Normally, when I get a haircut (and color – but don’t tell anyone, wink-wink), I sit in the chair with a few printed pages of a manuscript, making revisions, or with a notebook in lap, zoning in on a particular aspect of character, setting, plot, dialogue that needs attention on that particular day. My hairdresser always pokes fun at me and my “homework,” as she calls it.
During my last haircut, however, I had just come off of an extremely intense week of combing through Double Out and Back with my editor. I sat myself in the salon chair. Effie draped me in a black styling cape, looked around for my pen and notebook, and asked, “Where’s your homework today?”
I replied, “I’m taking a break. Some mindless magazines would be great.”
Effie took a few steps over to the coffee table in the reception area and handed me copies of Marie Claire, Elle, and Vogue. Great! Flipping through the pages, finding out what fashions are in and out for the season – fun stuff! I especially liked looking at a $5300 designer dress that looked surprisingly similar to one I bought at Target for $32.00. Cool! I read about fashion trends and beauty products, clearing my mind of serious literary pursuits for a while.
Until a thick, cardboard, advertising insert for American Spirit Organic Cigarettes in the middle of the glossy tome caught my attention.
I burst out laughing, Effie’s scissors dangerously close to my ear. Luckily, I contained my hysterics enough to avoid looking like Van Gough, or a Mike Tyson fight victim.
I know I’d planned to take a break from literary pursuits, but I couldn’t avoid my “write” brain. My literary synapses screamed, “Oxymoron! Organic Cigarettes is an oxymoron for morons.”
As a writer I’m always trying to find unique and vivid ways to describe the world around me. The oxymoron is a great tool. Some commonplace oxymorons have become cliché. Jumbo shrimp, poor little rich girl, cruel kindness, and deafening silence are some of the contradictory terms that come to mind. If you are a word-geek, like I am, you can take a look at the following link for definitions of and etymology of oxymoron.
Organic cigarettes have got to be the stupidest product I have ever encountered. In fairness, American Spirit doesn’t lie. Tobacco is all-natural. As an agricultural crop, farmers can grow it using organic farming methods. Get real! The term organic in consumer-speak implies a healthier alternative, and organic tobacco will kill you as easily as tobacco grown with pesticides.
Until next time, I leave you with, Organic Cigarettes, an oxymoron—heavy on the moron.
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