December 20, 2000

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Christmas Miracles

Maybe it’s a Christmas miracle, maybe not.

But pholks, one of my longtime Christmas wishes seems to be coming true. I hope so, anyhow. Maybe it’s only my imagination, or maybe I have just been lucky, but I’ve seen very few tv ads for the dreaded clappers, the obnoxious Chia heads and the stupid Salad Shooters this season. Sure, I know there is a week to go, but the mass invasion of my tv viewing time set has not materialized.

Why?

Have my prayers been answered by the great Santa Claus? Did the makers or marketers of all three of these devices get so tired of my annual bitching about them that they ceased their Christmas season assault of the tv signals? Me thinks not.

But perhaps there are some more practical reasons the invasion of tv commercials have slacked of so far this holiday season. Reasons such as:

• Marketing surveys show that everyone who would buy these things has done so and there are not enough dumb people left to buy them to turn a profit. This surely is a possibility considering how many of the damned things have been sold.

• Shortages of materials. Perhaps there was so much bad weather that the entire crop of Chia Pet seeds was wiped out and the seed farmers had to turn to the government for disaster relief. And nobody heard about it because the media was too focused on the whole election snafu.
And the electronic devices which run the off-on systems in The Clapper were diverted into the manufacture of  Play Station 2s thus leaving hundreds of thousands of little old ladies and men sitting in their easy chairs with no way to turn off the lights or the tv without struggling to get out of their chairs.

And the Salad Shooters parts were used in hair dryers instead or maybe the government restricted the sales of them because they looked too much like handguns.

• The market for these things has gone overseas with millions of Shooters, Clappers and Chias being gobbled up by unsuspecting Europeans, Asians and Middle East consumers. Perhaps this is a new way to help reduce the U.S. trade deficit. Maybe some unsuspecting Third World nation has been lead to believe that the Salad Shooters are state-of-the-art guns which can be activated by the clapping of hands.

• Or pholks, maybe a secret American militant cult has bought up all the Clappers, Chia Heads and Chia Pets along with Salad Shooters and is stock piling them in a remote outpost in Utah, Idaho or Nebraska. Only they know what can be done with these things.

Anyway, even if the week before Christmas we get assaulted with tv ads for these things it will have been a welcomed relief from the traditional barrage I’m so sick and tired of. All I know is that something has happened this year and I’m thankful.

Merry Christmas to all you pholks and best wishes for not getting a Clapper, a Chia or a Shooter under the tree.