Oh. How nice. A Fun-Doh extruder. Merry Christmas to me. As if Play-Doh wasn't cheap enough, mom and dad somehow managed to find a Fun-Doh toy for me. This box looks like it's been sitting at the bottom of a dollar store bargain bin for a few years. I wonder if the smiling Bulgarian boy on the label had anything to do with that. Check the unibrow on that guy. Ok, they're watching... May as well open her up and take a look at what we've got here... Oh good. I'll be able to extrude a waxing gibbous moon shaped snake with this. Or a circle. Or... oh no, that's it. Just two choices. Waxing gibbous moon or circle. And look, this Fun-Doh comes in three fun colors: chartreuse, ochre, and salmon. I didn't even know salmon was a color. I certainly didn't know it was a fun color. Thanks, mom and dad. Thanks for this knockoff Play-Doh extruder. Merry Christmas.
I guess I should be happy. I could have gotten no extruder at all. This way, at least I can talk with the rest of the kids in my kindergarten class about extrusion. That's a good thing, I guess. I'll just have to make sure I don't slip and mention that I've got a Bulgarian extruder at home. I'm sure this thing works pretty much the same as a Play-Doh extruder would. Just stuff the Fun-Doh in here and- ugh... Sweet crap, this stuff is greasy. Pungent, too. It smells like a gas station. What's in this stuff anyhow? ...Water, ochre dye #40, rice flour... Oh, there it is. Gasoline. Leaded gasoline. Great. I'll have to remember that next time my big wheel needs a tune-up.
Who am I kidding? This is awful. I've been playing with this stupid knockoff extruder for five minutes and I smell like a full serve attendant's grease rag. Chances are I've already absorbed enough lead into my system to have screwed my chances of ever getting anything beyond a bachelor's degree in sociology. What am I gonna do if my mom invites someone over for a playdate? If it's sunny, I'll be okay. We'll go out to the swingset in the backyard and that'll be the end of it, but what if it rains? Mom always makes me do arts & crafts when it rains, and, sadly, Fun-Doh extrusion falls into that category. What then? Even if I feign boredom- as if I would need to feign it when Fun-Doh is inolved- my guest might be fooled by the Fun-Doh packaging, and think that we have been presented with Play-Doh. I'll be mortified when he sinks his hand into this greasy doh. He'll pause, look at me, remove his hand, and our friendship will end the second his mother comes to retrieve him for dinner. As will my five-year old social life. I'll become a laughingstock.
Maybe it's not all that bad. I should stop worrying about the future so much and focus more on the present. I'm not so blinded by brand-recognition that I can't enjoy knockoff extruding on my own. Really, when you get down to it, stripped of all the advertising and the jingles and all the marketing, one doh extruder is as good as another. I've just got to try to have a good time. There's nothing wrong with Fun-Doh. Well, the colors aren't great. And I'm not too keen on this gritty, greasy texture. Or the smell. Or the social stigma that I'll have to cope with once word leaks out that I spend my free time handling a mixture of rice flour and leaded gasoline with my bare hands. Calm down- live in the now. Move on to the next gift. I'll worry about all this Fun-Doh stuff later. For the time being, I'm just going to open another present and try to enjoy my Christmas morning.
Oh good. A SpongeBiff ShortShorts DVD. And it's encoded for region six, so I can't even watch it. Mom, Dad, really- you shouldn't have.
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