Those crazy Canadians have already beaten us to it. Just when I was organizing my leap into the world of capitalism
and had finalized plans to make millions, I read that a company in Canada had created a “Balloon Boy” costume for Halloween. It’s on the market and it is expected to be the most popular costume this year.

It’s either that or Michael Jackson, which seems a bit morbid to me.
I hope those costumes don’t include intravenous drug drips, but that
wouldn’t surprise me. I guess it all depends on the “Halloween
budget.”

I’m not sure if I have ever been more disgusted with anything than
the “Halloween budget” news stories that have been in the news the past
week. One woman was lamenting the fact that she could afford a costume
for just one of her kids and that the others would have to “get more
creative.” And then there is the matter of the decorations and the
candy. I think this lady was actually adding and subtracting dollar
amounts to and from her budget to get through Halloween by feeding her
family less and cutting back on her personal hygiene. At least it
looked that way. I hope she doesn’t always look like she did on said
news segment.

What is WRONG with people? Why is it that the great unwashed insist
on spending money on crap they do not need and then complain about it
on national television while standing in the aisle of a Walmart with
bad hair and a brood of kids? Has the marketing world gotten to them so
effectively that they feel incomplete as humans unless they consume
whenever they’re commanded to do so by mass marketers? Do people really
purchase Latisse at the insistence of Brook Shields, so that they can
grown longer eyelashes? And now there is even a takeoff — or
ripoff, whatever the case may be — of that product. Like we need
more than one. It is called Rapid Lash and it guarantees to not only
increase the length and volume of eyelashes but also eyebrows. I think
the side effects might be a potential eye irritation and the chance of
a nonreversible uni-brow. Must be the Canadians again, lashing out at
American ingenuity getting the best of them, other than, of course, the
Balloon Boy costume.

My favorite new marketing trick is the one being used by Direct Buy,
the company you can join and pay membership dues to in order to get
good deals on furniture, toilets, and other household goods. Have you
seen the commercials for that one? They have a Condoleezza Rice
look-alike and talk-alike yammering away about how much money she saved
on whatever crap it was that she bought that she probably didn’t need.
I promise you, it looks and sounds just like Condi, except she doesn’t
have Dick Cheney’s hand up her ass, moving her like a puppet and
telling her what to say. At least she’s not “dithering” about her
purchases. She has made up her mind and she is acting quickly to
furnish her home with as much new stuff as she can.

I’m sure there’s a really good reason for using this Condi
impersonator, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is.
Could it be that people are waffling about where to purchase their next
toilet and they feel better if they think they are getting theirs
through the same money-saving source as Condoleezza Rice? I don’t think
I would want the same toilet she has. I imagine her trapped in the
bathroom while taking cell-phone calls from Cheney about how great it
is to torture people in secret prisons instead of giving a little
thought to sending 40,000 more young men and women into war.

Oh, wait. I’m sorry. It’s not “war.” It is now “theater.” Yes, we
are sending young men and women into “theater,” according to Arizona
senator John Kyl on this past Sunday’s Meet the Press. Now, I’m
sure “theater” is a term like “friendly fire” that gets bounced around
a lot in certain circles, but really: Do we want to make it sound like
we are sending these young men and women to the movies? I don’t think
so. What I would really like to see is some of the soldiers who’ve
actually been in Afghanistan and Iraq on those talk shows discussing
what THEY have been through and offering THEIR ideas. That might give
Condoleezza Rice’s toilet a whole new purpose.