Antivertisements

This doesn't really count as an outside challenge, but I have been going through my old, discarded writings lately, and I found an idea I had for product placement in works of literature. I also had (perhaps separately) the idea for "antivertisements" - poems discouraging people from buying products. I put the ideas together and tried executing two of these -- one for Axe in the style of Sylvia Plath, and one for Taco Bell in the style of Jane Austen.

To be fair, though, even the most disgusting description of a Taco Bell taco makes me hungry.

And now, for your post-Thanksgiving pleasure:

Taco Bell

by Jane Austen

A Scene from Chapter 1:

"Love does more to stir a young girl's heart than money. An old girl, now...that's a different matter entirely," Mr. Dimpsey noted as he poured several packets of Fire Sauce into his first beef taco of the evening.  No one could accuse Mr. Dimpsey of being overly delicate in either his eating habits or his addresses to Mrs. Dimpsey.  Mrs, Dimpsey, in spite of years of close observation of Mr. Dimpsey's manners, was always amazed both by his sharp remarks and by the distressing amount of tacos he could consume in any meal.

"Mr. Dimpsey, please!  I am an old girl to you, I suppose, but I haven't a heart for myself anymore.  My only heart is for my daughter, who does not seem to have been favored with this indispensable organ of her own."

"Mother, if you'll pardon me, I must protest.  My heart is quite real, though it is light and airy as a cinnamon twist."

"Yes, my daughter, as light and airy, and with the same consistency - that of a butterfly wing," said Mrs. Dimpsey.

Mr. Dimpsey finished his first taco in two bites and was already in the midst of his second as he chided Diana, his only daughter. 

"I dare say, Diana, your heart could break as quickly as a crunchy taco shell at the first bite of a solid man with any appetite about him.  You won't stand a chance unless you toughen up, like a crunchy taco that has been at rest under a heating lamp for several days, in a delicious lukewarm pallor that ferments and enhances the flavor of the beef mixture inside." 

"Well anyway, father, I haven't the slightest notion of entertaining any gentlemen this summer.  Although if I did, I dare say we would occasionally exchange these dull plain tacos for a cheesy steaktang and applesauce burrito, which you know to be a favorite of mine."

Mr. Dimpsey chuckled as he swallowed his fifth taco.  "This is quite so, Diana.  And I tell you, we shall have such burritos in a fortnight when the young Mr. Whicklesby, our new neighbor, joins us for a late night snack, as I have thusly and this very afternoon invited him to do!"

An Ad for Axe Deodorant by Sylvia Plath

To my partner
In death and other devilry--

You know too well the old

Miasma theory of disease and how

Your mist of hawk blood

Infected me.

Make a model of me.
You have a multitude of muses

Just as there are many scents of Axe,

from Dank Leopard, to Farting Melon,

to Packed Sand Hard Enough for Camels

to Traverse Into The Center

Of My Heart Which Is Sick
With Your Scent.