I hate advertising on TV

I am developing an overwhelming distaste for television every day. I did a time-motion study on one of the programs I like –Masters of Illusion where people do magic tricks and illusions. I am a sucker for such entertainment. However, on a recent half-hour program my statistics reveal: starting at 8:00 there were seven minutes of programming followed by three minutes of seven ads. Then there were three minutes of the program followed by 14 ads then four minutes of the program followed by eight ads. Then four minutes of show followed by eleven ads. I was worn out and disgusted with seventeen minutes of the program, 13 minutes of ads for a total of 29 ads. The next half hour was the same. In one hour of programming, there were 34 minutes of actual programming maybe. I was so swimmy headed I swooned into a stupor. I will not purchase anything from the tsunami of ads that whelmed me.

I hate most of the TV ads where the owner or manager uses his cute children to talk about why you should empty your septic tank but you can’t understand them. Ads that exaggerate a problem that is only solved by purchasing the item they are selling makes my sensibilities hemorrhage, i.e. the average cost of funerals goes up about 1K each month. Ads annoy me when announcers provide disclaimers at the speed of light or flashed at the bottom of the screen for 1/100 of a nanosecond. Personal hygiene ads disgust me. We now have ads that show people sitting on the commode – please don’t you have any decency or dignity of the human condition? I loathe alcoholic beverages because they are so effective and well done showing the “high life’ that so many crave.

Then there are the ads for weight reducing products: “Take Flab Away and lose 15 pounds between lunch and dinner.” One ad on the Internet said you can lose 110 pounds overnight.

I also abhor the ads where some maniacal man shouts about his furniture store and the wonderful deals you can get there. I won’t be coming Elzy. Have some dignity. I wouldn’t buy you furniture if it was the only way to escape my back being against the wall my shirttail on fire and the bill collector was at the door. If I hear another ad that invokes the words, “Because we care” I will take a hostage.

I can’t stand any ads that address personal bodily function products such as constipation, diarrhea, hemorrhoids, male itch, feminine itching, gas, pads that absorb bodily fluids, adult diapers and incontinence. We all know these conditions exist but genteel society does not include them in casual conversation. Leave it in the bathroom where it belongs. I don’t want to know about your incontinence from any orifice or pore. Please stop.

I also despise ads for exercise equipment used by muscle-bound men and women who live in the gym and always have while the ad intones, “For only seven minutes a month you can look like these people.” Come on, Rube, how dumb do you think I am. Don’t answer that. Those ads are as mentally stifling as wearing a too small bathing suit on a too long car ride back from the beach with sand in the wrong place.

[Larry Vandeventer. Go to my two websites – Larryvandeventer.com and wjrambler1956.com – and purchase my books. I grew up North of Calvertville and graduated from Worthington High School and Indiana State. Contact me at Goosecrick@aol.com or 812-557-3342]