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This is a simple column by a complex
woman.
“Splenda” Oreos can kill you, but an artificial sweetener is A-okay for little boys and girls? Everybody else must be busy flushing their genitals out with daisy fresh scented douche bags to notice the afternoon commercials promoting splenda as a low-calorie alternative for the entire family, especially little girls watching their figures. Then, on the radio, PSAs promoting an upcoming Inside Edition-sponsored baby makeovers, with the dulcet (approving) tones of former beauty contestant, now host, Deborah Norville adding acceptability to a highly suspect case of splenda. Granted, I can’t stand the Janeane Garofalos of this Free Radical World promoting their beauty-is-ugly alternatives, but c’mon, what kind of message are we ignoring in droves while we’re glued to the reality-TV consciousness of whores to the highest bidder, dimples and biceps do indeed apply? I wait and I wait, and still, splenda goes without discussing, as a “Hot Topic” on The View, Oprah or the Bill O’Reilly Show. Not when Annika Sorenson and the stupid Daytime Emmys make for sexier fodder. Well, enough of their extraneous plugs. The dubious hits of Joe Millionaire, The Bachelor, Extreme Makeover and Are You Hot? already establish within civilized society that looks matter, everything else falls into place, let’s stop kidding ourselves – bought and paid for with mommy and daddy’s platinum Chase, debts overloading. I figure, by the time my son James turns 18, NASA scientists will have figured out a way out of this extinction into a brand new world on the 42nd galaxy to the right of the moon. That’s where we’ll be, away from Anna Nicole and Bobby Trendy sensibilities. I mean, do you have any idea how impossible it is to finish the Sunday Seattle Times, much less an entire book of Victorian poetry without having to on the can after an especially nightmarish bout of Mexican Large Combinaciones? ... When there’s free porn on the ‘Net, Real Dolls in the mail, and a series collection of Girls Gone Wild! on DVD behind the technicolor, surround-sound stereophonics? Just push play. As my foot unconsciously taps to the stolen post-80s rap riffs of Christina Aguilera’s “Dirrrty,” and my fists clench in a knot of unrequited rage to key phrases of today’s angry young man, Eminem, the realization that I’ve already bought and paid for my share in the stock of shallow hits me like a ton of a year’s supply of man-made, non-perishable detonated products gathering dust on the shelves, two doors down. “I’d like two dozen original glazed, please.” “The power to amaze yourself.” “She’s not 62 if she’s a day.” “Embrace your fat.” “Beauty sells.” “Beauty’s only skin deep.” Is it any wonder we’re schizophrenic? Pass the Ritalin and the Dexatrim. I pass. And, I demand immediate retractions. It’s a slow, methodical, painstaking pain in the ass process, but one that every single member of the human race would do well to start. Starting with an end to the co-dependence of all things artificial, and a return to the natural. Because, if Oreos contain trans fatty acids known to cause heart disease and high cholesterol levels and should be banned as treats for children, then what’s splenda – a healthy alternative to sprinkle on your Kellogg’s Special K?! What’s the difference, and what’s the point? Obviously, the farther we veer from the source, the farms, the cows, the oceans, the dangerous the consequences, consequences proven diagnosis everyday, proving fallacy a decade’s worth of legacy in jump-the-gun advertising. Tobacco was touted as a cure-all, medicinal. Now look. Yet we frown at marijuana use. Alcohol used to be a religious experience. Now look. Yet we ban consumption in public arenas. The mixed messages would send an ordinary person into hermetically sealed seclusion for life. Just make sure the water’s pure. Even the bottled stuff ain’t safe. Sold.
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