NOBODY BETTER READ THIS!

This is totally bullshit. Didn't I talk about this, like, more than a week ago? Are there people reading this blog? I sure hope not.When Love's First Arrow Strikes Close To Home (washingtonpost.com)

The Availability Paradox.

The complement, opposite, or corollary to what you describe in "I want Junk Food" is what I would describe as the iPod effect: 2,000 songs seemed like more than I could ever want in my hip pocket until I was actually able to put 2,000 songs into my hip pocket. Now, there are many days when I shuffle through song after song, sighing to myself, "There's no good songs on this thing."

The iPod effect, I would argue, suggests that rather than inspiring desire, availability tends to create a feeling of insufficiency. That is, one never wants Item C, until one already has items A and B. Also, having items A and B somehow raises one's estimation of item C.

What's most interesting, however, is I don't think that the iPod effect poses a threat to the point of "I want junk food," as both, according to my experience of this thing we call life, hold true.

The real question is then, How can that be? How can availability simultaneously drive us to desire what is readily at hand and yet somehow color our perception of what is readily at hand so that it is somehow never enough? How can the available be simultaneously both superior and inferior to the unavailable?