Category: Short Fiction

Super-Selling the Taste of Irritation

I don’t watch TV anymore, but I like to have it on retro MeTV in the other room, overnight. Mannix comes on at 2 AM (currently circa 1973; I’m where I can tell the year by Joe’s coif). Of course the specifics only make sense in America, but I have a feeling that similar channels exist all over the world. Regardless, this is not about old “CTE” Joe, it is about something very disturbing I heard during a commercial break as I was in the kitchen getting coffee.

Billy Mays was hyper selling something. I do not know how much of the globe got the Billy Mays’ super-sell treatment, but in America, I got plenty. He used to be on commercials selling stuff day in and out. I really wasn’t paying attention, so when I heard his familiar voice on the TV I thought no more than I would about seeing a Pigeon in the park–but after a few seconds a headvoice asked:

“Isn’t he dead?”

Indeed. Dead as a Dickens’ doornail. Since 2009. For a moment I thought “Oh, a retro commercial inside a retro TV show” (the mortality rate among Me TV performers is very very high). But, no, it was a recycled ad.

I tried to think about that objectively. Maybe the product (can’t for the life of me remember what for–a glue of some kind, I think) had paid for the ad and held onto it for sixteen years? Seemed unlikely.

Then a different headvoice spoke up. It was familiar, and a rarity because it only speaks when it has something to say. It asked: “What the hell is wrong with people?”

I thought about it. There’s nothing unusual about using dead people to sell stuff. American money is covered with the faces of ghosts–so maybe there is some kind of connection. Yet there was something wrong with seeing Billy Mays, sixteen years dead (cocaine), behaving as though we were all alive together today and that I needed to buy his product. Something not just wrong, but fundamentally wrong.

It wasn’t a lack of respect for the dead; Mays was all about the push, and probably would have loved the idea. It wasn’t about the product itself (yes, a glue of some kind, almost positive). And it wasn’t anything overly offensive in the ad. Yet it was still fundamentally wrong.

Then it came to me. Having Billy Mays (or anyone) sell long after his death was in BAD TASTE.

I returned to my desk and sat there. I stared into my computer screen. Yes, somewhere along the Irene Leila Allison Experience having a dead man sell glue was deemed to be in bad taste. Obviously this was not instilled in me specifically, but as a Fundamental (that word again) Principle, headed Dead People Acting Alive, something like that. Moreover, it should be clear to everyone that such a thing is in bad taste and that…well, is that.

I googled the miserable affair. Sure enough the company wanted to mark its fifteenth anniversary by using the Mays’ ad. Naturally, I do not believe that poppycock* one damn bit. It remains classified as bad taste.

(*Old word of the week.)

I do not think that having a standard of taste is a generational thing. The input should not be able to override the inside system. There should be a safeguard against merrily accepting a dead guy selling glue (almost positive it was glue) because the client was probably too FUCKING CHEAP to tape a new commercial. After all, they are still in business sixteen years later (not fifteen, which is impossible); I’m sure they can afford to make another.

The rare voice asked again: “What the hell is the matter with people?”

I chose to hear it as a rhetorical question that is begging for an answer, but it will not get one because the only people who care to reply think using the ghost of Billy Mays to hawk glue (damn it, glue it is) is a fine thing, respectful of his legacy as a coked-up super salesman. People for that sort of thing yell, the rest mutter helplessly.

Then another voice, slappable, punky, chipped in: “Alright Boomer.”

I reached into my mind and grabbed that voice by the throat and squeezed. “Say that again and you will have spoken your stupid last,” I told it, words seething out due to a vape pen clenched between my teeth. “C’mon, let’s hear it, you dreary little darling, let’s hear it!”

Yes, I have heard ‘Alright boomer’ everytime too many. Only idiots and politicians must use material written for them. But even those guys can wax original when you attempt to crush their voice boxes. Yes, so so so sweet a sound…

But now I have caught myself dreaming of doing such a thing, coming back to the now, empty hands clenching and twisting, instead of writing this wrap. So, with a sigh, I move away from the irritating world and head for the good part.

The Good Part

Here, I’ve gotten into the habit of mentioning the Sunday feature to lead off the week that was. Seems to me that poor Sunday was left out in the cold, so far be it from me to contribute to the desolation of that situation. This past Sunday Geraint Jonathan returned with A Most Unfortunate Accident. Geraint paints a winning portrait of Dostoevsky and the great Russian’s novel in his beautifully flowing essay. It worked on me, since I added the book to my Kindle.

For those of you who missed Arjun Shah’s debut last week, you get a second chance at reading him with his The Rules of Love that opened the regular week Monday. Atjun is able to get a great amount of humanity across in just a few words; he also shows a different culture known to us in the West.

Brandon McWeeney gave us Beetles on Tuesday. It is to Brandon’s great credit that he was able to get such a thing over so easily. A real squirmer, but well worth the read, layered and entertaining.

Sandra Arnold returned on Wednesday with Colour Clash. Sandra’s story is remarkable for both its incisiveness and restraint. There is a contrast of ideas put forward by a brother and sister; the ideas do not match yet neither is wrong.

The Castle’s Walk-in Cooler, the first by newcomer T.C. Barerra is a free trip to the bizarre land of California. T.C. weaves tremendous social examination with cynical humour and under-riding sadness, that is actually at the surface, for people who look at other people, and comes up a winner.

Friday brought What Matters by Shivani Sivagurunathan. Like Sandra there is beauty and restraint. And there’s tremendous courage and strength in the MC, Didi, whose reactions remind me of Nora’s in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Beholding your own reflection is the second hardest thing to do. Doing something about it is harder.

There we have them, six writers from four continents, two genders, various ages and diverse POV’s; all met in high quality and GOOD TASTE.

A List

We all have our bugaboos when we try to write. I do it every day, and yet I must overcome several obstacles that often make me want to quit and fade even further into nothingness.

Mine are:

• Izzy the Cat meowing about nothing. All night. Nothing wrong, she does it just to be annoying, knowing nothing bad will happen. She’s been at it for fifteen years and it still drives me insane. Yes, Izzy is a talker.
• Dudley the Cat wanting to be brushed. Her figures that he should annoy as well. Just sits there and stares at me. He rarely speaks, but he has staring down as an art.
• Downstairs neighbor spitting and making disgusting noises while outside smoking more weed. I want to dump boiling oil on him, but I guess that might still be illegal.
• Unsteady Jukebox playing something like “Stairway to Heaven” or an item best described as equally “kegger rock.” Nothing against those tunes, but I had already heard them too much by the time I was in high school.
• Squeaky office chair that mocks me. I swear it says “Please–just one at a time.” It is an ugsome bastard.
• Having to vape instead of smoke indoors. It does sate the addiction, but it feels so damn phoney.
• Bad Memory Machine. It often opens on its own and fills my mind with a bad scene from my life that was dealt with years ago. Hate it. No good Memory Machine. Must be a personality disorder of some kind.
• I get into something and all of a sudden the OS must update. Now! or the world will end!!! Never happens when my mind is blank. Google OS somehow related to my office chair.
• Summer Aphids on the screen. I count them and wonder how many will wind up as Bird chow come morning.
• Yours

Nothing relevant here, just something silly and cheerful…

Leila