...a Christmas catalog in September, can you believe it? Not even Fall. It's not the last Holiday catalog we will be receiving from this particular overpriced merchandising concern either. More will follow. As a good telecommuter I am trying my durndest to save what's left of the environment by not clogging its' arteries with the burgeoning detritus of an outfit interested in only one thing; separating me from my money. The few catalogs I do get, go from the mailbox right into the recycling bin.

To stop much of the junk mail and phone calls, one must write to the Direct Marketing Association, which represents about 3,600 companies.

--For Mail

Mail Preference Service

Direct Marketing Association

PO Box 9008

Farmingdale, NY 11735

--For telemarketing

Telephone Preference Service

Direct Marketing Association

PO Box 9014

Farmingdale, NY 11735

--Include all the names and addresses you want excluded.

--Consumers must register by mail for both the mail and telephone services.

--If unwanted mailings continue after a few months, the association suggests complaining directly to the companies.

--If you don't want to be contacted by merchants , they don't want to contact you.

-- Direct Marketing Association website:

http://www.the-dma.org/consumers/consumerassistance.html

...There, that being said, where was I? Ahh, yes the ellipsis. I know this is not where I was, but this is where I was headed. Ellipsis, those three quaint, but potent little dots (...) used to express some sort of omission in a sentence or thought. We are starting to subconsciously live on these simple things. Momentary lapses of reasoning. Subliminal and yet poetically abominable. When you watch a commercial and have seen 772 quick cutesy images in 30 seconds and start to think you have been overloaded...you haven't. You've been underloaded... Duped... Sold a bill of goods... Ellipticized...! You have been robbed of your own thoughts for just a few seconds and shown a string of pretty pictures that say nothing or have nothing to do with what the product has to offer... Your life is being shaped for you... You are being mainstreamed...In the metaphorical time it would have taken for your mind to see those three little dots you have been pumped full of commercial stuffing and are now ready to go into life's oven to cook, only to emerge feeling unfulfilled; uncooked in life's gourmet of drama. I am unfulfilled without those desirous products festooned throughout the canyons of my mind..

I want to pull my hair out and cry quietly at night because I can't possibly live the life all the commercials portray. I ain't that good looking...I don't possess that kind of buckage...the youth... the hairstyle... the clothes... I don't eat the right junk foods... drive the right car... use the right paint on my house... underarm deodorant... dog chow... mascara... beer... antacid... soap... I'm a washout. Inadequate. An outcast.

...and drugs. Ahh, yes, the drugs. I love when ,as a family unit, we are all watching the tube in the early evening and a Viagra commercial comes on. Two folks dancing in the barnyard ...or dancing at a wedding ...or dancing in a department store, or on the head of a pin. Well, I can't dance all that good either. Maybe I'll tell my young children that Viagra is a suddenly impulsive spontaneous dancing medication. Additionally, the warnings and disclaimers at the end of the commercial are always encouraging, too. Don't take this medication if you have ever owned a puppy, have chartreuse curtains, been to Malaysia, know people with rickets, telecommute, or are normally healthy and pink. Side effects may include, vomiting, loss of fingernails, spontaneous bleeding at the navel, rickets, bone decalsifcation, myopia, dysfunction, and possibly rampant and pernicious vertigo. If any or all of the symtoms suddenly appear, say on a Saturday evening at about 9:15 when you are dancing, call your physician, who will be waiting in his office, ready to assist you.

Yukko! ..."Please turn of the TV kids, lets look through these catalogs."