I'm hatin' it!

Okay, don’t panic. I’m not hating farming. Farming’s marvelous. In fact, you’d probably rather I talked about farming than what I’m hating. But there is more to me than a bumbling neophyte, and one of the many kinks in the, ah, tangled fishing lines of my soul (as it were) is a deep loathing of advertising.

Not that I need to go off on a big tirade. We all know ads are the modern pestilence that incessantly crowds into mental space that could be better used for fine literature, memories of kissing one’s spouse, and where one put one’s keys. If you’re not already annoyed by advertisements, you’re either one of those few people who needs to read the social enyclicals or you’re some hick living in a cabin.

But there’s this one billboard on the way into town that has pushed me over the top. The top of what, I don’t know, since World War I is over. But I’m there. It has encroached even on this blog. Someone somewhere has to speak out against the abomination, and it seems it must be me.

Ready? Here it is. It’s an ad for a slop shop, also known as a “fast food restaraunt”, which, in the interest of maintaining a respectful anonymity, we’ll call O’Donalds. On one side of the billboard, occupying literally half the billboard, is a giant Egg O’Muffin. Again, I’m veiling the actual name of this product, but to help you visualize it I’ll say that it apparently consists of two muffins, lightly toasted, each about twenty feet wide. Between them is a yellow substance which once resembled an egg.

So far, so good. O’Donalds sells this product, and O’Donalds has bought the right to inflict the sight of their product on morning commuters. Perhaps they even donate a massive O’Muffin every so often to some “Third World” villagers that have reached that point of starvation where they would willingly ingest it. They’re proud of it, and they have a right to show it.

But then, then, on the left half of the billboard, without even a mitigating blend between the two images, is a young woman standing outside a tent on a mountainside!

She is fit, she flings her arms wide to the rising sun (not pictured), she is a free spirit. Below her is a slogan which has probably jangled in your invaded mind and which I won’t repeat.

If anyone, anyone, can explain what possible connection can exist in a coherent cosmos between a joyous camper in the middle of everywhere and a ten-foot-high Egg O’Muffin, I’ll be able to sleep again. As it is, the thing hurts the brain. It’s like seeing “1 + 1 = Bubbacious”, or “War Is Peace”, or “Black is Fuschia”, over and over and over again. I try to put the two things together, but they don’t fit and I cut myself.

What is she so happy about? Did she just bite a smaller, human-size version of the Egg O’Muffin and leap for joy? Then where is it? All I see on her side is blue sky, trees, fresh air, pretty much everything that doesn’t go with a squat O’Donalds. Maybe she carted the muffin up with her, but it must have been a hike. Even the most avid O’Donalder might hesitate to eat an O’Muffin once the grease dried, much less leap for joy after hazarding the experiment.

Maybe (despite her hip outfit) she’s lived in the forest all her life, in that tent. And maybe she’s looking at nothing other than the ten-foot high golden O’Muffin! Even I, a seasoned suburbanite, would be startled if a giant O’Muffin came crashing through the trees. Perhaps she (not being familiar with the smaller version of the O’Muffin) has leapt up at its approach in the ecstatic worship of an awed savage.

Not that I use the word ’savage’ to fault her. Given the true oddness of a monstrosity like an O’Muffin appearing in our otherwise sensible universe, I can see the temptation to worship the thing. It makes more sense than eating it.

Hmm. I didn’t think of that worship idea until I sat down to write the blog. I like it. It has some faint coherence. It’s far easier on my mind than a certain grotesque suspicion. For in my darker moments, I wonder whether, somewhere in the bowels of the O’Donalds headquarters, some lord of lard has decided on a new strategy to sell his greasy wares. Is it possible he wants us to think that O’Muffins and camping really do have something in common?

For Americans might be a tough sell. We’re discovering that we regularly eat cows that were so sick they couldn’t get off the ground, that contemporary slaughterhouses are hells just as horrid as anything Upton Sinclair ever thrashed in The Jungle, and that, dang, we really are fat. It might not be so easy to sell O’Muffins these days.

It might be, it just might be, that O’Donalds is seriously trying to shoehorn into your mind the idea that if you eat an O’Muffin, you will somehow magically wind up thin and camping someday. Which is like saying that if you shave your head, dip it in wax, and glue it into a helmet, you’ll have lustrous hair with full body. And a boyfriend.

Not that most ads are much better. But at least most ads don’t put together things that are diametrically opposed. Drinking beer won’t give you attractive friends, but models do sometimes get together and drink beer and all smile at the same time. If there’s a cute girl in the car ad, at least there’s a slim chance that some girl somewhere some day might smile at you because you drive around this contraption that she’s been trained to regard as worth working years for. The whole idea is stupid, but it could happen.

But not only is there no connection between camping and fast food, but in order to get the damn O’Muffin, you have to stop camping, go back to ‘civilization’, and then, having eaten it, put on weight! They work against each other! But through the magic of mental associations, bam, there they are on the same billboard. No explanation required.

It bugs me. But maybe I just have it all wrong. Maybe it’s an either-or. EITHER camp and be free OR come on down and slather on a few pounds. That would make some sense. Maybe that’s it, it’s a subliminal warning. Maybe they didn’t even mean to do it, and their tortured subconsciouses are crying out in symbols to warn the rest of us. Who knows.

Or maybe it’s all just a big mistake. I look forward to a revised billboard, picturing a jolly man settling his monstrous bulk into a booth, complete with the realistic touches of spilled salt and an empty soda-stained straw wrapper on the table. Before him is a super-sized meal, lit only by warm flourescent light and his expectant smile. There are grease stains on the wrappers, fries spilling out and blotching the tray paper, and the soda is fresh out of some vat in an industrial district. From his physique it’s clear he eats here often, and there’s a space at the table for you.

If I ever, ever see a billboard like that, I’ll go get an Ecstatic Meal myself. I promise.