I had to think for a while about what I'm boycotting. It's not very interesting to say that I'm boycotting caffeinated beverages. I'm just not drinking them any more. I don't shop at Wal-Mart, but there isn't one anywhere convenient for me and I'm certainly not driving out of my way to get there. I have no problem with Target, which seems like Wal-Mart Lite in many ways and, at the end of the day, is probably just as evil, in the sense of destroying the economy and all that.

I suppose you could say that I'm boycotting BMW, only in the sense that I'll never buy another one after the continuing mechanical problems exhibited by my current one and the dealers' complete inability to fix anything on the first try. More generally, if Consumer Reports doesn't "recommend" a car, I'll never buy it. I'm not sure how I'd feel if they recommended the new 3-series (which is, roughly, where I need to be shopping if/when I replace my Z3). I'd previously been boycotting any though of getting an automatic, slushbox transmission, but if I want a 3-series and I'm boycotting BMW, that tends to point toward the Lexus IS, where there's no manual offered with the beefy engine. Bastards.

You might even say that I'm boycotting RIAA-labeled music, but I've just been too damn busy to buy much of any music at all in the past year, which shocks me most of all, relative to my former hundreds-of-dollars-per-month habit. Maybe it's that I've already got more music than I know what to listen to (1200+ CDs and counting).

Probably the only true boycott: there's a private parking lot near the airport that I used to frequent because it offered reasonably priced car cleaning service. Leave your keys, let them know when you're getting back, and you get a shiny, clean car for about what you'd pay at any other car wash. Then they stole my radar detector and didn't give me the time of day. I now park at one of their competitors (and keep my keys to myself). They've probably lost over $1000 in parking fees, over the years since I stopped using them. Not that they'd notice...