3 AM smockservation

Honeybaby, EVERYTHING on infomercials looks more fun than it does in real life. Haven't you ever seen those people exercising on those Gazelles or whatever they are--with big ol' smiles on their faces? They're on drugs, darlin'. Trust me, no one smiles like that while she's ramping her heart up to explosion level. Not even at the hard core gym I used to go to--where sweating and grunting were marks of HONOR.

Yeah...and they work on television!

I think Josef Pieper put it most thoroughly:

"We should also consider how these ubiquitous commercials in turn possess the power to influence human attitudes, as these commercials propagate a dreamworld primarily by glorifying human weaknesses. Not that we should see the devil in every corner...Still, it can hardly be denied that our language through all this indeed progressively loses its character as communication, as it more and more tries to influence while less and less saying anything." (Abuse of Language -- Abuse of Power. Translated by Lothar Krauth. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992, pp. 23-24.)

[For Pieper, "language" means not only words, but music, film, television, radio, and practically any other medium as well, with all the nonverbal cues some of them have available.]

If I had dirt on my floor as cute as the stuff on theirs, it would be fun to vacuum. M&M's, buttons, pennies......I just have plain old fluff and hair and icky stuff I don't recognize.