Pumpkins; everywhere, goddamn pumpkins.
Pumpkins with gap-toothed grins. Why? Halloween, of course – you know, that
traditional Australian holiday?
Last
year it was a novelty. The year before, an experiment. This year, it seems,
we’re all just expected to go along with it like good little morons; to shell
out a small fortune on sweets, decorations and costumes, just in case an army
of hyperactive brats alights on our doorsteps to extort sugar in one of the
world’s oldest protection scams.
When
I talk about this, I’m treated like the Grinch who stole Christmas. “But the
kids love it,” I’m told, “It’s fun for them”. Big deal; there are no end of
ways kids can have fun, without the rest of us being dragged into the latest
marketing wank. And anyway, who ever said that a kid’s life has to be an
uninterrupted stream of enjoyable sensory-stimulation, preferably featuring
microprocessors and carbohydrates?
I
can understand all this going on in America. There it’s part of their history –
it means something. Here, it’s just a
way to wring more dollars out of us between Easter and Christmas (which you’ll
know, if you play the same little game I do, appeared in shops this year in June).
Stand up, people, keep your money in
your pockets; take your kids to the park instead. Send these cynical
money-grubbing bastards back where they came from.
Next,
we take out the fat, jolly guy ...
No comments:
Post a Comment