded toward the vending machine, I grabbed
for my wallet and gleefully felt its ballooned,
coin-stuffed shape. A wallet filled so full of disposable
income that not even its ‘100% cotton’
tag could assure me that it wouldn’t come
apart. While emptying the contents of the wallet
into my hand, I realised something didn’t
feel right. There seemed to be no variation in the
colour or mass of this payload, and it sure as heck
didn’t feel like money.
What
was I grasping? Tiny dull silver medallions with
a bold “1” stamped into the plastic
surface. First prize! Congratulations!
Here are your tiny medals! At this
point it was abundantly clear that this was no reward.
In my hand was 50 yen worth of one yen coins. Even
with their combined strength, they couldn’t
be exchanged for even one of those dazzling plastic
household items at the 100 yen store.
I offered a useless gesture to the vending machine
and fed one of the coins into the slot. Rejected!
I could sense that even the faceless drink machine
was feeling embarrassed for me. Filled with
rage, I lunged for the coin in the return slot and
angrily threw it as hard as I could, only to have
it catch the wind and blow back into my face! By
this point the remaining coins were laughing hysterically
at me. Laughing money? I knew I had lost it. Time
for work.
Seriously, what can be purchased for one yen? OK,
fine! Besides a gimmicky down payment on a mobile
phone? Maybe im just bitter because 1,000 yen notes
don’t seem to accumulate around my apartment
as well as plastic bags and those shitty 1 yen tokens.
Im positive that the days of the one yen coin are
numbered, being only a matter of time before this
tiny space waster suffers a similar threat to that
of the five yen coin: A precise bullet hole through
the centre, although that hasn’t seemed to
stop those equally dopey 5 yens from continuing
to show up, maybe a stronger message is in order.
Let’s
rid this pretend money from society, melt it down
and enhance our lives by fashioning this raw material
into rubbish bins for the streets, bigger beer cans
or a prototype liquid metal terminator, to eliminate
the worlds obsolete money….GET…OUT!
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