From: I. Zelnik
Category: Amis
Date: 9/12/99
Time: 8:56:09 PM
Remote Name: 129.219.126.131
FROM *TIME'S ARROW*: "Oh, I'm there, I'm there in Salad Days, or outside Hank's Hardware World or on the patch of grass by the white town hall, with my chest thrust out and hands on hips and a kind of silent ho-ho-ho."
FROM *THE GREEN MAN* BY KINGSLEY AMIS: "A tall and immensely broad figure came stumping awkwardly along the track, massive legs, apparently of not quite the same length, pounding away with the implacable vigor of machinery, long arms pumping in an imperfectly synchronized rhythm. If it had been human, it would have weighed twenty-five stone at least, but it was not human; it was made up of lumps of timber, some with thickly ribbed bark, some with a thin glistening skin, of bundles of twigs and of ropes and compressed masses of green and dead and rotting leaves. As it drew nearer, laboriously quickening its pace, I saw that its left thigh, the one nearer to me, was encrusted with a plate-like fungus, fragments of which fell off at every stride, and I heard the creaking and rustling of its progress. When it was exactly level with me, it turned its lumpish, knobbled head towards the house, and I shut my eyes, having no more desire to see its face now than when it had appeared to me before, in my hypnagogic vision of two nights ago."
***************************************************************
JAMES LILEKS SEZ: When I was growing up in North Dakota, the knowledge that the Green Giant company was based in the adjacent state of Minnesota was somewhat discomfiting; I didn't like the idea that this lurid golem probably could walk to my house in a day. But he never did walk around. He just tilted his head back slightly and issued that laugh---merry but *too* merry, bone-chilling, if you thought about it coming from a sixty-foot biped standing over your house. When we got color TV, I could see how his skin glistened, a sick oily green soaking in the sunlight, a nauseating fecundity shining from his manic eyes, and I began to fear the Giant.
I knew we were supposed to feel as though the Giant was a great benevolent spirit, happily stuffing peas into plastic bags for the good of all, but I never bought it. First of all, he never did any of the work. Just stood there while the presumably terrified townspeople did his will. It would not have surprised me to see a terrorist act during a commercial---a little house explodes under the Giant's foot, a suicide-squad rappels up the Giant's thigh and blows off a testicle, etc. Even if he didn't control the town and bend it to his will, I did not buy him as a benign creature. Someday, I thought, that Giant's going to turn on us. Not a word but that damnable *hohoho*, which may be in his tongue the phrase "I shall consume your young with butter sauce". Try singing the jingle with that notion in your head. "From the valley of the Jolly---KILL YOU ALL!---Green Giant."
Years later the advertisers came up with a small ambulatory weed-child, Sprout, who was sort of the Green Giant's only begotten son, made cellulose, sent to intercede on our behalf with the Giant. Sprout scampers about in a presumably amusing fashion, getting into scrapes of all sorts. He is not interesting or lovable and can be regarded as pure Giant propaganda.
This would be of little consequence had not the real Giant disappeared from the ads entirely, replaced by an animated version of himself. I can only conclude that something truly dreadful has happened in that village---or revolution is underway, and transmissions from the Valley have been successfully stopped.
*****************************************************************
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/MNBLUjolly.html The Jolly Green Giant is The All-Being! Master of Space, Time, & Dimension!! ACCEPT HIM BEFORE HE DESTROYS YOU. HE IS A JEALOUS GIANT. BEWARE!!! JOLLY GREEN GIANT IS LORD OF ALL CREATION. THERE IS NO GIANT BUT JOLLY GREEN GIANT. BOW DOWN AND SUBMIT TO HIS PEAS & CARROTS. SERVE HIS WILL AND GREENIFY THYSELF OR ELSE THOU SHALT SURELY BURN FOREVER IN HOSTESS DING-DONG HELL. PROSTATE THYSELF BEFORE THE VEGE-MEISTER!!!!!!