Guess I’ll Never Be an Ambassador to Australia

So, I’ve not been in the greatest of moods lately. The only thing I can think of to explain this would be the gross abuse of my country’s status to infiltrate the rest of the world and set up McDonald’s restaurants.

I’m lying. I’m actually on day four of my period, but I’m leery of admitting that when it only serves to further the stereotype that women who bleed are psychotic.

Anyway, this bad mood has served to alienate me almost completely from nearly everyone else on the planet, so I’ve had a lot of time to myself. And, as almost anyone who recalls The Sally Hansen Incident of Ought-Six will tell you, there are few things more dangerous than time when placed in these hands (though the composition notebook full of poetry I wrote when I was sixteen¹ has been responsible for the near devasation of several major cities.).

I’ve been watching the home shopping channels. Let me write that again in bigger, flashier font so that you understand just how important this is:

I have been watching the home shopping channels.

I don’t know that televised shopping networks have made it to other countries yet, but I’ll assume that the rest of the world has been smart enough to avoid them thus far and explain anyway. Television channels like HSN (Home Shopping Network) and QVC (Quality…Vicunas Center?) specialize in offering a variety of different products to all Americans who have a television, telephone, credit card and simply way too much time on their hands since they went into retirement. The broadcasting days on the shopping channels are divided up into groupings of similar products, each segment lasting roughly an hour, each one hosted by one of those overly-zealous, blood-sucking salespeople each and every one of us has hidden behind shelves to get away from. Only now, we don’t have to hide from them because they’re on television. Instead, we can sit and watch them hoc their wares from the comfort of our own homes, laughing hearitly at first at the absolute cheesiness of the entire set-up, though we all eventually succumb to one of two other states:

1. Severe depression over the fact that there are people out there who would actually spend “just 72 payments of $44.99″ on a set of stainless steel kitchen knives, or

2. Extreme annoyance at the fact that you’ve been on hold for 45 minutes and the announcer just said that there are only twenty sets of stainless steel kitchen knives left, and you must have them, you must!

I usually fall into the first category, but only because I don’t have a credit card.

It doesn’t stop at kitchen knives. Oh no, there are literally hundreds of different products sold every single day between the six different home shopping channels offered by my satellite provider. Everything from electronics to makeup to clothing to jewelry, all sold on one soundstage, all talked up by scary people you know really only ever wanted to be TV weather forecasters.

Having worked in retail most of my working life thus far, I feel that I can safely say it’s male salesmen you need to watch out for in the real world. It’s not just that most customers believe men to be more knowledgeable about damn near everything, it’s also that they tend to be a little more ambitious. While I was very good at sales (I was a personal shopping assistant at Best Buy), even I will admit that, though I knew just as much if not more about iPods and digital cameras than my male colleagues, they got more sales from more people who bought their line of buddy-buddy bullshit.

On HSN and QVC, though, the tables are turned. The programs hosted by men are usually boring and slow, but the ones hosted by women… That’s another story entirely. For the female hosts on the home shopping channels are akin to one of my other favorite breeds of woman: The female televangelist. All hair spray and mascara and patterns and pumps, they project and yell and show all their teeth when they smile. Since they’re all roughly the same, I don’t have a personal favorite HSN saleslady, though I do have a favorite segment: Cosmetics.

When a home shopping channel sells makeup, it’s like nothing else you’ve ever seen. For starters, not only is there the HSN hostess who applied her own makeup with a trowel, there’s usually the super-friendly, overly made-up woman who “invented” the cosmetics line featured. For some reason, she’s usually Australian, but, as I haven’t been able to make that connection yet, it’s not important. Joining the sales hostess and the “inventor” will usually be three models representing every woman everywhere: The Tan Blonde, The Pale Woman With Reddish-Brownish Hair and The Black Lady. That’s it. If you don’t fit into either one of those, you must be the wife of a terrorist, so, as far as HSN is concerned, you can just fuck off.

The sales hostess’s job is to talk loudly about how “FABULOUS” everything looks while the “inventor” says various Australian-sounding things that make the viewers in Alabama nervous and everyone else think they’re buying premium, exotic cosmetics with names that sound vaguely French, when all they’re really getting is the same crap they could go buy at Wal*Mart, plus $29.95 shipping and handling. Throughout the segment, the “inventor” will mention a lot of things that sound scientific to describe the “special processes used to create our exclusive formula.” (I can’t type in an Australian accent. Sorry.) To demonstrate this, the “inventor” will do something completely odd, like mash a bunch of lipstick onto her hand or spread eyeshadow across her forearm. They only thing I can think of to explain this is that the toilets aren’t the only things that run backwards Down “Undah” (Hey, look, I did it!).

Anyway, after the “inventor” has finished wasting half of her own products on every part of her body except her face, the sales hostess will take a few calls from people who just bought something. They will usually be older, Southern women who are obviously just looking for someone to talk to, and since it’s 2 A.M. and the bank’s closed, this nice, technicolor lady selling makeup will have to do. At this point, the “inventor,” who has successfully removed all of the makeup from her body plus about three layers of her epidermis, starts applying cosmetics to the first model, Tan Blonde. She smiles vapidly as industrial-strength silver eyeshadow is applied to her face while the sales hostess remarks how this particular color brings out the depth in Tan Blonde’s blue eyes, even though it is completely obvious looking at her that Tan Blonde couldn’t spell “depth,” let alone possess it.

After this, the sales hostess takes a brief break to display a ring that looks like a Jolly Rancher wrapped in aluminum foil and says that it will be featured in the next hour’s Diamonique^® Lumiglow^® 3000^® Jewelry Extravaganza.

Now the “inventor” is at work on Pale Woman With Reddish-Brownish Hair. As the “inventor” slathers on some putrid shade of pink that makes her look like a victim of a particularly violent strain of conjunctivitis, Pale Woman With Reddish-Brownish Hair smiles only semi-hesitantly into the camera because she knows her rent is due and so she doesn’t really have a choice.

Finally, the “inventor” and the sales hostess move onto The Black Lady, onto whom they lavish praise, green eyeshadow and adjectives like “mocha” and “chocolate” until she wants to run screaming for the door. However, her rent is also due, so she stays put and grimaces for the camera².

The sales hostess takes a few more calls from lonely, Southern retirees before harassing viewers with information like, “There are only 5,000 Pink Kits left!” every thirty seconds. The “inventor” throws in a few more scientific-sounding explanations for the chemical engineers-cum-makeup artists just tuning in. Harass, harass, educate, harass, lights out, Jolly Rancher jewelry.

I think these are my favorite segments because theiy’re some of the only home shopping programs that involve humans interacting with one another: the sales hostess interects with the “inventor,” the “inventor” interacts with the models, the models interact with their gag reflexes and so on. As I only watch these channels when I’ve cut myself off from all other human contact, I need these shows to fill that void in my life.

Well, they keep me from getting my jollies chasing the cat around the house with the vacuum cleaner, anyway.

¹Death

Death death death death death.

Death sucks.

Life…

(Title: Everything I Need to Know About Life, I Learned From Killing Smart People And Eating Their Brains)

²The Sixteen Year Old is tan and blonde, so you’re damn right I made Tan Blonde the only real idiot in the bunch.