Someone was complaining to me about christmas music being played incessantly at supermarkets and shopping megaplexes. There’s quite a low-tech solution to this: earplugs and eyeshades whenever visiting large open commercial spaces.

The christmas music is played to trigger memories of presents, which triggers feelings of guilt that you haven’t done your christmas shopping yet, which triggers the need to buy, buy, buy!

Human eyes and ears are quite a serious security flaw. All kinds of aggressive advertising memes can leak through and distort your ability to make sensible purchasing decisions. Some people can recognise the memes and deflect all but the most subtle - a kind of firewall. Others have no idea and just process everything they see. Like all security holes, this calls for a patch. An eyepatch, to be precise. Two of them. And earplugs for the music (shame it blocks out people too, but when was the last time you had a meaningful conversation with someone you met in a shopping mall?). Bakeries and shoe shops require nose plugs.

Of course, you’ll look like an idiot, so you’ll fit in just fine with all the other shopper drones!

I predict that by 2010, 95% of the world’s cognitive neuroscientists will be employed by the marketing industry.