My Life: March 2005 Archives

Today I received an email forward from a relative, subject line: "funny ad" with attachment named "BestCommercialEver". High expectations here.

It starts off with a kid (maybe six years old) and his father in the grocery store. The kid sees a bag of candy and puts it in the cart. The father puts it back on the shelf. The kid replaces it, and the father again removes it, whereupon the kid launches into the mother of all temper tantrums, attracting the attention of other shoppers and in general behaving like a total brat. It ends with the words "Use condoms" emblazoned across the screen (followed by the logo for the sponsor, Zazoo).

Let me say that I was shocked. Humor never even came close to approaching my mind. It inspired me to coin a new term: Pedophobic (having to do with fear of children). (Actually I doubt I'm the first to coin it but I don't recall hearing it used.) Another word that comes to mind is misanthropic. The message is: Children are the problem. Eliminating them is the solution. Scary.

This so totally goes against every Catholic moral principle dealing with human sexuality. Note how cleverly the child becomes responsible; the error was not in not sufficiently disciplining the kid, the error was in not using a condom and preventing the kid in the first place. Spouses ought not endure hardship and sacrifice for the sake of the next generation; rather, they should avoid the hardship of raising the next generation (fundamentally an act of selfishness). Children are fundamentally brats. Despising children becomes a virtue.

I don't think my relative (a Catholic) appreciates why I do not find this ad amusing. But perhaps I can plant some seeds in her mind, or perhaps supply an antidote to the poison she's viewed so if she isn't better than she was before she viewed it, maybe she won't be any worse, either.

I was at the mall this weekend and found there no less than eight, count 'em, eight booths selling cellphones, some just a few yards apart from each other. This just amazed me. I could understand one for each carrier, although I think most of them were multi-carrier. Do we really need eight cell phone stores in the mall? Is this a sign of conspicous consumption, or have we just hit the "sweet spot" in the market? Being a cellphone owner I don't want to sound like I want to deny people something that I own, but I wonder if this isn't the sign of some sort of excess. Nor do I want to be a Luddite. I just thought it was a bit strange. Thoughts, anyone?

This book I've mentioned before, From the Holy Mountain, continues to provide much interesting information. (I must say I've not run across a book in a long time that taught me so many new vocabulary words.) Anyway there is a section on all the various, shall we say, religious characters of the Byzantine world. I had heard about the stylites, who made their homes atop pillars and preached from there (I believe St. Simon is the most well known of these). But have you heard of the dendrites? These were people who took literally Jesus's exhortation to be like the birds of the air, and they made their homes in trees!