Monday (Blogophilia 33.9)

It's not nice to fool mother nature.


If you are old like me, you remember the Chiffon margarine commercial. Mother Nature is traipsing through the woods and is approached with a tub of something she thinks is butter. Every time she was sold a bill of goods. The product was supposedly so good it would even fool her. All the commercials ended with her coming unglued at the shattering illusion. She would snap her fingers after saying the above statement, summoning thunder, with elephants or tigers chasing the camera.
It was a cute bit. Did everything a good ad should. The catch phrase entered the lexicon, even though the product isn't widely available anymore. But like all marketing and advertising, it was based on a lie: Buy our product and improve your life. 
Being lied to is never a fun thing. You expect one thing and get another. It happens constantly. It is why we are so cynical these days. Nothing is as it seems. Photoshopped, autotuned and manipulated, entertainers are everywhere playing their dog and pony shows, screaming for attention. Nature is co-opted and life is cheapened (at least more than it has been in the past). Nothing is real. And we still buy it.
Then there are the stories of fair maidens meeting studly hands and playing hours long bedroom tennis matches ending in Love-Love, with no consequences. The women are slender and blonde and the men are curly and cut. It's a trope members of our own Blogophilia corps earn actual money from. And more power to them. It is better than slaving over spreadsheets in a cubicle. 
But in real life, we are lucky when passing the peace pipe with our partners lasts two minutes. Wham, bam, Thank you, Ma'am. We are pudgy and balding. We spend time purchasing this cream or that tonic in the hopes we can fool each other one more time, when it would be better to take everyone as they are.
Why do we keep running in this circle? 
Probably because, in our fantasy world, we want to be the image...or the actual manipulators. That is the carrot dangled in front of us. To have people dance to our whims and serve our pleasures. And we silently snicker and cheer when a star is devoured by the human adoration, sparkle by sparkle. They are proven to be human, and so are we with the base cheering of their falls. Admit it. You do this.
The manipulators know this and keep pitching us the image of the unattainable. And we keep buying it, hoping Mother Nature is fooled...again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Topic-Michael Todd
Pic-Diana Jillian
Pic guesses: Elephant (in blog), Dumbo, Issue, Problem, Circus, Junk in the trunk, In the pink,

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