Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how enriching is your garden?

Cute Kids in advertising backfires, for me.

You know the commercials where a kid's lisping through two missing front teeth. Being too-rehearsed giggly, silly, sweet, coy.

Truth is, the public as a whole eats it up. If it didn't, admakers would know — they spend oodles of bucks and employ many methods to determine what works and what doesn't — and be forced to invent other means to capture our attention and dollars.

For me, Cute Kids in ads aren't a selling point but an annoyance. (I'm not speaking of ads where kids are integral to the message, i.e., diapers.)

The other day this ad came on the car radio for an event by the symphony or maybe it was the opera.

It ended with this kid around, oh, 8, saying: "The symphony is a very enriching experience."

OK, what kid at that age is using the word "enriching?"

That he pronounced the word measured syllable by measured syllable sounded more than unnatural, it sounded lame. Plus how many tots are all gung-ho about the symphony.

C'mon guys, get real. I have half a mind, if I catch it again, to write them suggesting it's time for a new ad writer. Oh, and I'm available.

We're moving into the season of harvest and thanksgiving. In that spirit, I'm starting a program of Positivities. Each day I'll write three (five if I just can't contain myself).

No imposing limits. They might be aspect of self, akin to LOIL's daily compliments, or something in my life for which I'm grateful. Might flesh 'em out or leave as a single sentence. There are no rules, only that I feel it genuinely. The harvest of Positivities, starting today.

1. My laptop. Without it, I'd be dead. Or terribly irrevocably lost in life. It's my connection with words and those are my lifeline.

2. A very cool clawfoot tub. I'm a bath person. This tub, the finest of all my American tubs, is thick and sturdy and of perfect size. The water is super hot and in ample supply. Without baths, I'm not myself; with them, my soul is nourished.

3. Microbrews. In the States, you cannot beat the Pacific Northwest for micros! Although microbrews are put aside on the unemployed budget, and I'm slumming it with cheapo Pabst, I know they're there waiting for when I'm employed again. I have the heart for beer, for sure

Now for something different – a few pics a bud sent; he didn't take 'em, they're just too pretty not to share.