Now that I’m done with hurricane chasing (crossing my fingers), it’s time for Cranky Ol’ Thom to get back to my job b##ching about the world again.
The truth of anything is almost never pretty. It’s usually ugly as hell.
Humans will do anything to sugar coat anything that’s even slightly real.
We strive for fantasy like a dog grasping a rotten half eaten 7/11 burrito from a rusty dumpster, desperately wanting it to be a T-bone steak. We BS ourselves and are totally okay with being lied to. And oh boy do they provide us with the lies we crave.
Much of this is driven by advertising. I’ll bet if you looked up the Latin word for that it would be “Excrementus Max Bullus.”
I’m not a big fan of it. However, I guess it has its purpose.
Without it for instance, no one would EVER buy a fast food burger. The burger NEVER resembles the pretty and delicious image in the ad or commercial. Open up the bag at the takeout window. That burger looks like it was stepped on and kicked around the floor and should have ended up in that dumpster.
All those shiny smiling young people in the burger commercials, the ones behind the counter just so excited to serve your needs they can’t contain their excitement?
That’s a figure of someone’s imagination.
Drive over to the real place. The sulking and sketchy looking folk at the register seem to be really annoyed that you interrupted their cigarette break with your silly request for food. By the look on their face you can’t know if they want to hand you a burger or mug you. If you’re in Memphis, just toss them your wallet.
And it would be difficult to sell an electric vehicle if the ad picture showed it intensely burning and melting the asphalt in the parking lot. Three hours from the nearest charger.
A minute’s worth of ad video of “you” cruising a coastal road with a beautiful sunset behind you might just overwhelm your common sense long enough to get your signature on the car loan.
About every 1.5 minutes, your TV screen is filled with the face of some washed up “B team” actor selling you some pill, powder or injection guaranteed to cure any medical problem you might have.
Cancer? Cured with a swig of the bottle. They are the descendants of the guy waving a bottle of “miracle elixir” from the back of a snake oil wagon.
My favorite medical drug commercials are the ones put out by the drug companies themselves.
First of all, they have run out of names that make any sense. Flammtx, Zooburnx, Promolotx, Whamistx, Xampodx…that sort of thing. I think they put a Parkinson’s patient in front of a computer keyboard, let him bang on it and then just add “X” to the end of the word.
Then they drop it into a video ad with bright colors, flying unicorns and “you”… dancing along the yellow brick road like you just won the lottery. Add a Baby Boomer soundtrack, but with new lyrics. (Sold to them by the greedy grandchildren of rock stars now dead… who would be appalled.)
“Well she was just seventeen, but she had a hard time pee’n…”
I went to my doctor the other day and asked him about the new pill Doodidox. He asked me what health problem it was for.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They just said to ask your doctor about it.”
Laugh if you must, but it must work or they wouldn’t keep doing it.
Those are just examples of the old type “1950’s style” advertising.
Now we have entered a time when YOU are the product. That’s why all the hoopla about “privacy” and “we won’t sell your information,” which of course is “booshee” (my favorite word).
All I know is that if I Google “Trans Siberian Railway,” within ten minutes I’m getting 32 ads for discount sex operations, five documentaries on Russian prisons and where to buy Amtrak tickets.
Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.
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