There’s not much in this old life, this vale of tears, that I truly understand, but some things are utterly mystifying. Such as a few glaring omissions in the list of things Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife purchased with stolen campaign money.
On at least two instances, Mr. Jackson and his wife used campaign money at Build-A-Bear Workshop, a store where patrons can create stuffed animals. From December 2007 through December 2008, the Jacksons spent $313.89 on “stuffed animals and accessories for stuffed animals” from Build-A-Bear, according to the documents.
I kinda get that (have always loved stuffed animals), and who doesn’t want a fancy Rolex, a stuffed elk’s head and some high-end vacations? But if I were going to lift $750,000 from donated cash, there’s just so much other stuff I could think of.
Such as a lifelike Gollum bust
Or maybe a highly accurate body-fat monitor
What would you buy if you had 3/4 of a million dollars to throw around? Michael Jackson memorabilia and fur capes, like JJ Jr? Or something a little more practical, maybe a year’s supply of cinnamon nicotine gum, a CrossFit membership and a few dozen pounds of wild salmon?
Whoever thought up ‘buildabear’ is an evil genius. Of course she or he worked for Disney. Having raised three daughters in a city with a buildabear franchise, and not been warned about its dangers ahead of walking in, of course I fell into their trap, too.
The set-up is basically designed to make little girls (or boys, but not so many I think) feel as if they have given birth to a soft fuzzy baby-like doll. (How could you not make money out of that?)
With the assistance of a very enthusiastic, and good-looking & smiling & shiny& clean attendant, who has been carefully trained to get right down to kid level, the child mulls over bins of empty husks of teddy bears of various sorts. (Not deadsurrogate babies, quite, but as-yet-empty-of-life skins of surrogate babies absolutely.) Which are hideous in their flaccidity, but also weirdly promising. Like the delicate skins of little flayed babies in God’s waiting room, waiting for the miracle of procreative sex. But without the sex, of course. It’s Disney. Or sort of without the sex…
When your child has chosen the skin she wants to bring to life, she and the attendant then move to the life-giving ‘filling station’. Where the skin is slipped onto a tube more or less precisely the size and shape and length and width of an erect penis. The attendant presses pedal with her foot and… shooop! the flaccid skin inflates with white fluffy stuffing, becoming in an instant three dimensional, solid, huggable… But it doesn’t stop there! Here comes the stroke of genius!
When the bear (or dog or hippo or muskrat) is about 3/4′s full i.e. nearly alive- The attendant stops the filling, and gets down to kid level again and offers the child a secret little treasure chest to open, which contains…. A little red cloth, stuffed 3-d heart! A soul even! The child is told to take the heart- carefully, because it’s precious- in her hands and put alllllllllllllll her love into to it! Which she does, squeezing hard with her eyes shut in an act of prayer so genuine and honest any churchman anywhere would blush to emulate. Then the attendant helps the child insert the heart into the stuffing inside the bear (the stuffing slit is strategically placed on the left side of the breast) and then back on the penis for a last top up, that inflates the toy to optimum pulchritude. A couple of quick pulls on hidden stitching, a couple of practiced knots, and…
Off the child goes to select an outfit with accessories!
The pricing scheme is more or less the same as for desktop printers: the printer itself seems not at all so pricey, especially for all that clever hardware, but its really just a delivery system for hideously expensive ink. Well your buildabear bear doesn’t cost so much either. So when you ask on the way in, you think okay, I can get away with that, but then- can you walk out of the shop with a naked bear?
Can you, hell. Another father might. One made of stone. And the outfits are so varied, so cheeky, so bright and funny, and there are so many of them…. And all of them are arranged at kid level, between you and your child with her newly born surrogate furry baby object, with a real heart into which she has put all of her love, and the exit through the cash desk to the door.
I don’t know how many times Mr Jackson, or his wife, or whoever it was, walked into the buildabear trap, or with how many kiddies in tow, but to get out again for no more than $300, when it wasn’t as if it was real earned money that was getting spent anyway… I’d say if it was him, and he really is bi-polar, he must not have been on an up-rise or any kind of manic peak on the day. if he had walked in there with a small daughter on real full-on mania high he could not have walked out with a bill less than $3000. Not if he is at all like anyone I know who is legit bipolar. Hell I had a friend (now deceased) who managed to spend close to two and a half million (pounds) on a ten day manic jag, and he didn’t even have any money in the bank at all. (He did have a very smart suit, a more-or-less stolen Rolls Royce and a very beautiful and very expensive hooker at his side at the time.) It took three years to sort out all the C.O.D. deliveries that had to be turned around, and he had to go into hiding from the hooker’s pimp. Which included moving, permanently, to another country. (We are all pretty sure he died of natural causes, but no one was with him at the time.)
So, Bim, that may give you a clue as to why Mr Jackson was able to resist the Yoda bust. me, I’d want to see those eyes staring at me over my breakfast every morning. Wouldn’t you?
Gollum! Not Yoda. Could they be related?
I was seriously disappointed to see that the coffee maker has no house-cleaning function. Think I’ll stick with the Melitta pot. It makes coffee. It’s called a “manual” coffee maker ’cause you have to boil the water before you pour it into the filter.
As for the buildabear, sheesh, Bluthner, it sounds like the sort of thing that would have given my small children nightmares. “Empty husks of teddy bears” I think would have turned them off stuffed animals forever. Your very evocative description of the set-up is hilarious, though. I’d never heard of this brilliant parent-trap until JJ Jr brought it to my attention.
Bluthner,
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Now that I have a clear picture in mind, I understand completely. The Rolex, however, remains mildly disappointing.
Madame,
Actually just bought a new coffeemaker from Amazon for $20. It’s superb. Being the kind of person I am, the real temptation is to buy 134 more of the exact same item – rather than the Jura Impressa shown above.
I do seem to finding myself writing this sort of phrase rather often around here. But . . .dear god. From that description, that Build-a-Bear is the most blatant capitalist exploitation of Freud one could imagine, isn’t it? You really do have to start with a peculiarly warped mind to devise that at all, don’t you?
(Squirrel was given a small soft fluffy red squirrel, with a very bushy tail for Christmas. He’s very sweet. He was not built to order; as far as I know, he contains no prayed-over heart—there really is something rather obscene about that*—and a proportion of what he cost goes to real red squirrels apparently . . . This squirrel not having been too bright lately, and on the whole thereby feeling too worn out to do battle on the ‘equality’ thing, has been keeping him tucked up in bed alongside.)
*Reminds me of those gruesome illuminated bleeding hearts that used to make me shudder seeing them in windows in Italy.
Oh, and Squirrel’s squirrel is as naked as nature intended, too. (Madame may remember this.) We’re not prudish, he and I . . .
Everybody wants a bipolar diagnosis, which beats the shit out of ICD-9 code 301.7, Antisocial Personality Disorder.
Not saying JJJ is ASPD (although Patrick Kennedy, who also managed to buy a bipolar diagnosis, probably is), but it’s about the best you can do in the world of ICD-9 codes and DSM labels when you’re a serious fuck-up.
It’s good to get all that shit out of your system when you’re young, but I guess the burden of ASPD daddies and a lot of unearned shit coming your way makes it difficult.
My god, (again). For a tenner, you can buy crutches for your crippled bear*. I bought a real pair for only three quid more than that last year . . .
Hmm. A wheelchair, too (20 quid). (As tacky and old fashioned as the crutches. Not like Squirrel’s—not squirrel’s, if you see what I mean, he’s non-disabled.) A hearing aid . . . There’s something about all that I find somehow disturbing.
Red,
It’s good to hear from you.I’m sorry you’ve been unbright. The cold today feels so bitter that tucked up is just the right place to be. But are you saying you don’t have a black velvet portrait of kindly Jesus pulling open his chest and pointing at his (anatomically correct) hear adorning your nest?
Bim,
In my experience, bipolar is the diagnosis of choice for narcissistic psychopaths if/when their grandiose shit hits the public humiliation fan. Nothing I’ve so far read so far about JJJ suggests he isn’t most likely just another banal example of one of them.
Squirrel, I don’t remember seeing that before but it might have been when I was fairly new to the internet and usually didn’t click on links for fear my computer would explode.
My daughter, at around age 3, was given a trousered and jacketed teddy bear by her grandmother. Daughter promptly removed trousers and jacket and threw them into a corner, knowing full well that bears are meant to be naked. That bear is now re-attired and nestled into a box with his cohort that sits in my store room. What does one do with the once-loved now-abandoned creatures of one’s children’s childhood? They can’t be thrown out, of course. Ah well, when I drop dead it’ll be the grown children’s burden to decide the fate of these bedraggled old loves.
Hold on, the remark about 134 of those drove me to click on the coffee maker and Jesus Haploid Coranarily Bleeding Christ! Two Thousand Eight Hundred dollars for a coffee maker?
Who? Why? How….
On the other hand, a mere three grand for the bathroom scales that tell you your body fat content to five decimal places, that I can understand. I mean I can understand that a bulimic social X-ray (as Tom Wolfe so memorably described a certain sort of fat-less society hostess) wannabe would kill for such a machine. Or at least be willing to pay far more than 3 grand, so this might even be a bargain basement model.
Bluthner, that’s why I expected it would have a house-cleaning function. But all it does is make coffee… There’s Someone here who’ll do that and it doesn’t cost me even a penny. Someone even buys the coffee, which apparently that machine does not.
Now I understand, Madame. But does that someone have:
A Multi-level conical burr grinder?
A High-performance pump, 15 bar?
A Thermoblock heating system?
An Integrated rinsing, cleaning and descaling program, or…
An Energy save mode?
I’m thinking maybe 3 out of 5?
You are absolutely correct, Bluthner, 3 out of 5! But you have to guess which 3.
Way off topic: Reading The Last of the Just for the first time. Great book. Had it been purchased with campaign cash, I would find it within my cold, cynical heart to forgive completely…
Almost 50 copies for the same price as the Build-A-Bear experience.
That makes me think of the Irishman who found a bottle on a beach with a genie in it. The genie granted him three wishes for releasing him, so the Irishman asked for a pint of beer while he mulled the decision over. The genie said you don’t understand; you have an enchanted pint; it will never be empty. The Irishman tried to guzzle it down; glug, glug, glug, but it was always filled to the brim.
“Do you mean I’ll never be able to drink this and it’ll always be a full pint.”
“That’s exactly what I mean, now what do you want for your next two wishes?”
“Easy, I want two more of these!”