Thing You Didn’t Buy: Giant, Behatted Frog

Among the things you’ve bought in the past week, reader, one of them is decidedly not the giant, behatted frog with bloodshot eyes and purple, fire-emblazoned tank top that you see pictured in this internet post.

You’ve bought a lot of things, sure — sensual oils with which you will make love to America; the complete set of The Wire DVDs; diet juice — but not, unfortunately, this huge, irksome frog made of synthetic materials and sadness.

Don’t get me wrong, reader: you’ve pulled your weight so far as both the local and national economies are concerned. Like with your purchase of that toothpaste that’s exactly like Tom’s of Maine but, like, half as expensive, for example. And that copy of pre-Victorian British erotic novel The Lustful Turk. And a six-pack of an amber ale described as “sweet but not cloyingly so” by a shitty bartender whose face you hate. Among that list, regrettably, is not “haunting and/or haunted frog mascot.”

Let me not mince words here: you, the person reading this, have exchanged American currency for goods and services. By what other means would you have had a delicious brunch the other day while reading the Sunday edition of the New York Times? Or watched all those out-of-market NFL games on DirecTV? Or renewed your subscription to The Economist, which you’ll totally read more often, you swear. “None,” is the answer. Unfortunately, of all the transactions in which you’ve been involved, exactly zero of them have been the acquisition of this menacing and drunk-looking and likely dangerous fake frog.