Last week I inexplicably wound up watching an infomercial on the TV machine. It must have been, I don’t know, at least twelve minutes before I snapped out of it. But it’s okay, because I learned a lot in that time. I learned that I could lose 16 pounds in two weeks just by doing yoga. I further learned that in just one additional week I could lose another 19 pounds, and I could lose a total of 65 pounds in about two months. All of this simply by stretching and bending. It must be true. Somebody said it on TV. They can’t say it on TV if it isn’t true, right? And the best part is, I can do this yoga thing (to be honest I’m not too sure what yoga actually entails) while watching all the other great stuff on the television these days.
For instance, there are all those happy dancing people on commercials for everything from various electronics products for the young and the hip, to all manner of miracle medications for the not-so-young-and-not-so-hip. Holy crap! How many of those #@$&#-ing dancing dork commercials can they make? I wish I were an advertising executive. I’m thinking there is no easier job in the world than being an advertising executive. Don’t have any catchy new ideas for your next television commercial? Just find some incredibly ordinary looking people who would appear incapable of graceful movement, and have them do a weird looking little dance step to a catchy tune playing over the background voice explaining how one little pill a day can cure AMD. (That would be Age Related Macular Degeneration for the uninformed among you.) (And why is it AMD, why not ARMD?) If you really want to swing for the fences, the dancer can throw in a repetitive and rhythmic head twitch which if tried at home would cause carpal tunnel of the neck bone. But don’t worry, there’s another little pill for that. I saw that on Channel 32.
Speaking of miracle medications, what is available these days is, you know, a miracle. They seem to have a pill for everything. I don’t know how anybody ever dies. They all advertise on television, and here is the really important point. They all treat some horrible condition known by a heretofore unknown acronym. Commercials for pills feature acronyms for two very important reasons: 1.) they sound impressive, and 2.) they free up air time for disclaimers about how this cute little pill may possibly cause heart failure, renal failure, shortness of breath (but there’s another pill for that), certain dangerous personality disorders, and black grunge of the big toe. On Channel 12, as I said, they have a cure for AMD. Over on Channel 6 is the cure for COPD. On Channel 4 it’s ADHD (with an ingredient originally found in jellyfish). On Channel 23 is the cure for DJD, and on Channel 50 its IBD. And the cure for ED? Oh yeah, that can be found on every channel up and down the dial. And every single such ad will inform you that if your cure lasts more than four hours, go see a doctor immediately. And guys please, wear a very bulky overcoat when you do so. There may be children around.
Commercials are both informative and entertaining these days, but here is the thing that annoys me. They keep getting interrupted by regular programming. It’s just getting so bad. I was intently focused the other day, learning how to achieve financial security in my old age by selling my life insurance policy 18 months before I’m expected to die. Unfortunately, the commercials kept getting interrupted by CNN. Somebody was trying to tell me that nuclear missiles had been launched at Hawaii. Who cares? It’s Fake News. I want to know how to score some cash so I can upgrade to the latest iPhone. (I took out a reverse mortgage, also as seen on TV, to upgrade to the iPhone I have now, but the new one is even prettier). Out of pure frustration I switched over to Channel 50, but after only seven minutes of fascinating ads I had to sit through eight minutes of Pawn Stars. Rick was explaining to some guy (with bald head, huge beard, and a guitar strapped to his back), why he couldn’t pay $9,000 for that Nixon/Clinton campaign button from the 1988 election. But there was a happy ending. Chumlee bought it later for 89 hundred bucks.
And what about those pizza ads? Why is there an ad for pizza every ten minutes? Pizza peddlers are the biggest buyers of ad time in the entire universe. Are they afraid we’ll forget that pizza exists? And speaking of pizza, every time I order one I pay for it with my new credit card which offers that great cash back deal. I learned about that from a TV commercial as well. They promised that the more money I spend, the more money I’ll make. Without television ads I would have never known about this great alternative to working for a living.
And my cash-back credit card is not the only good deal I’ve found on the TV machine. Thanks to television advertising I am now the proud owner of one handy dandy fruit and vegetable juicer which doubles as a mouse trap. I also got for no additional charge a second juicer which will serve as my backup, in case I get too many mouse guts in the main unit. Total cost for the two units was only $19.99, plus shipping and handling (that was $67.33, each). I have also recently snagged a miracle frying pan which is guaranteed to give me absolutely no stuck-to-it mess when I fry my bananas. (I’ve been frying my bananas ever since I sent my spittle based DNA into that website I learned about on TV and discovered I am one-tenth of one percent Latin American.) And let’s not forget the potato peeler which doubles as a Swiss Army Knife. Or the 900 piece screwdriver set which is great for, well, turning screws. Or the miracle mop which can be attached to the underside of my cat. Actually, that’s why I needed the vegetable juicer which doubles as a mousetrap. Kitty is completely incapable of multi-tasking. She just cannot catch a mouse with that mop duct-taped to her tummy.