A pair of drawers with hand-cut dovetails from a recent tool cabinet I finished.  December 2017

My wife sent me the video below this morning — a concatenation of ads in Japanese for Van Houten Cocoa, a typically sugary chocolate drink.  It’s aimed at Japanese women, and it’s fascinating.  Highly recommended to watch:

The basic theme of the ad is a woman, attempting to fill some level of traditional gender roles, becomes frustrated with the lack of connection with her son, husband, and daughter, then explodes in a heavy-metal rage that is only soothed by drinking a sugary beverage.  There’s no symbolism that needs to be decoded to understand the point — in the absence of connection/serotonin (one of our empathy/We/happiness-eudaemonia hormones), the best thing to do is harvest the benefit of a solid shot of dopamine (our primary self-centered pleasure hormone.)  Which, of course, reinforces the rage reaction by creating more biological drivers toward impulsive behavior.

Terrifying.  The processed food companies know EXACTLY what they’re selling.