21 July 2008

Do bears shit in the woods?

It's a dangerous path I tread when I go a week without an update here. The last time that happened, a week turned into a month which spread out into a year, and I can't have that happen again, or... or... well, or nothing. There wouldn't really be any consequences, actually, unless you count that overwhelming sense of failure that comes attached to the inability to complete even the simplest task. Even so, I ought not to be so lackadaisical about these things.

Unfortunately, I was back on the wheat last week which turned me into a morose thuggish bastard, and it is not in the nature of morose thuggish bastards to engage in bloggery. No, if you want to find morose thuggish bastards expressing themselves, simply turn to the back of your Bible and read the Book of Revelations. Now that was the work of some morose thuggish bastards. On acid.

That said, consider yourselves fortunate that I did not write anything last week, for had I managed to focus the energy, who knows what could have come out? Hell, you could have been treated to a diatribe on... toilet paper.

Or more specifically, television advertising for toilet paper.

In the old days, Mr. Whipple - the curmudgeonly grocer - berated anybody he caught squeezing the Charmin only to end up giving it a good coddle himself by the end of the 30 second drama in what was clearly some loose allusion to people squeezing tomatoes or other produce... because otherwise, who gives a shit that you've squished a roll of toilet paper? It just springs back. It's paper.

These commercials got across the point that Charmin was soft without getting scatalogical or otherwise drawing too much attention to the anus. There was no need to go there; everybody knows what toilet paper is for: it's to defudge the pucker. Going into those kinds of specifics just makes people uncomfortable. Softness as an abstract ideal is sufficient to get the point across, and a nice memorable catch phrase will get people to pick up your brand. Mission accomplished.

So, great, advertising of toilet paper - except they call it "bathroom tissue" to further disassociate it from its purpose - focused on how soft it was against your skin. And that's great. It's safe, and inoffensive. I can live with that.

But modern toilet paper... um, bathroom tissue, I mean... advertising seems to be moving away from the abstraction with which I am comfortable. For example, the ads with the goofy little puppy running around watching people sit down hard on uncomfortable surfaces and making comments about how that's gotta hurt (or whatever) are a little too ass-centric for me. In the old days, they said the paper was soft, and they rubbed it on their faces, and asses never came up. They deceived us and we allowed them to deceive us and everything was good. But no longer is the ass lurking around backstage; now it is front and center with a big spotlight shining down on it.

Now, don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with a nice set of callipygian buttocks, all round and firm and supple and... ahem! What? Oh, right... But when it's an ad for toilet paper, it's not about a heart-shaped derriere. It's about an anus nestled deep down between a couple of buttocks, smeared with poop. And that's no longer abstract.

The puppy ads aren't the worst offenders, either. No, that dubious honor belongs to the family of cartoon bears that have replaced Mr. Whipple.

These bears really push the boundaries of good taste. Take the ad in which two bears are running down a beach, their faces distorted by the urgent need to drop a squat. As they run, there is suddenly a closeup of their two asses wagging back and forth (just in case we failed to appreciate their sense of urgency) and then they come upon two outhouses. The voiceover says, "Now when you gotta go, you can go strong or you can go soft." What?! They must be talking about the toilet paper, but is sure sounds like they're talking about the act of defecation itself. They use the same euphemism in the ad with the little bear that wants to use the whole roll of paper to wipe his ass - "Uh oh! Gotta go!"

Of course, the little bear doesn't need the whole roll; he only needs three squares which they illustrate by spraying Charmin and the competition with that blue liquid used to demonstrate absorption in everything from paper towels to bathroom tissue to tampons and maxi pads (with wings!) When they lift up the paper, there's an outline of a hand beneath it. The Charmin hand is dry; the other one is wet. The thinly disguised moral: If that blue liquid had been poop, you'd have poop on your hand! Unless you use Charmin. Say goodbye to poop hand.

And then there's the advertisement for the Charmin Extra Strong, in which the bears are playing football and the one bear jumps back with a horrified, "Yiiiiikes!" when he sees the ass of the little bear with flecks of white paper all over it. "No one likes a bath tissue that leaves little white pieces behind." Wow. An anti-dingleberry commercial. Now they're doing more than putting the image of an anal sphincter in my head. They're putting the image of a hairy anal sphincter bedecked with clumps of poo and paper.

I think the next ads should have a bear walking around in a lab coat with an index finger in the air shouting, "Eureka!" The bear will be blue, but the finger will be brown, and the voiceover can say something like, "Not all breakthroughs are good." And then talk about the evils of stinkfinger.

So now aren't you glad I didn't update for a week?

Uh oh. Gotta go!

The Last Five:
Do bears shit in the woods? - 21 July 2008
Politics schmoliticks - 14 July 2008
words and pictures - 14 July 2008
A Horrible Update - 13 July 2008
I am just Babbling - 11 July 2008

Do bears shit in the woods?

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