Sunday, June 12, 2005

This week's column:
Going from ad to worse

Maybe it's me, but I've never thought of my kids as what you'd call "useful." Sure, they bring joy and happiness and all that, but they don't really contribute to the well-being of the household like, say, a RotoTiller or a Roth IRA.

I realize when they're older we can assign them certain mundane tasks like mowing the lawn, but they'll probably do that about as well as I did in my youth, when I was known to mow in a circle for 45 minutes in an attempt to run over a garden slug that turned out to be a pretzel. I suppose anything's better than now, though: All this "Feed me! Clothe me!" stuff gets old pretty fast.

That's why I have to hand it to Michele Hutchison, a 26-year-old expectant mother in Philadelphia who apparently is seeking bids on eBay to put advertising on her new baby. This is bound to be far more attractive to corporations than sneaking up on babies and stamping logos on their foreheads, which is still awaiting sign-off from legal.

Read the rest of this week's At Large by Peter Chianca here.

8 comments:

Kuroaki said...

hmmm. there are many ways to consider this. then again there are many ways to consider crazy people. would people really be looking at the ads on someone's torso, or something else? and who'd look at an old man's bald head? ...of course, if this got big, people'd be looking at every bald head. freaky.

Anonymous said...

I wonder if Michele Hutchison will feel differently about hiring out her kid as advertisement space once the baby is born. One's attitude towards children tends to change once one has actually produced one.

On the other hand, my own girls really aren't stuffing the family's coffers. The elder one is only interested in selling products to her parents, which doesn't alter the family's economic standing vis-a-vis the rest of the world one bit.

Meghan said...

I find myself planning (10 years in advance) all the chores I will be able to force my 10 month old daughter to do when she is older.
Two I can for sure think of already are weeding the garden and scrubbing the ter-let.
That is about as far as I plan to go with gratuitously hogging her human resources.

the Witch said...

That's not a bad idea. Stupid me may have taken a similar idea a bit too far. My daughter ING-Direct and son Pepsi seem to think so...

Anonymous said...

Why doesn't she also make an infoblog about it. It's not like I see one every other time I hit the "next blog" button. Sometimes I wish corporate America would shape up, in other words, GO AWAY.

JNH said...

I do enjoy the humor of your post, and I actually think Michele is onto something. I happen to think my children are more attractive than average; maybe I could get a higher rate? In all seriousness, though, I trust that you are getting more out of your children than the anticipation of a poorly cut lawn in the future. I know mine have already given me more than I could hope to give them!

james@hakimfamily.org
http://hakimfamily.org/TGiN/

John Left said...

Damn funny.

If you get a chance, check out my blog, "John Left's Field".


http://johnleftfield.blogspot.com

Plat Sajack said...

That was quite interesting, I needed that laugh.