You, the Consumer, Drawn

I just got a sewing machine (for sewing! Home Ec redux!), and the best thing about it is this picture in the instruction manuel. Presumably this is the footwear that the good people at Brother envision their typical customer wearing as she sits at her crafts table in the refinished rec room. "Criminey -- I forgot to make the deviled eggs for the fair!"

It's like they're saying, "Enjoy your machine, housefrau. You can make a lot of muu-muus with this baby!"

They could've at least drawn Crocs -- stylish slopwear for those too classy for flip flops and too sane for slippers outdoors.

My Goals Have Changed

When I was a kid, I got my idea of the world from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Phillies and Braves games on TV (the Braves thanks to Ted Turner and his cable station), and a basic study of American history. I believed that American Senators were present-day Jeffersons and Adamses dedicated to the ideals of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, that baseball was the noble sport of American kings (which is to say, all of us, in our no-caste-system/no-monarchy/ Common Sense society), and that we were all essentially rabble-rousing, freedom fighting pamphleteers at heart.

I may have been wrong about some of these things.

Then I read an article about Happy Chandler and I thought I'd discovered the road to a perfect life. I seized on the following goals for myself:

1. Attend Princeton.
2. Become a U.S. Senator.
3. Become Governor of a state.
4. Retire from politics, become Commissioner of Baseball.

I don't know why I fixated on Princeton; I didn't know anyone who'd driven through Princeton, NJ, much less gone to the school. For some reason known only to a sheltered kid who read too many books, attending Princeton seemed like the epitome of good breeding and fine learning in natty suits. It is possible I had seen a picture of F Scott Fitzgerald and took all the wrong lessons from it.

I wanted to be a governor, but I don't remember picking a state. I knew it wouldn't be Southern, because I'm not Southern, but it was pretty open after that. I liked the idea of being responsible for a state that was all my own.

I wanted to be the next Kenesaw Mountain Landis and rid baseball of any sneaking suspicion of foul play and keep it the fine, upstanding game it was meant to be, played by fine, upstanding lads with pure hearts.

Then I grew up. I forgot about Princeton. I watched the Iran-Contra hearings and the Anita Hill hearings. I followed the presidency of former California governor Ronald Reagan. I watched chicken-eater Wade Boggs disparage his road girlfriend when she took their arrangement public. My heart broke. My dreams died a horrible death at the hands of trickle-down economics and good old boy sexism.

Now I have new goals in life. I am older and wiser, savvier, even. I know what's really important in life. Now I want only the following two things:

1. To be in a Levitra commercial. I want to see what it's like to be so happy to be with a silver-haired chemical stud.
2. To play a mascot/Fruit of the Loom character/monster/vitamin/what have you. In a commercial. Wearing a goofy costume looks like fun.

Sorry, Congress! You'll have to make due without me.