I have found a new and exciting pastime while eating breakfst in the UAE. When I was a child, cereal boxes usually had a game or puzzle printed on the back  to keep me entertained while mindlessly consuming the artificially sweetened cellulose they passed off as nutrition. I guess the marketers figured they could sell more boxes with the entertainment value printed on the outside of the box rather than hope to sell the taste of the contents in the box.

Censored Cereal Box

I am reliving my childhood once again with the slick marketing campaign designed on the outside of UAE cereal boxes, disguised as censorship. As you can see by the photo, the innocuous looking model on the back of the cereal box has been turned into a suggestive sultry maneater by the addition of two carefully placed censorship stickers over her immoral parts.

They say that once you aren’t allowed to do or see something, you desire that thing even more than before. When we moved to Portugal 11 years ago, there really wasn’t a minimum drinking age. Minors were allowed to purchase beer and hard liquor for their parents. At first we were shocked having come from California where you can legally go to war and kill people at age 18, but can’t drink to anesthesize that experience until you are 21. However, in Portugal, there wasn’t an underage drinking problem because alcohol wasn’t demonized by a law banning alcohol until an arbitrary amount of time had passed living on this planet.

Damn! Better luck next time.

These censored cereal boxes remind me of a bizarre type of adult Advent calendar. You know, each day of Christmas has a numbered window that you open, behind which a cute drawing of some sort of holiday icon is revealed. Now I look forward to breakfast and my morning cereal box as a challange of my manual dexterity and to the unrealistic fantasy that I will uncover much more of a visual treat that I know is really there.

You Are Here

Stating the Obvious at the Dubai Mall. Of course you are here, or you wouldn’t be reading the sign.

Check out the logo.

I saw this on my way to work this morning.  Apparently this clinic is expanding its services to include in vivo fertilization.