Start the New Year Right

For the last day of the new year, I was going through my word processing documents, realizing that I never delete ANYTHING.  Ned and Marta have been married for more than 20 year and I have a file that I believe I wrote before they were married.  It's quite a trip down memory lane, and in among the many oddball things I'm finding are some Funny the World entries that I wrote at some time, intending to post them, but apparently never did.  I really like these from 2004

16 June 2004

Our cable company is doing work on the line these days, so we are having intermittent interruption of service.

I’m one of those people who need the "company" of tv in the background, so the TV is on all day long, whether I watch it or not. The lineup of the shows that I have on keeps me aware of what time it is: Today Show / Regis and Kelly / Today Show #2 / West Wing #1 / West Wing #2 / Columbo / first half of Queer Eye / Ellen / Oprah / News.

However, with the cable going out intermittently, I don’t always get the channel changed at the right time, so today I happened to have some infomercial about a skin care product.

The only reason this warrants a journal entry was because I felt I had just stepped into Stepford.

A woman put a box that looked like a big metal toolbox on the table and opened it up. The four women watching, in rapt adoration, all gasped and put their hands to their mouths and let out "oohhhh!" sounds.

What was in the box? Make up. Layers and layers and layers of make up in all different shapes, textures, and scents.

but wait...there’s more!

A beginner kit only costs $60 and they include brushes and a DVD that tells you how to put on makeup.

OK, folks, I know that I pay very little attention to my appearance. I get my hair cut at Supercuts, I haven’t worn makeup in years, I go out in clothes that are coffee stained and in the summertime I don’t wear a bra unless I have to. I’m fat and sloppy and all that.
But surely there is better use to be made of $60 than to spend it on a starter kit of makeup.

I’d love to see this infomercial running back to back with one for Christian Children’s Fund, with the dirty faced starving kids. How much food a starter kit of makeup could buy for those kids.

19 June 2004

I don’t remember what gift I got for my high school graduation back in 1960, but I know for a fact it wasn’t a boob job.

This evening’s news reported tonight (this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this report) that a popular gift for girls graduating from high school is breast enhancement.

Call me an old fuddy duddy, but...

ARE ALL YOU SILICONE ENHANCED TEEN AGERS OUT OF YOUR EVER-LOVIN’ MINDS???

More to the point, what in God’s name would possess a parent to agree to such a procedure for a 17 or 18 year old???

I haven’t seen the new Stepford Wives movie yet, though it looks like a funny film. I enjoyed the first one back in 1975. But somehow I think that it’s not quite as much fiction this time around as it was back in ‘75.

We are becoming a culture where plastic surgery, which used to be something people “didn’t talk about” has become a spectator sport, as people settle in each night to watch The Swan or Extreme Makeover.

We are producing a generation of people who have lost all sense of individuality.

If you lined up any number of today’s young stars from Brittney Spears down to the Olsen Twins, and asked me to name them, I wouldn’t be able to. They are all blonde, perfect features, and look like they came out of the same cookie mold. I envision a factory somewhere with a bunch of Oompa Loompas waddling around stamping out perfect blonde young things with perfect breasts and perfect hair and perfect teeth and perfect noses and then turning them out into the world.

This business of going in for major surgery to look more like your favorite celebrity (which is easy, since they all look alike) is crazy. When I was a teenager and wanted to look like Judy Garland, I slicked my hair back, wore wispy bangs and red lipstick. I didn’t chop five inches off my legs so I’d be short.

Even just enforcing the notion that whatever one has been given at birth needs to be tweaked in order to become more beautiful is a sad thing.

It’s major surgery for one thing. Have I mentioned lately how my friend died during routine surgery (hernia) because of a bad reaction to anesthesia?

Of course you rarely read about the horror stories, the things that go wrong. We only see the success stories.

Has anybody looked at Michael Jackson lately?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not opposed to plastic surgery across the board. But like everything else, it should be all things in moderation. A better gift to give the college grad is the sense of self-worth that comes from knowing she is loved, accepted, treasured.. That her family is proud of her accomplishments and ....

Apparently I never finished this, which may explain why it was never posted.  But the thoughts are still good to post, even this many years later.