Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The messages I am receiving from advertising on television.


I haven’t picked on television commercials for a while. That was somewhat of a staple of this blog when I first started. It’s an easy target, and I get so annoyed at the basic message being sent out. So, maybe to try to get back into doing something other than politics, I’ll give it a bit of a go here.

These are things that I have learned about our society from watching television commercials. Based on the regularity with which I am subjected to these nuggets of American Culture, I suppose these points are vitally important. I figured that I better write them all down before I forget them all. Then where would I be?

- When a person is drinking coffee, they must grasp the cup firmly with BOTH hands, tilt their head back with their eyes closed, and take a deep breath and sigh contentedly. I assume that this is a method of clearing clogged sinuses. When a person is drinking coffee with friends (usually three total), not only must everyone hold their cups firmly with both hands, they also must all hold the cups very close to their faces and all three must have their heads very close to each other. A group sinus clearing, I suppose.

- Many of the same things that apply to drinking coffee also apply to eating soup. When eating soup with friends or family, no one is allowed to set their bowl of soup on a table. No, the proper way to eat soup, apparently, is again to hold the bowl very close to one’s mouth (most soup eaters are excessively messy, as everyone knows) and keep their heads very close together. And everyone must smile a lot. That is a by-product of the large amounts of MSG consumed, I believe.

- If you are a male that has, shall we say, “performance issues”, there are several things you must do. The first is that you should be very proud of this and the fact you are relying on some pharmaceutical assist, so much so that you should get together with your over-50 buddies that play in your rock and roll garage band and play and sing songs about your drug-enhanced experience to the tune of old Elvis Presley songs, which may or may not be in the public domain. You should also schedule a vacation with your wife or girlfriend to a vacation resort that will let you move two “his and hers” bathtubs out on the beach, so both of you can sit out on the beach, in bathtubs, while watching the sun go down. Where the water comes from to fill these bathtubs out on the beach is unknown, as there may be no obvious source. It may be that you don’t really need water and you and your wife/significant other can just sit around in dry, empty bathtubs in your undies. And finally, if your “exuberance” lasts for more than four hours, you need to go find a doctor to schedule immediate emergency surgery.

- In order to buy really cool tires for your all-terrain vehicle (which probably doesn’t ever get more “off-road” than the local Food Mart parking lot) or hopped up muscle car, you must be really young, good looking and have rock and roll music blasting at full volume. Buying the right tires is obviously the most important, coolest thing any young person can ever do. It will get you dates with really hot chicks that have a thing for tires equipped with all-weather treads. Or it may be this is just some sort of very obscure metaphor for something else entirely. But, big tires obviously matter!

- Everyone, no matter his or her station in life, must have a broker or financial consultant. If you don’t have one, you desperately need to find one. If you already have one, you must be very dissatisfied with him. If you don’t have one and aren’t looking for one, then you must be a person who handles his or her investments without such such aid on the web, or with minimal help from consultants who are available to assist you 24 hours a day but otherwise let you do whatever you damned well please but won’t ever let you lose money, ever. You must spend a lot of time on this activity, and must never be satisfied, ever. If you don’t have large amounts of money in stocks, mutual funds, foreign currencies or other such investments, there is something seriously wrong with you and you will probably die penniless and alone, without anyone to take care of you.

- The smaller something is that you are eating, the more important it is to grab it with both hands and hide the fact exactly how small it actually might be. You don’t want people to see your really tiny chicken sandwich and start laughing at you.

- Speaking of which, it is always acceptable to demean and ridicule someone based on the fast food they are eating at lunch. Cheeseburgers and fries are very laughable items. Original recipe chicken strips are MUCH more honest, believable and grown-up.

- Drinking too much beer causes hallucinations, such as large horses playing football, talking Dalmatians and beautiful young women who desire to rip the clothes off any male found drinking, in large quantities, the correct brand of beer.

- And finally, only elitist rich a**holes drive Cadillacs, so you better go buy one right now so you can be an elitist rich a**hole too!!

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