That the world today is run by commercial empires and evil capitalists is something even that weird bloke down at the local pub who never wears a shirt, is able to realise without much effort, and so most of us have lulled ourselves into a cotton candy reality where we think we just have to live with all the ads, banners, posters, sounds, shrieks and flashes that are crammed into our every orifice day and night. Ads are wonderful after all, right? We've all experienced how a little shopping can cure the bubonic plague and poverty, changing your brand of cat food will make your wife more sexy and loving, changing your hair colour will make you slim and forever running around on some beach with tons of young, scrumptious, half nude men, and buying a new car will save your marriage and the environment.
Seeing as you are most likely reading this on your computer, unless you're just some freak that prints out all the blogs you read and take them with you to bed at night, you too will have noticed the hysterical, blinking neon orgasms that pop up on the sides of what you're trying to focus on. Who in their right mind can concentrate on a boring text about prerural deconstruction issues in Videberg-styles when there's a hot, half nude woman luring you into a membership at the Bird Watchers Association, or some hypnotic whirling spiral makes you buy the new shades with a built in mp3-player. Watch out for those offers that seem just a tad bit too good to be true. Getting one pair of free woollen socks if you say yes to take in three Mongolian princesses and marrying them is not a particularly good deal… If you're a woman.
Many may not think ads on TV is such a bad thing, seeing as it gives them a chance to run to the toilet, beat their wife or walk the dog, but there are only so many times I can wee in one hour. The worst part about TV ads though, is the volume. I know you've experienced what I have. It's a late, calm, sleepy winter night, you and your partner are lounging in the sofa, clawing each other like there was no tomorrow, whilst watching a shitty romantic film about "life" with a lot of crying. All is quiet, the only sounds protruding the silence is the mellow squeals of your neighbour ritually slaughtering a goat. Suddenly you both jump, your bodies are elevated and smashed against separate walls by the intense volume of the commercial break on the screen cutting out the terrible, but calm tuba solo of the film. It's like going from a harp number to Gene Simmons on sewing machine oil and lemonade.
Like the man you are, you know it's your job hauling yourself across the floor, to the sounds of your loved one's hysterical sobs, throwing yourself forward to grab the remote and turn down the volume, but even though you just saved both your lives, the only thing you can think of is that you won't get any tonight. And it's all the commercials fault.
Once, I went to my local cinema, and sitting there in the dusky dark waiting for the terrible mind raping experience of some Hollywood flick to start (I have my weak moments, like all the rest of you lot), AFTER having paid my 100 NOK / £ 10 / 5 $ / € 12 and being bled for another violation buying a bar of chocolate. During the intense ad marathon before the film started, there was an ad for the cinema itself, marketing possible private clients in the room, it informed us that "Nobody minds ads at the cinema - Advertise at Bergen Cinema".
Yeah… Yeah… People LIKE sitting 20 minutes in a dark room with strangers learning about chewing gum and sanitary pads. There was only so much I could do not to pull a Hulk there in the dark, jump up screaming, ripping off my shirt and spilling my precious chocolates into the afro of the person in front of me, foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog whilst running down the isle up to the big screen, falling onto my knees and screaming "why, god? Why?!"
Ok, I didn't do any of this, but leaving the cinema afterwards, I was cruel enough to NOT throw my waste in the bin. Take that, Bergen Cinema!
For those of you who have been deprived of contact with the opposite sex since birth, your first and foremost contact with ads is when you check your mailbox every morning (you know, the box outside your door, you modernistic bastard). No matter how well you know that death trap your mailman has left for you, you know you have to open that box to get your new issue of "Better Boobies Exclusive", and every time it's the same. Once you open that lid, brochures and fliers shoot up and out, smacking you in the face and burying you in a ton of pornographic ink fuse and diabolical paper, and none of your neighbours can help you, because they are all suffering the same fate. To help myself, I've put up bright stickers, approved by the Mail Service naturally, that say "No ads, please", or "Only addressed mail", but it never helps. Now and then an inattentive, or just pure evil mailman ignores the thirty stickers completely, and when I think I'll be safe checking my mail, in reality my hand is soon caught in an ad bear-trap when I put it in the mailbox, and I thrash around on the ground in a brutal death roll, thinking that that mailman will surely die for this.
The same thing happens a lot when I take the bus. Now, the only thing you can do on a bus is stare. And think. But when one of those things are taken away from you, you get angry, and you start writing about it online, like a sad degenerate. Like when the bus passed a parade of nude people protesting. Everybody on the bus were all eyes and mobile cams, but I, I was staring into a gigantic poster telling me how wonderfully fantastic this new phone company was. Ads stopped me from seeing naked people. Nothing makes people angrier than missing nudity!
Despite the hostility many show towards commercialism, working with commercials is still pretty popular. Even my own father got a job in a media and ad company a couple of years back. My first reaction was naturally shock, disbelief and a short trip up on the roof threatening to throw myself onto the spiked iron fence below, but when I had been tricked back down with candy and flattery, I tried to look on the bright side of it. I even visited my dad at work to meet his new colleagues, they were all very nice, too nice indeed, because they invited me to join their morning meeting, and I knew it was too late to escape when those huge, iron bolted doors were closed behind me and the Circle Master lit the black candles in the pentagram on the floor. They all started chanting the name of evil as I crawled into a foetal position in one of the corners with my doctor and pharmacist on speed dial, knowing all to well this would scar me for life.
Let me just make my point clear. I hate commercials, I hate ads. Unless it's used for promoting this wonderful blog, of course.
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