Truth in adverse-tising.

Commercials.  They really, really suck.  They loudly disrupt our television viewing and they subliminally suggest to all of us what we need to purchase so that we can be whole, happy, and not suck any longer.  We are constantly bombarded with images of cookies, razors, jeans, candy bars, investment banks, and so on.  But you know, there are some products we, strangely enough, don’t ever see ads for on TV.  Here are a few examples:

1.  String.  (Steven Wright has famously opined on this, so I won’t belabor the point.)

2.  Douche.   (Do women even use this shit anymore?)

3.  Canned tomatoes.  (Not spaghetti sauce, not pizza sauce – I’m talking good ol’ diced tomatoes.  A staple in any decent kitchen cupboard.)

4.  Knitting needles.  (There are lots of old women and hippie dippies making their own sweaters and shit.)

5.  Fingernail clippers.  (We all use ‘em – well, except maybe this woman.)

6.  Dog leashes.  (Some dogs are pretty fuckin’ strong.)

7.  Sandpaper.  (There’s good sandpaper, and then there’s cheap-ass-eats-through-quickly-and-ruins-your-fingers sandpaper.)

8.  Towels.  (Think of all those nauseating ads for toilet paper.  What about towels, the softness of which we so deserve and should demand?)

Are there some products that simply don’t need to be advertised?  Products whose manufacturers have cornered their particular market and now nothing more needs to be said about them?  Why, then, must we be subjected to ads extolling the virtues of mountain fresh Clorox bleach?

Let me know which products you think are strangely absent from Commercial Land.  Go get a life – but keep reading this blog!

Catching up on belly-aching.

Well, faithful readers, needless to say, I’ve been a bit distracted lately by other things.   But don’t you worry – there is no shortage of vitriol in this latest installment.  I’ll need to hit a few topics, so pardon the wandering.

1.  First of all, it is of course the Christmas season, probably my least favorite time of the year.  Why, do you ask?  Because of how arbitrary and soul-sucking it truly is.  Think about it – you, like millions of others, are probably stressing about what to buy for whom, where to buy it, how much it will cost, how you can’t afford it, while standing in line at lifeless box stores thinking about it all, and why?  Because once upon a time, some religious nutcases decided to celebrate some kid’s birthday around the same time that a bunch of pagans were being burned at the stake for celebrating the winter solstice?  Give me a fucking break.  Christmas is complete and utter bullshit.  Do what I did and drop out altogether – and enjoy the time off with the people you love the most without feeling obligated.  Life is way too short for that kind of shit.

2.  Who gives a shit about Tiger fucking Woods?  I don’t.  So he cheated on his wife.  Big fucking deal.  A lot of guys do.   Gals, too.  That’s because monogamy  is a wholly unrealistic expectation that humans place on each other.  So, let’s all admit that we’re human and we like to fuck each other, sometimes without the presence of love and romance.   And because of his actions, Tiger’s sponsors are pulling out (so to speak, heh).  Well isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black.  You don’t think the CEOs of some of these hotshot companies don’t have a line of mistresses pulling down their stockings outside their office doors?  Puhleeze.

3.  Obama gets the Nobel PEACE Prize and then says “Hey, let’s send a shitload more troops to Afghanistan.  I think it will work.”  Yeah, that makes fucking sense.  Whatever happened to “you cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war”?  Oh wait, that was Einstein who said that.  A fucking genius.   I’ve been regretting my vote for Obama for some time now, but hey – at least he’s not McCain.  Ain’t democracy grand?

4.  Some 8 year old kid in Massachusetts got sent home from school this week for drawing a picture of Jesus on the cross with Xs on the eyes.   The class was asked to draw something pertaining to the holidays, and this is what he came up with.  Wrong holiday, kid – that’s the bloodthirst-quenching holiday of Easter you depicted.  You missed it by a few months.  Ah well.  He was inspired by a recent family visit to some wacko Christian retreat in his neck of the woods.  The school want to have him psychologically evaluated because of the “violent” nature of his drawing.   Well, duh!  I think anyone who fixates on some dead dude nailed to a cross ought to have their head examined.  And people are just starting to the figure this out now?   That perhaps we shouldn’t be exposing our children to this kind of religious mind-fuckery?  Christopher Hitchens calls it child abuse for a reason, folks.

Well, that’s it for now.  Maybe I’ll be back again soon.  Stay tuned.

Bah hum-turkey.

What a bullshit holiday. Yeah, let’s all celebrate the fact that a bunch of Brits came over on a boat, sweet-talked the Native people who were already here, had these Natives share some food and agricultural secrets with them, and in return butchered their men, raped their women, enslaved their children, took their land and infected them with smallpox and syphilis. Yeah, happy fucking turkey day.

And while we’re at it, let’s see if we can manage to kill anyone else this Black Friday.

The triumphant return of jugs and java!

Well, he’s done it.  Donald Crabtree has reopened his Grand View Coffee Shop in Vassalboro, Maine, much to the delight of coffee-, freedom- and booby-lovers everywhere.  Granted, his new digs are an office trailer… but who cares? The coffee is flowing, the donuts are glazed, and the women are topless.  Every straight man’s dream, right?

I actually heard a wrinkled, humorless old woman on Wednesday night’s local news say that she thinks Don and his shirtless staff should go “someplace else” like New York or Boston.   Ah, fuck her.  Check out the broadcast here:

http://www.wmtw.com/video/21591387/index.html

While the arsonist who burned down the original shop remains at large (prudish bastard!), it’s heartening to know that Mr. Crabtree is bound and determined to keep plowing ahead.  I say good for him, and good for coffee-, freedom- and booby-lovers everywhere.

The State of Maine is an embarrassment.

So, we had a chance in the state of Maine to live up to our Latin motto: “Dirigo”, meaning “I direct”.

Clearly not a mandate, but a victory for homophobia nonetheless, 53 percent of Maine’s voters repealed the same-sex marriage on Tuesday.  The shame I feel for my home state is almost more than I can express.

We had the chance to show the rest of the nation that it doesn’t matter what consenting adults choose to do with their genitals and how that choice informs who they’d like to marry and share a house and a car and mortgage and a checkbook and a bathroom and a life with.  We had the chance to stand up and say, “Everyone deserves equal protection under the law in regards to marriage.”  We had the chance to stand up to the bible-thumpers and the voyeurs and the peeping toms and the hateful bigots and the scaredy-cats and say, “Enough is enough!”

We had the chance, but did we blow it?  This time, maybe.

But this fight, like any other, will take time.  It will take time for people to accept the idea that not everyone makes love in the same manner.  It will take time for people to warm up to the idea of allowing men to marry men and women to marry women.  This may be the end of this particular campaign, but this is certainly not the end of the story.  Like any other civil rights fight, this one will be largely uphill, and will have to be won one conversation, one heart, one mind at a time.

Just listen to this guy.  He’s got it right: