Wood Grain

The idea behind veneer is that you cover up a cheep wood with a thin layer of nicer more expensive wood.  My mom used the veneer philosophy with t-shirts when I was growing.  She would buy cheap multi-packs of plain white shirts then proceed to paint various brand names and logos onto the shirts.  To be fair, my mom has an incredible talent for painting and drawing.  Nobody at school ever knew that the "Guess" shirt I was wearing was actually just a veneer hiding a plain shirt recently purchased from Zellers.

Wood veneers are not new.  They've been around for hundreds of years.   In the '70s, plastics started being produced.  The goal with plastic at the time was to try and make it look like wood .  Soon plastic wood veneers started showing up on everything from televisions to tables.  This happened until the '80s, when somebody realized that not everything had to look like wood and plastic could simply be a solid color.

Eventually something cheaper will replace plastic.  We'll be so accustomed to plastic that we wont be able to simply get rid of it.  To fill the transition period the new product will have to be made to look like plastic.  "That looks exactly like a plastic wood grained veneer, I would have never guessed that it wasn't plastic."   Why not start collecting all of those future plastic antiques now?  I would but I'm in the middle of a law suit from wearing one of the shirts that my mom made me.   Something about copywrite infringement involving a maximum $250,000 fine and up to 7 years in prison.