Being unemployed has its advantages. Well, no, I'm lying. It might have its advantages if, say, you have an active social life or lots of disposable cash lying around, but I have neither, so having no job kinda sucks. But it has given me the opportunity to watch more TV. Granted, it's fuzzy, rabbit-ear television, but it's something I can watch.

And as so many other things in life, TV tends to piss me off. The television shows, in general (I mean, who the hell came up with the idea for 7 million different wanna-be court shows? Or 7 million "I'm too lame to find my own dates so I'll get one through a TV show" shows?), but advertisements...oh my. One day, I will meet an ad executive. And even if, as I'm beating him senseless, he pleads with me and tells me he made all those Mentos commercials I like, or even those cute CGI Coke commercials, I'll still continue to whale the tar outta him until he's a bloody, bloody pulp. Because he'll still be a soulless vampiric whore with more money than I'll ever have, all for being dumb and able to pander to millions of trailer-trash rednecks and sexually frustrated housewives.

But I reserve the lion's share of my spite for those truth.com commercials. No, I'll not link to them because they deserve no traffic. Now, I'll admit that the commercials are different in that they seem to be advertising nothing more than blatant scare tactics. But naturally "scare tactics" is tantamount to "the lowest-common-denominator knee-jerk reaction we can get out of the herd that is humanity." The three recent ones that I've seen prove this beyond all doubt.

First off, we have a guy in a public restroom, pissing in a urinal. As he finishes, he quizzically looks down at the urinal cake, only to find a message: "Cigarette smoke contains urea. So does your pee." And I ask, so the fuck what? Cigarette smoke contains lots of things, including oxygen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, cocoa, sugars, alcohols, and lots of others. Granted, some of the shit they put in there isn't good, but urea? It's naturally occuring, for christ's sake, organic, and a fertilizer. Sure, our bodies might not need it, but that doesn't necessarily make it bad.

Next commercial has a bunch of kids surreptitiously running through a hotel, hanging signs on the doorknobs that say, "Each day cigarettes kill enough people to fill this hotel." All I have to say to this one is: prove it. We aren't given the size of the hotel, nor are we given statistics to support their claim. If you want to scare people, scare them with facts, not with vague assertions. Actually, this reminds me of the older commercial where they had a vanload of kids (it's always kids in these damned commercials) running through this residential neighborhood in the middle of the night, claiming that it was "the neighborhood of various tobacco executives." And they were screaming various flavors of crap through a bullhorn about the people being able to sleep at night. Honestly, who the hell gives them the right to scream through a bullhorn in the middle of the night at the homes of people who may or may not work for a tobacco company? How do we know they're actually employees or execs of Big Tobacco? We don't. They're just being ass-clowns.

The most recent commercial I saw earlier today. It shows some dumbass in a rat suit (reminds me of the picture of Narcus from the message board thread about desktop screenshots, no offense to you, Narcus) crawl out of the subway and start writhing around on a sidewalk, holding a sign that says, "Cigarettes contain cyanide, just like rat poison." Hrm. I guess most people aren't aware that cyanide can be found in apple seeds. Are people going to stop eating apples? Or almonds, for that matter? Probably not. Cyanide is a component of vitamin B12. Yeah, it can kill you, but I'm not aware of any cyanide-related smoking deaths.

No, I didn't write this because I smoke. I just hate stupidity, especially in the guise of "helping people." All commercials have an agenda, none more so than the truth.com ones. Being against tobacco is just as big a business as tobacco itself. Now, where did I put my lighter...?

02.25.02

MightyMon