Don’t buy this shit! All you get is more shit!

I don’t have cable TV, just a set of rabbit ears. And my viewing habits consist mostly of Buffy and Glee DVDs, which have no commercial breaks. So advertisers have just a teensy window of time to explain why I must have whatever they’re selling. But even people with satellites full of obscure little specialty channels (like my parents) are bombarded with commercials, all trying to make them believe their product or service is the best in the universe.

I am astonished by the number of colossally horrible ads. I’m don’t mean the cheesy “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” emulators and the ambulance-chasing lawyers and debt consolidators promoting their services. Those are bad because they are low-budget. But how dare those big players who have their choice of the top ad agencies to produce their commercials give us drivel like the following:

1.Cottonelle Saved my Marriage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0CTJj_-nJI&feature=related –

Perhaps something got lost in translation from the French version, but all this ad did was make me cringe.

I’m guessing the intent was to be humorous, but I felt only pity for that woman. She’s gushing over the virtue of a freakin’ toilet paper as we hear hubby make happy male noises off-camera, supposedly from the ensuite bath. She’s smiling in that “he hasn’t touched me since I had the kids and I was desperate to save this relationship! Thank you Cottonelle!” way. And right on cue, hubby steps out of the bathroom in his vintage Herb Tarlek finery ready to dry hump her on the dance floor at the local disco.

If their marital problems weren’t caused solely by hemorrhoids, this campaign is just sad and will not compel anyone to pay that dollar or two more to upgrade from store brand bathroom tissue.

2. Pull Ups training pants (featuring the “potty dance”)

I refuse to link to this one. It has already led to dozens of ill-advised youtube “tributes” made by misguided parents hoping to one day embarrass the crap out of their kids. I for one am embarrassed to be in the room when that bloody song interrupts The Young and the Restless. I’m guessing they paid the poor shlub who sang it a lot of money (though no amount of money can buy back dignity) as well as the potty dancing kids and adults. I can’t fathom why the hell anyone would anyone consent to being seen by millions doing the stupid thing for free.

As my children were all born crack litter box users, I am aware Pull-Ups doesn’t care what I think. But if I were part of their target market, I’d go out of my way to buy the rival big kid pants for fear of catching the stupid that led to those youtube So You Think You Can Potty Dance travesties.

3. Dairy Queen- 1/4 Lb. Bacon Cheese Burger Grill Burger

Disembodied whore lips singing about dreaming of “meat and bouncing pickles” then telling us to “shove it in our mouths.” And then fireworks explode out of nothingness. Creepy. I’d add that it makes me wonder what they put in the secret sauce, but that would be too easy.

4. Tim Horton’s “Worst. Ring Tone. Ever.”

What, because Timmy’s is a Canadian institution they don’t have to pay writers to come up with clever ads (at least I hope they didn’t)? Their commercials have been stupid for a very long time but the recent ad for their Caramel Café Mocha with a grating, synthesized “I Love Caramel” ring tone is just irritating. Wow, this gal must be batshit about caramel.

5. Multigrain Cheerios- “The box says I’m a bad, bad man and have a small penis.”

Television is overrun with ads that portray men (or at least husbands) as overgrown children who can’t be trusted to do anything around the house but can always be counted on to say the wrong thing. Why? Such commercials appeal to women (who still do most of the grocery shopping) who married losers in order to have babies and are now kicking themselves.

“Oh, that’s my husband all right! Lord, how I hate the bastard but I must swallow my resentment and carry on for the sake of our spawn who never, ever stop wanting STUFF—and he thinks I’m FAT! Why oh why did I go off the pill?”

These ads do neither sex any favors (men are morons, women are insecure ball breakers) and have caused me to never want to marry. At least we don’t have to suffer through the horribly dubbed (why the hell do we need to dub a commercial that was already in english? Would British accents make Cheerios seem snooty?) version that got foisted on Americans.

I know times are tough and even very big corporations may have less money to spend on advertising.

But how do you expect to penetrate our collective brain fog with advertising so bland and irritating? Or maybe it’s the brain fog that’s allowing such ads to happen.

You can’t throw a dried up old pen out the window in a major city without it bouncing off a hungry writer willing to compromise art in the name of eating or buying a second pair of trousers. No need to overpay talentless hacks or ask your ten-year old kid to write your scripts.

Dear readers (especially my adoring subscribers), you have the power to stop such ads. Don’t buy what they’re selling! Send your kids Pull-Ups back in protest (especially used ones)!

Please, before I am forced to get rid of my TV.

A hollow threat, yes. But just do it anyway! This revolution will not be televised. But it may end up on youtube.