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Venturing
through the land of giants, disguised in a dark blue cloak
with a traveler’s staff, Geoffrey the Giraffe made his way to the
Well of Wisdom. He passed through the towering shadows of Forty-Second
Street and began a hell-of-a-climb up the luminous encrusted 1 Times Square
to the steaming Cup-o-Noodle Soup. To drink from the Well’s water
he is forced to make a worthy sacrifice so that he may see the past, the
present, and of course your future. The toll costs him his left eye and
it sits in the bottom of the cup still.
With this new gift he could see Saddam invade Kuwait in a trading card
set while US troops stationed in sand pits played Texas Hold’Em
with the faces of wanted Iraqi officials.
He could see deep into the past when Nero was just a child attending his
first violin lesson and day-dreaming of stories about Pompeii and Atlantis.
This was before cable TV in a Northern Europe occupied by Vikings.
Vikings: A group of polytheistic
heathens who practiced democracy longer than any known culture, and
should be despised by history for that among other crimes.
The Norse had few expectations for their lives here on Earth,
a factor that no doubt contributed to the drastic spread of Christianity
in Northwestern Europe.
What they did expect – after one last breath on the blood
soaked battlefield – was an all-expense-paid flight to Valhalla,
enjoying the company of talented and proficient stewardesses affectionately
renowned for the horns on their helmets and a plate of armor forgiving
to the voluptuous bust.
The biggest selling point of this vacation at the end of the world is
that your cup never runs dry and the dime-o-dozen sport killings have
no consequences whatsoever. This was quickly replaced by Christ's Heaven
where most promotional campaigns emphasized recreational floating. Blood
didn’t come back onto the menu until 1991 when ID Software wrote
the classic PC game “Castle Wolfenstein 3D.” The first-person
shooter followed American soldier BJ Blazkowicz as he tries to escape
from Nazi stronghold Castle Wolfenstein facing SS troopers, blood-thirsty
Nazi Dogs, and even Adolf Hitler himself.
Ever since the close of World War II, the pendulum has continued to swing
towards consumerism, creating an afterlife market within our own that
would prove more profitable than tradition. The ‘50s would usher
in decades of expanding and diversifying products until children themselves
were sitting on a goldmine of business. That’s when the regressive
people at Post Cereal, in cooperation with Toys ‘R’ Us, would
create the Second Coming of Santa Claus in the minds of American youth.
I'm talking about the Toy Shopping Spree.
Sixty seconds, one steel cart, and not a single woman in the store to
slow you down.
Imagine: a large audience of frothing middle-class Americans cheering
you on as you push your steel cart furiously down the electronics aisle,
scooping up cartridges and game systems without even slowing your step.
Once the valuables are secured, you move quickly to the guilty pleasures
of the action-figure wall.
The legend of the toy run spread quickly among the children of America
and the Catholic Church just couldn't keep up. Geoffrey the Giraffe was
beyond reach, wielding a vision far above our heads where he will stay
until the howl of Fenris ushers in the final war of Ragnarok. Upon hearing
the biggest of all dogs bark, the great serpent Wal-Mart will unwrap its
gargantuan coils from the earth and bring the end of a toy-store dynasty.
But before the North Pole melts into one mighty river that stretches from
the positive to the negative, the world's tallest scientists will build
a computer out of their mothers’ milk that will write a single rhyming
couplet so divinely passionate that it can sit on the head of a pin and
play the world’s smallest fiddle.
What could be more fitting? [B]
JEFF BURNS |
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