paper mache ponderings

There are some things that I see in my day to day life that disturb me a little bit. Even frighten me. Just random advertisements or products that it seems one could never ever want or even need. Or television commercials that are either too unbelievable or should have never been made. My favorites are late night infomercials and only-on-TV products (which you can usually find at Wal Mart or CVS) with a special one time only in the next 37 minutes offer! (Coincidentally these one time offers seem to still be going on a week or two later when I happen upon the same commercial again.) I love the one that asks you if you have trouble using normal curling irons and it shows the woman jabbing herself in the eye with the giant curling iron and fingering her frizzy hair with what can only be desribed as disgust. I think it's the one for the Revo Styler (yes, that's right, I remember the product name), this fancy rotating brush that styles and shines and slices and dices and cleans your entire home top to bottom (you get the idea) in one spin.
Here's what I'm thinking: (Okay, I never meant for any of this to be bold or unbolded, that's just my computer playing tricks on me) If you, as a woman with horribly frizzy hair and that may or may not have Tourret's or some other condition that causes your body to go into spasms that launch curling iron into your eye, cannot seem to manage using a simple curling iron, how in the HELL are you going to keep from getting a ROTATING brush stuck in your tangled mane? Just a thought.

A new commercial I caught on TV that made me giggle recently was for birth control. All these women were at a party, swilling cocktails, and I assume they were gossiping, and one woman made a comment about birth control, something, I've only really seen it once and have not had ample time to memorize it. Anyhow, this other girl says, "Yeah, and you shouldn't take it if you smoke!" The other girl responds with, "Right! And inform your doctor if you have heart palpitations, radioactive urine, blah blah blah" and then proceeds to rattle off all the precautions you normally hear voiced over in birth control commercials. But she does it like she just so happens to know and was just waiting for the perfect party topic to roll around so that she could flaunt her knowledge and experience on the subject. Cause I just KNOW that when I get together with all of my girlfriends, all we can talk about are MAOI inhibitors and glucosamine phenylhydrate levels (I just made that up, note, I just made that up)....oh, my gah, as if!

Then there's the tampon commercial where the clever and quick thinking girl inserts a tampax pearl into a hole in a boat she and her guy are paddling around a lake to stop a leak. Don't even GET me started.

I could go on all day about commercials, but that's not even what I intended to write about when I started this blog.

No, I was thinking of something a little different. Who can remember back to a time when you had fun birthday parties and things, and there were games and cake and ice cream and sometimes, a pinata? (Imagine the little tilda over the n) You know, with all the candy inside? All the kids would hit at it while blindfolded until someone hit the jackpot and there was candy everywhere?

Well, I was strolling down the party aisle with a good friend when we happened upon the pinatas. There was one shaped like a dinosaur, a peppermint, a race car, and......Dora the Explorer. Dios mio.

This made me stop dead in los zapatos. Now, I understand that children love, love Dora with all their corazones, but why would you want to string up an paper mache version of the Hispanic tot for the kids to beat the shit out of with a stick to get candy? It just seems like one big, bad ethnic joke to me. "C'mon, let's all cane the Mexican girl to get her candy." No esta bien, mis amigos. No esta bien.

That's all for now. More to come. Much more...