Schlock for the Flock
Don’t know about your shopping needs, but here in the Seton household, we’re just gaga over the chance to name a star after all of our relatives and friends and business associates, neighbors, delivery people, and the otherwise homeless. It’s that time of year, and back out from under its interstellar rock returns the International Star Registry. International indeed! But you know, they’ll send you a sky chart so you’ll be able to find your star. And they’re gonna print it in their registry for all to see. But just imagine one of your dimmer relatives — maybe Aunt Hattie, the dyslexic who doesn’t believe in her dog — goes lookin’ in the register and finds her name there, perhaps next to a whole slew of location numbers or some other form of identifying characteristics. Then she looks down the page and sees that you named a star after everyone else you owed; excuse me, the myriad hangers-on for whom you felt an under-$50 obligation. She’s gonna take your name right out of her registry, otherwise known as her will. Try shopping on-line instead. Maybe she’d like another pair of mukluks; for her god.
Another winner just out for the holidays — and celebrating the fact with full-page, back-of-section ads — are the metal-minded peddlers from The Washington Mint. No, not our Washington mint, the LLC. Their pitch — Own A Piece Of History With The Worlds First "Coin Toss" Presidential Election Silver Proof — is for a coin that has likenesses — if you have a good imagination — of Al Gore on one side and George Bush on the other. Talk about hedging your bets to make the Christmas rush. But you better act fast, because there are "only 100,000 available" and thus "oversubscription is a virtual certainty". You probably don’t have time to finish this commentary before you pick up the phone, right? ‘Cause it comes with "a Numbered Certificate of Authenticity" and a "FREE Deluxe Window Display Case"; if you call in time.
Of course, there’s a temptation to buy this over-priced trash as a joke, but you really shouldn’t encourage them. You don’t want to hurt their feelings, or interrupt them as they separate the mindless from their money. Kinda like the home shopping networks, which priced their omnium-gatherum so high that they were forced to announce every now and then something to the effect that no one with a double-digit IQ would pay this much. Which is only a step above sending money to televangelists. The fleecing of the flock, as it were.
No denying that if people earn it, they should be able to spend it the way that they want. Gamble , do drugs, rent harlots...but what if they spend all their money on such frivolities and are still alive? Should we have to support them? Should we not require idiot insurance on people who spend their money badly, so that Snoopy or the great deer will look after them? It’s not the morality of what consumes their funds, but that they would not exercise the discipline necessary to keep themselves whole.
Another reason to resent the commercialism that has over taken the season is that it forces people to scratch their crania in vague hopes of freeing an idea about what to buy someone who has everything — except a small plane, a hangar to keep it in and impeccable maintenance. No honey, I don’t think you’re ready for your own plane yet. Larger earrings?
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.