Ok, so I’m home today, working on a report, and for a little background noise, i click on the telly. Seems like I couldn’t have made a bigger mistake if I set my gentials on fire, and tried to put them out with a barbecue fork.
I suppose, by the frequency and volume of the commercials that the Writhing Spectre of Sulphurous Hell, or Dancing Elmo, is one of the toys being direct marketed to our nations youth, this toy buying season. Which, is cool, you know, in the spirit of profits and all that, but my objectifyin comes in around commercial time.
Time that happens to coincide with the time when I’m peacefully sitting in the breeze of the unseasonable 72 degree day in Chicago’s November, with the windows open, the sun shining in, and my nimble digits, dancing furiously about the notebook keyboard, prattling on about the benefits of spending nearly 300k on a suite of software for our police/fire departments.
In the middle of my zen-like work state, crosslegged on the fold out couch, the telly speaker explodes in my ears with "DANCING ELMO, KIDS LOVE TO GET DOWN WITH E-L-M-O, then the Writhing Spectre of Sulphurous Hell begins to SING.
Yes, that’s right, SING.
In that annoyingly chipper, helium stained throat, the machine puppet barks out “E-L-MMM-OH, EE-EL-MMMOHH”.
It’s an affront to the very nature of my existance and sensiblities. I saw it a total of eleven times in three hours, but could only bear to hear the saccarine sing-song sales shanty once. It will be seared into the depths of my cerebellum until death. When I am old, and devoid of anything meaningful, tied to a chair in some forgotten retirement home, evacuating in my pants, and drooling my pureed bologna on to someone elses shirt, I will be screaming E-L-MMM-OH, EE-EL-MMMOHH at the top of my lungs, much to the chagrin of my polish speaking caretakers.
Damn you ELMO, Damn you all to heck.