More Commercial Problems

It's happening again! Television commercials are causing me to question my knowledge, my eating habits, my world. Speeding away from the hemi question, I find myself in the world of breakfast cereals. Two commercials, in particular, are raising eyebrows around, well, my face. First, Kellogg's Fruit Harvest cereal... In the Fruit Harvest commercial, a voice asks about the dream in which boxes of tasty, wholesome cereal grow on trees, you know... that dream! While we are reminded of the dream that we have all certainly had, we see are given a visual of rows and rows from an orchard filled with the mysterious cereal box trees. Okay, I'm with you so far, Kellogg's. But then it happens! The voice tells us to wake up. It's not a dream any more. The video continues to show us the cereal box tree orchard, in full bloom with "ready for store shelves" boxes of Fruit Harvest cereal. It's not a dream any more? Are they really growing cereal by the corrugated, full-color printed boxful? The voice tells me yes. A hearty congratulations to the fine folks at Kellogg's for this incredible advance in agricultural science.

It's not just Kellogg's that has me wondering, though. Post Maple Nut Medley (or something like that) has a commercial that has piqued my interest, too. In their commercial, the Post people don't suggest that their product is grown completely ready for retail sale. What they do show, however, is a woman enjoying a bowl of this delicious cereal... up in a tree! Now, I've eaten cereal for a long time and in a lot of places, but I can scarcely imagine a scenario in which I would be eating the cereal in a tree! And I don't see any milk up in the tree with her. Did she prepare the bowl first and then climb the tree? Maybe a cereal accomplice on the ground poured the milk over the clusters of hearty goodness and then somehow (maybe pulleys?) lifted the bowl up to this cereal-loving tree dweller. It all just seems like a lot of trouble. If I'm not going to be able to enjoy this cereal in the comfort of my home, I'm afraid I won't be able to purchase it. You see, I usually don't climb any trees until around lunch time.

Commercial Literacy

I am a pretty well-educated person and, beyond the books, consider myself intelligent, with-it, and at least basically literate in most areas of common knowledge. Now, however, I find myself in an awkward place, having my faith in my own general cunningness being tested by... television commercials. That's right, commercials have pushed me to the limits of what is known to me.

What is a hemi? Do I have to drive a truck or a souped up old sports car to know? I'm sure it has something to do with an engine because in the commercials, two trucks pull up to a stoplight (usually somewhere in the desert where there doesn't even seem to be an intersecting road) and one driver leans out the window and asks his neighbor, "That thing got a hemi?" The neighbor counters with some sort of smug "well of course I have a hemi" answer and promptly leaves the questioner in the dust as the light turns green. It's very impressive. I want a hemi. Until I have one though, I can assure you that I won't be engaging in any conversations with my stop light neighbors!

I Love Sports, But...

How did NASCAR get so popular? I can't believe people watch this. You know what it is they're watching, don't you? They're watching traffic ! NASCAR happens everyday at rush hour in every city in America, yet racing fans still feel the need to watch it on t.v. and, even worse, buy tickets to see it live. I think I'll start selling tickets to people to sit on busy street corners everyday from 5 to 6 p.m. Now there's entertainment!

Some people change careers and move to different cities just to avoid a long commute. Race car drivers, on the other hand, choose to make a career out of the commute. Their goal - their professional lifetime goal toward which they devote significant time and effort - is to win rush hour. It's really a pretty noble pursuit!

Personally, I think racing should be a punishment. I think repeat speeding offenders should be sentenced to laps at various speedways. A couple of minor offenses and you find yourself doing a short race at a nearby speedway. Keep it up, though, and you end up in the Alcatraz of racing, the Daytona 500. Of course, if you're a bad enough driver - among the worst of the worst - you get the book thrown at you and you end up living out the rest of your days on pit row. Just sitting there, hoping to get that last-minute pardon call from the racing commission.

The Most Disturbing Thing In My House

Those who know me will vouch for me when I assert that I am not a neat freak. I'm not unsanitary, mind you, but I'm not always quick about discarding items that I could never possibly have use for again. As a result, I have some pretty funny, and sometimes disturbing things in my possession. The most disturbing, ironically, is one of the housekeeping implements that I, and hopefully you, own. The absolute most disturbing item in my house is the toilet brush. In a society where almost everything is available in a disposable form, we still keep this cheap piece of plastic that is used to scrape old, well, toilet contents, off the walls of the toilet because they didn't go away the first time we tried to get rid of them. It astounds, dumbfounds, and, yes, I would go so far as to say, flabbergasts me, just thinking about the fact that, as a society, we make a habit of keeping these things in our homes.

So I invite my fellow Americans... No! I invite all of humanity to join me in taking our disposable culture just one logical step further. Sure, it goes against all the reuse-reduce-recycle conservationist ideas that we have tried to build within ourselves to combat our wastefulness, but you know what? It just makes sense. I don't know how we missed it until now, but it is not too late. Join me! Make your house less disturbing by throwing away that repository of filth, stimulate the economy by buying a new one when your toilets are ready for their next cleaning, and in your own very small way, change the world!

Welcome Riders!

Welcome to ZiggyBackRide: The Ride of Your Life! I hope you find it entertaining, inspiring, sickening, maddening, or some other -ing word that keeps you coming back often.

Hang on tight, make sure your safety apparatus is engaged, and for heaven's sake, keep your arms and legs in! The ride is beginning...