A Pilgrim’s Digression

Listening to XM radio this morning as I was driving my son to school, I heard an advertisement for a company called Big Plush. Yes, it’s Mother’s Day on May eleventh, so the air waves are now flooded with “reminders” to go spend money on useless gifts that will mean nothing to your mother.

This has to be the most useless gift of all, though: an 8 foot tall, 40 pound teddy bear. That’s the featured item at Big Plush.com.

I don’t know why I am writing about this topic, probably hurting the feelings of some small business owner who thought enormous teddy bears would be the next iPod in terms of cultural phenomenons. It’s just one of those things I come across occasionally that strikes me as so ridiculous, it has to be mocked just a little bit.

The funniest part of the advertisement is after describing the dimensions and weight of this monstrosity, the announcer says excitedly, “It’s taller than a professional basketball player!”

Yeah, just what Mom needs. She no longer has to wash the dirty underwear of her six foot tall, pig of a son…so the jerk off goes out and buys her a stuffed animal larger than Wilt Chamberlain. She’ll really thank him for that when, as the announcer says, the bear is “delivered on a dolly.”

Incidentally, if anyone ever gives me an eight foot tall teddy bear, it will go straight to the landfill and your four hundred bucks will have been wasted. Yeah, did I mention this thing costs $399.00?

We are such a wasteful society, and I think that is what irritates me most about this product. Think of the forty pounds of synthetic stuffing that goes into the thing, plus the cloth and whatever else makes up the composition of this beast.

And then imagine it all in a landfill, bio-degrading slowly, slowly over the course of a thousand years. And for what? Your mother won’t even appreciate this present. She barely tolerates the presence of your Dad, so unless that thing comes with some unadvertised sex toy attached, do you really think she has a use for this idiotic gift?