I was in a store with a friend the other day and we passed a display featuring items that proclaimed “Live, Laugh, Love” — a phrase that was okay the first time someone used it, but has now become a million-dollar industry of triteness. You can even buy wall decals!
My friend looked at it and sneered, “Die, Cry, Hate.” Which cracked me up.
I want to meet your friend. She’s overcome that “SMILE!” commandment that is placed on so many women.
Someday, all the Happy Talk, perky, marketing types will be employed by a concentration camp, where they will hold a talent show each night. They will give workshops to the inmates on resume writing and persuasive body language.
Back in the 1970s, before the yellow Smiley face symbol got trademarked by WalMart — yet another manifestation of a 1984ish world — cartoonist Gahan Wilson did a “National Lampoon” feature with Smiley faces, in which he drew the Smiley on the armbands of Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels, flanked by huge banners with Smiley symbols on them.
This is what capitalism does, right? It mainstreams an idea to reach the maximum possible audience. It’s why there was a whole industry of Jonathan Livingston Seagull knockoffs, and Cabbage Patch dolls. We should even feel grateful when we get cancer, because it is a challenge. Barbara Ehrenreich skewers such ideas in her fine book, “Bright Sided”.
I, for one, loved that scene in the movie “Office Space” where Jennifer Aniston was scolded by her manager because she wore only 15 “pieces of flair” — happy buttons — on her waitress outfit — because “that’s only the minimum.”
Why does that make me SMILE so hard? Thank you, I needed that.
Die, Cry, Hate!
LOL and chuckle, chuckle, chuckle.
And, good points, GNewman
It always reminds me of Jerry Blavat, a local motor-mouthed DJ whose patter included, “Live, love, laugh and be happy, maintain your cool and be nobody’s fool. Solid Ted, ’nuff said.”