silly rants

So here's the thing: it's March. This makes it roughly 5,623 months since winter began. People around here are growing testy, irritable, pinch-faced and grim. I'd like to write about happy things but that's just not going to happen. Not in March. So if you'd rather not read a rant, check in again in April. Or maybe May...
I have just a few things I need to criticize. First, there's this television commercial. And right now you're thinking "Oh, I know the one! I bet it's..." And probably you are thinking about some other truly horrid piece of advertising. I'm sure you are correct and it is loathsome. But in this commercial, a small band of badly-dressed women with unfortunate hairstyles and fussy accessories is sitting around a table in a mostly empty, blandly underwhelming restaurant. Instantly, you know that if this place was for real, you wouldn't want to eat there. The menu would be familiar, unimaginative, yet still far beyond the "talents" of whoever was in the kitchen.
A 50th birthday cake (not an especially enticing or elegant one) sits off to one side. Briefly, the women "welcome" the newly half-centurian "to the world of ..." And then they each list what are apparently the most important qualities of this world - sagging skin, wrinkles, brittle bones.
It's a commercial for calcium supplements. And a savage, should-be-satire of North American mores.
Now, I've got nothing against calcium. And yup, osteoporosis is an important health issue. But this commercial has pretty much guaranteed that from now on, I'll be getting my calcium through full-fat Reblochon and Epoisses, Etorki and Mimmolette, all the way from France, my friends. And while I'm at it, let's toss in a little Machego from sunny Spain, and some artisanal cheeses from Quebec and Saltspring Island!
If anyone has the nerve to invite me to a dismal white tablecloth and dusty rose eating establishment for ANY birthday, let alone one that marks someone's half-century on this earth, I swear I'll run screaming from the door, and I won't stop until I've reached the Petit Dejeuner on King Street, or Edward Levesque's Kitchen, or Eigensinn Farm, or just about anywhere they care about food. And when we reach that appropriately groovy place, we're sure as heck not talking about our skin or bones. If I get to turn fifty, and I can celebrate with my friends, we're going to talk about theatre and books and art, and what is happening with Burma or Kenya or the Niagara Escarpment. Somebody better have an opinion on whether the latest NBA trades made any team better, and everyone had better realize we're all darn lucky to be here, no matter what we look like.
But we will look good.
And I don't mean that in some sappy, our internal beauty will be shining through kind of way. We will look good. And what's more, we'll have strong bones and healthy, wrinkled, lived-in skin, from fifty years of being in this world, reading and working and thinking and raising families and caring for each other, not to mention working out and running and going to the gym, and shovelling. Shovelling snow. Lots and lots and lots of snow. Heavy, wet, icy snow. Fluffy, sparkly crystals. Brown and grey slush.
You just know that in that commercial, it's March - all year long.