Christmas has become the commercialized feeding frenzy that it is because of what we have allowed ourselves to become. Americans LOVE to buy things. And it seems that the more marketing agents realize that our desire to shop, and our need to buy, is no greater than at Christmas time, should it surprise us that crappy products tumble out of the woodwork and into our stores and impulse displays like so much rubber fake vomit from a Taiwanese storage container.
Americans are guilty of so much buying that the impulse items at check out counters now stretch 4 racks deep and make shoppers leaving the store to check out look more like cattle in a Nebraska slaughter chute than people anymore. I understand putting a few magazines out or some candy, but who the hell puts toys and sugar within arms reach of kids?? No doubt the reason we are leaving the store isn't because we were done, but more likely that our little darling children suddenly transformed into 'Rosemary's Baby'. The LAST thing I want to contend with is a screaming child throwing an epic fit in a checkout aisle because he can't get the impulse sugar. But even that makes some kind of sense. Can someone PLEASE tell me how I would need to 'impulsively' purchase a flashlight, a toenail clipper shaped like a dolphin, and enough beef jerky to supply a traveling chuck wagon on the Oregon Trail? There is no escape from it. Some however, after years of retail lobotomy, simply disconnect from the social world and remain behind closed doors. To escape the insanity of impulse buying? Oh no. It was to purchase the same inane crap without the need of winding up like the next unwitting contestant to have their photo snapped and put on on "People of Walmart.
The alternative was fielded years ago so you can buy these impulse items from the safety of your home. There's a catalog where you and your family can browse the biggest piles of impulse shi....I mean products ever seen. What is this tome of capricious consumer bliss you may ask? It's the Fingerhut catalog.
I have to honestly admit that I used to buy some of these things simply because of their sheer idiocy. Remember the shower attachment that connected to your shower head so that two jets of water came out instead of one? There was one at the top for your head, and one at waist level for your....yeah. The problem with it was that all the water came out of the bottom and barely dribbled out of the top. Which, in case you haven't already managed to figure out, was a very good way to allow people to masturbate with a jet of hot water equal in pressure to that used by firemen during the Oakland riots without ever having to lie about going to wash their hair. And yes, I bought it.
Another was a small cheese grater that was shaped like a pig. You put the cheese in the top and then twisted the pigs head around in some sick, porcine rendition of 'The Exorcist'( I named mine Regan). Your prize for your satanic swinely efforts? Yup. You guessed it. Oodles and oodles of cheesy pig noodles erupt from the back of the pig. I swear to God, I couldn't eat bacon or cheese for months after that. Pig butt cheese strudel.
Remember the Ronco Pocket fisherman? It was a fishing pole, tackle box, and measuring tape. This thing was stupid all over. I looked exactly like one of those electric knives for cutting turkey. The tackle "box" was about as big as a pill organizer and couldn't fit anything except a fly for trout fishing. I won't even tell you how much of a loser you'd look like standing on the edge of a trout stream trying to whip this one foot pole back and forth. What could possibly be caught on a rod that made it a distance of 14 inches before hitting the water. And who could even maneuver it? Midgets? The fun part was pulling the tape measure out and finding out that it only came out 8 inches. Just so you could know for a fact that anything caught on this piece of crap was too small even before you measured it. And yes, I bought that too. Oh come on. There is a bit of class to a marketing tragedy this epic.
My greatest acquisition, however, HAD to be what I call "The Home Suicide Kit". Originally it was designed to make it possible to wash your hair without getting the rest of your body wet. Now I thought they had invented this device centuries ago and it's called it a SINK, but then again I'm just a dumb consumer.
The 'product', for lack of a better word, consisted of a three gallon baby blue bucket. The bucket was split in halves from the center at the bottom and up both sides. One side of the bucket was hinged so that it could be opened like a clam, and there was a hole in the bottom for your neck. To put it on, one had only to open it to place it around their neck and then securely close the front. Viola!! Instant head-in-a-bucket. It's also the quickest way to look like a dog being curbed from liking its testicles except that a dog would have the common sense not to attach it to its own head. In any case, this is where the true fun occurs.
So you have attached this big ass, blue bucket onto your head and must now navigate your body into the shower. How will you accomplish this feat of navigation without the aid of those stereoscopic, binocular receptive organs on your face, you ask? Well, the designers, in their infinite wisdom, saw fit to add, completely free of charge to their valued customers I might add, plastic adhesive stickers that look like eyes onto the front of the bucket. Don't ask. Please. Don't ask. You can see it coming though can't you? Like a Bhopal train wreck. You just can't stop looking.
So now you have been imbued with plastic adhesive ocular goodness and hopefully step into the shower. I am going to assume that you took off your clothes for this exercise which now begs the question, "Why buy the fucking bucket in the first place?", but that is neither here nor there. All there is left to do now is turn on the water and let the bucket fill with water. My God, the survival mechanism is going off in my own head like a klaxson right now as I recall the multitude of lesser intelligent organisms that can instinctively prevent what a human being failed at even with precognition.
Now I would think that an inventor with the common sense to engineer plastic stickers that function just as good as real eyes would have enough anatomical knowledge to realize that directly below those now disabled eyes was a very real airway that needs to be kept patent. Is there such a device installed on this "Wonder Bucket"?? Hell no there isn't!!! "Wash quick, Dumb ass!! Wash like your very life depended on it. Because it DOES!!"
I can see the scenario playing out in my head. It's no small wonder that the bucket was blue. I'm sure it very closely matches the color of hypoxia you'll get after drowning yourself in a bucket. Let's just hope that the person who comes upstairs to investigate the loud crash in the tub caused by your collapsing body will have enough medical training to look past the wide open adhesive eyes for a more definitive symptom of distress. Can you see the conversation with the EMS now??
"Timmy, why didn't you give your mother any mouth to mouth resuscitation?"
"Well I heard the crash and looked in the shower to see if she was hurt but her eyes was wide open so I just left her alone. Momma doesn't like me to check on her too much because she says that only an idiot could get killed in their own bathtub".
"Well , Timmy. Even if you didn't check on her right away, don't you think that a 90 minute shower is a little long even for a genius?"
"Oh, hell no Mister Paramedic. We got her one of the double headed showers, too what got that water sprayer for your...uh...yeah".
