– – It’s challenging, but not impossible to be a Halloween-centered person during Xmas season as I am; it’s all a matter of perspective. Many of you have probably seen the classic Campbell’s Xmas commercial when a friendly fir tree gently opens the window of an invitingly warm kitchen, extends a branch through the opening to the delight of a cherubic boy inside, helps itself to some green bean casserole, withdraws with it, and then essentially becomes ablaze with light as the perfect Xmas tree.- -All is calm, all is bright, right?
Those of us who are Halloween-centered prefer other kinds of trees and vegetation, however, of the more malevolent variety…like the carnivorous plant in Little Shop of Horrors, the trees in the enchanted forest of The Wizard of Oz or Poltergeist, or the consuming alien vegetation that Stephen King has crafted in a number of tales. So we need to ask ourselves some questions, and perhaps re-engineer this commercial a bit…
…for example, isn’t the act of a fir tree consuming green bean casserole vaguely cannibalistic? And what if instead of calmly opening the window, the pine tree smashed through it, grabbed the kid by the neck, hauled him screaming outside into a shrieking black storm, and inserted the hapless victim into some kind of unspeakable tree orifice to consume later?
Now you’re thinking the way that I do! I worry about myself, sometimes…but make my vegetation evil and otherworldly, please…buwahahaha!
– – Sadly, even NASA has found it necessary to debunk the reputed end of the world hysteria that some believe is suggested by the Mayan calendar. The Near-Earth Objects Program at NASA has explained away many of the most frequently cited doomsday scenarios for 2012. 
– – With the Xmas season almost upon us and overeating indulgences likely to ensue, it might be worthwhile considering the differences between competitive eating and fad eating. While it’s debatable whether competitive eating is really a sport, there are at least rules and regulations which govern it, and the items consumed tend to actually be conventional foods, such as hot dogs. Fad or event eating in contrast tends to be less structured with at times potentially dangerous consequences to participants; the items consumed, while technically edible, tend not to be commonly found on family dinner tables, such as insects. Other fad or event consumptions have involved normally harmless and indeed vital items, although even water proved fatal to one contestant when consumed to extreme excess over a short time. Fad eating has been spurred in recent years by the advent of reality TV shows, and feed off of the gross-out factor involved. If $100 is offered to someone to eat a worm, there will be takers and those who watch.
– – Don’t the bugs seem to get bigger each year? And there’s something marvelously surreal about going along in a big RV with a human-sized blue bug riding shotgun up front! I could get into this scene…well, this is an ESPN RV marketing campaign commercial that features New Orleans rookie Anthony Davis traveling in the RV together with ESPN commentator Mike Breen and Hugo, the team mascot. They are all very comfortable in one another’s company, a cozy group…thank heavens for cultural diversity!
– – You’ve probably seen at least some of Geico’s “Happier Than” series in which we are shown people basking in the glee of improbable situations, such as Gallagher smashing watermelons at a farmers’ market and Christopher Columbus with a speedboat. Two comfortably scruffy folksingers called Ronnie and Jimmy then appear to draw the parallel that people saving money on Geico insurance sure are happy, happier than say, a witch at a broom factory…
– – In another of the Degree Chain of Adventure commercials, three average guys are equipped with “meat ponchos” and then have a pack of wolves released upon them! “Sweat is like tasty gravy to a hungry wolf,” explains survival expert Bear Grylls.- –Well, only one of the three meat poncho wearers is still standing alive and dry at the end of the commercial, and it should come as no surprise that he’s the guy wearing Degree deodorant! 
– – Bear Grylls is a British survival expert and adventurer who hosts the show Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel. He also does a number of commercials for Degree deodorant, one of which shows us a poor subject pacing in a primitive “perpetual motion simulator,” which is really a large wheel set into motion by the movement of the guy walking inside it. “Feelin’ fresh and dry!,” assures the hapless subject as he moves at a leisurely pace. The deodorant’s protection is activated by movement, ‘ya see, so to kick things up a notch, the survival expert tosses the wheel walker a trout, and a bear is introduced in pursuit behind him!- –Now things are getting interesting!
FOXSYLVANIA 
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