It is truly amazing how much of our landscape is dominated by advertising. It seems everything is an add, or at minimum covered in one or more adds, to the point of even altering the appearance of Humans. A dockworker once remarked that "paintings hang on a wall, they don't sit" refusing to give up his seat on a bus after a hard long day. All that plucking, shaving, painting and dressing is an attempt to look younger, but why? We're not fooling anyone and we aren't any healthier underneath, we only look healthier.

Sometimes there are practical reasons for certain "improvements" like hiding burn scars. I get this because many of my wheel chair clients complained people were talking to their equipment (headrests, sip&puff straws and other controls) rather than making eye contact. As a young Dive master, yes I worked in the Tourist trap industry, having a beard or mustache meant having a perpetual water leak in my mask unless I used copious amount of Vaseline to stem the tide of rising water attempting to drown my eyeballs. Tired of having to clean all that goop off my 'stache 3 times a day meant the facial hair had to go. Being a creature of habit, it stayed that way most of the time, besides, time spent on grooming is time not spent on other things I'd rather be doing.

I always questioned the wisdom of spending weeks of fairing and sanding to get the perfect finish on a newly built boat, only to have it blemished by the first wave that slams it into a dock, though I must admit that I also like to look at pretty things and that the advertisers are fully making use of that to try and get my attention.

After all, I take my Coffee with all the embellishments.