Theme Twelve: Indirectly

Example one:
Christmas is coming quick, get out your holiday spirit. Time to get out your wreaths, and bows and wire, the outside lights, the indoor lights, and the plastic Santa and reindeer set for the roof. Get out the wrapping paper, the scotch tape, the ribbons, and the tags. Make your list, and don’t loose those receipts. The sales are here, the mobs grew near, the malls, the stores and shops are packed and the registers keep ringing. Buy the seasonal eggnog, and green and red colored M&M’s, Pepsi’s holiday spice, the Christmas cookies, and don’t forget the Christmas cards, and treats for the dog. The stockings must be hung, the tree picked out, gotta find that tree stand in the basement. Get the kids picture with Santa, make a Christmas dinner.

The Christmas season is commercialized with a Santa, and a Mrs. Santa Clause, reindeer and Santa’s little helpers. Families lie to their children, until an older kid at school tells them, “There is no such thing as Santa, you know!” And a world comes crashing down until their teacher reinforces the lies, “There really is a Santa”.

Parent’s drive their bank account balances to a slim, to provide their children with possessions that they will either out grow or destroy within days. Brawls breakout among siblings over who got the better presents. Guilt rises in those who did not have the money to provide their children or family members with gifts galore.

What is this all for? Keep being good little consumers, and keep fueling the big businesses! And kids, keep watching those commercials for the new remote controlled trucks, and real peeing dolls. Keep begging for the toys you want!

People stress themselves over these insignificant tasks, until they are sick in bed Christmas day. Buy, buy, buy and by and by you’re broke, for what? In celebration of Christ’s birth of course? Oh yeah, well what’s he getting?

Plan a dinner, take your children to the woods and chop off the top of a pine tree, decorate it with home made strands of popcorn, and spend time with those you love, and count your blessings. That is the holiday spirit.


Example Two:

Ideas and research have pushed through the years with its inventions and break troughs. We have seen the progress and shake hands daily with modern conveniences; we as a race, but more specifically as American’s, have become dependent on technology.
In the later half of the 1800’s there was a booming of break troughs; we saw the first motion picture projection, talk on a telegraph, the invention of the light bulb, and radio power.
General electric was established in 1892. (“Electricity” was first coined in the 1600’s.) Inventors pushed forward in their brainstorming and in with advancements in technology and we began distributing radio power to the US, and putting radios in cars. Nine years after the first television broadcast in London, there were 7,000 televisions in the homes across America; around the same time as canned beer.
In the 1950’s, we first began using Velcro® and eating a ‘fast food’ from McDonald’s®. We began using credit cards; which was conveniently introduced the same time as microwaves and color television broadcasting, with color commercials!
In the late 60’s though the 80’s, we go to the moon, we have vinyl records, audio cassettes, invention of the handheld calculator, VCR’s, the first computer with intergraded circuits. We have the first Arpanet (internet), we are playing Pong®, (the first video game), using cellular phones, Walkman’s®, and IBM pc’s. 8-track and Fuji® disposable cameras are introduced.
We zoom through the ‘90’s, and become materialized consumers; CD’s, high definition televisions, answering machines, Pentium processors, DVD’s (which just of 2004 out sold VHS.) We have digital everything, cordless everything, Web TV, hybrid cars, virgin births (cloning,) vegetables, ears, animals, and people. We have robotic vacuum cleaners, navigators in our cars! What the hell is going on here? Things have moved too quickly! The simple life is over, unless you can compel yourself to stay in the woods. We replace our machines with newer machines, inflation has jacked the prices, but we pay it, because we need electricity, we need the internet, and we need a cell phone. With all the ideas and research we have created conveniences to save time, but most of it just uses up our time, and distracts us from what is more important