Are there no garage sales? Are there no charities?

Here's an original advertising concept: Owning a really tiny car "allows" you to "escape your stuff." Because the tiny car is SO tiny you can't take the contents of your house with you when you go for a drive. The Smart Car is so --umm, "smart," it is designed to force you to take your leave of everything that you own which is larger than your wallet and cell phone when you putter around in it. Not shown: it's also so smart that it's "efficient" design does not allow you to bring home any more "stuff," either. Call it forced simplifying.

Yes, the Smart Car allows you to escape your stuff. Like losing your job frees you from the headache of managing money and maneuvering rush hour traffic, or having an empty refrigerator provides the liberating experience of not having to decide what to eat for dinner. Seriously, this message really pushes the Stupid envelope- and in today's advertising world, that is saying a LOT.

"Thanks for finally noticing! Now I can exhale!"

There are several of these Cheerios Multigrain commercials featuring women who go out of their way to make it obvious that they've managed to lose weight- they hang out in laundromats until someone asks them why they are drying their clothes for the fourth time, so they can "casually" mention that they need to shrink them because "they don't fit anymore, I've lost weight." They spend hours in front of the clothes donation bin, patiently waiting for a neighbor to notice their slimmed-down butts (seriously, this one is more than a little creepy- the friend actually stares at this woman's backside and approvingly- and loudly- takes note of the improvement.)

Ok,so maybe the woman in this ad hasn't been waiting hours for just the right moment to bend down in her new, tight slacks in front of just the right person to achieve just the right response. Maybe she's just been bringing her old, No Longer Wearable Because She's No Longer a Fatass discardables to the bin one item at a time, and has finally drawn a stare from her neighbor. Either way, the "Oh yes I HAVE lost lots of weight, thanks for noticing, now let me go on and on and on about how I accomplished this great achievement" response should convince the friend to never,ever comment on The Biggest Loser's weight loss ever, ever again.

And I just love the smug, I'm So Very Awesome look on this woman's face as she eats what is probably her 19th straight meal of Multigrain Cheerios. Hey, lady? Before you get too carried away with your own sense of self-satisfaction, I'd like to remind you that that stuff is still made up mostly of milled flour and sugar. You could do a LOT better- I like mixing Great Grains, Grape Nuts and granola with yogurt, myself-far more whole grains than your Cheerios, much more variety, and a LOT more filling (I like Cheerios, but anyone who tells you that they are not very hungry two hours after eating a bowl of it is lying.)

But back to my main point- if you have to solicit compliments like this, maybe you don't look as good as you think you do. And "I'm shrinking my clothes....I'm donating my clothes...?" Please, get the hell over yourself. Better yet, pack those clothes away in the closet, because if you think that a diet consisting of Multigrain Cheerios is something you are going to be able to stick to for the rest of your life, you are only kidding yourself. And don't think your friends won't remember when you are back to hauling yourself around in sweatpants what a big fricking deal you made out of dropping a few pounds, once upon a time.

For the person in your life who already has everything: More.

Is there room for any doubt that Lexus will not stop subjecting us to these horrible commercials until everyone on the planet absolutely despises the company, the jingle, and every actor who has ever appeared in any of them?

This family comes close to some level of Wholesomeness, because for a few moments they are actually doing something together. Of course, when you think about it for a moment, you realize that they must have been doing something together for some time, because they've managed to prevent mom from noticing the overpriced luxury car with the giant red bow being parked ostentatiously in the driveway. Maybe they were using the SodaStream or whipping up Lattes? Maybe they were gazing at their individual Apple laptops and updating their Facebook pages? Whatever it was, I'm sure it was fun, Upscale, and very, very White.

Anyway, this whole mess comes to a climax when mom realizes that someone has reprogrammed "Mom's Song" (Mom doesn't have a name; she left that with her soul, at the altar) to match the Lexus Jingle. It takes a few moments to sink into Mom's brain, but the giant, delighted grins on Dad and her 2.5 children eventually give it away. And then it's time to leave the cavernous living room with the freaking wall-sized windows looking out into the perfect fucking snow-encrusted lawn (well, why not, everything about this family is perfect, naturally the very trees in the lawn would be delicately shroud in newly-fallen snow. To expect otherwise would be to imply that this family's fecal matter emits odors. Not a chance.)

The final scene is the exact same god damned final scene we see in every. Single. One. Of these Ads. Spouse who lives in a suburban palace and is obviously used to getting every freaking thing her heart has ever desired finds a Lexus in the driveway. What strains credulity is the fact that the receiver of this gift always acts so damned surprised- why? I mean, last year it was two weeks in Paris. The year before that, it was the Navigator she said she wanted. The year before that, it was the indoor swimming pool. And let's not even start on those dirt bikes and ponies the kids have been getting every December since they were roughly six. The only surprise here is what took so damned long for the giver to get the freaking hint- I mean, these ads have been around for a long time now, and didn't you notice the look of disappointment when she opened that box of chocolate diamonds while taking the Cessna to Greece last summer?

Meanwhile, the only look we have on our faces is that of slow-burning rage and hate for anyone who was within one square mile of the lot when these commercials were created. I hope this doesn't sound too harsh for the Holiday Season, but you should all burn in hell. Slowly. While the Lexus Jingle plays in an endless loop in the background.

So you're still a little girl. Your price has just gone up.

This time of year, jewelery commercials almost manage to crowd out cell phone ads, and they certainly give them a run for their money when it comes to utter, pointless loathsomeness. And that is really saying something.

In this particular commercial for something called "chocolate diamonds" (I don't know. I don't want to know) we see a little girl staring at a plate of chocolates in a shop. Presumably a parent is nearby and this little girl is letting that parent know that she just adores chocolates and would be ever so happy if said parent would purchase little girl some of those yummy chocolates. Ok, lots of kids love chocolate. Nothing offensive here.

But then we see the same girl grown up, and she's still audibly cooing over chocolate- except now it's chocolate DIAMONDS. Let's try to figure this out, shall we? When she was a kid, she loved chocolate- but wait, maybe it was just the appearance of chocolate that she liked so much. Because chocolate diamonds are not edible (they aren't, right? I mean, these aren't diamonds actually dipped in chocolate, are they?) So she still loves chocolates- but now they have to be really expensive chunks of rock. And because deep down she's still a little girl, she's still going to find some adult to make aware of her stupid obsession, 'cause maybe he'll get the hint and buy her the pretty little things she saw in the display case, just like daddy did when she was REALLY a little girl.

Sure enough, this nasty, pain-inducing little nub of an ad ends with Allegedly Grown Up Girl getting the "chocolate diamonds" (seriously, what?) and giving Daddy/Husband an appreciative smile and hug (which really can't mean anything more than "awww, you were paying attention when I was drooling all over these things in the store, I'm glad I brought you with me!" although I'm sure the guy hopes it also means "ok, I'll keep having sex with you- for a few more months, anyway. Valentine's Day is February 14th by the way, and this doesn't count.")

What it all boils down to is what all of these awful jewelry commercials boil down to- women love shiny things, and in a way, men love them too- because women are really obvious about loving shiny things and also really willing to let men know exactly which shiny things they love the most, they make gift-giving a no-brainer. "What do I know about my wife? Well, she likes pretty rocks. So if I get her a pretty rock, I'm safe." Everyone's a winner. Except the television viewers, but when have we ever counted?

Divide and Conquer, the Verizon Way

A pair of upscale breeders cruise through their upscale neighborhood, quietly pretending to have concern for one of their formerly upscale neighbors, who are about to fall from the top branches into the Let's Pretend It Isn't There land of How the Other Half Lives.

Some of their "friends," you see, are on the verge of losing their house. "So many bills" mutters Hubby to Obviously Pregnant But Keeps Touching Stomach and Don't Worry There Will Be a Reference To Future Child Just To Make Sure You Get It Later. Mommy First/ Wife Later replies something about how Verizon is now going to require that she pay a little bit toward her insurance. Seems like an innocent, "hey I want to be part of this conversation too" thing to say, except...

Fox News Viewer and Sean Hannity Worshiper Hubby instantly jumps down her throat with a line that I think I've seen misspelled on a sign at every Tea Party event ever held. It boils down to "shut up, it's still a good deal, and hey we are a million times better off than our friends" and strongly implies that the reason why those friends are about to be homeless is because one of them objected to contributing to their own insurance. In other words, were whiny, demanding, entitled losers who simply failed to appreciate their jobs and their Godlike employers- you know, the Most Productive Amongst Us.

Hubby's "shut your mouth you never know who may be listening" admonition does it's job- Mommy/Wife not only regrets her half-uttered criticism of All Good And All Giving Verizon, she quickly puts on a smile and folds herself back into focusing on Baby To Be and Former Baby in the Back of the Minivan Made Possible By Verizon. It's strongly implied that the mildly anti-Corporate afterthought throwaway line has been tossed down the Memory Hole, never to be retrieved and certainly never to be spoken of again.

One of the YouTube commentators gets it exactly right here- this commercial is all about dividing Verizon's worker drones into opposing tribes. Yes, Verizon is demanding that it's employees (who, by the way, might want to notice that unemployment rate and remember how much they like living in a house and how much it costs to feed kids these days before they start to bitch) pay "a little" into their insurance funds, which had formerly (probably due to some silly "contract agreement") been paid in full by Verizon. Maybe some employees have a problem with this. Verizon would just like to remind them that hey, jobs are hard to come by these days, and maybe they'd rather have no job at all and be out on the street? Would that be better? Hey, it's up to them. But complaining about it- well, hey, it would be a real shame if the company shut down because it wasn't profitable enough after paying out for all that insurance. If that happens, you know who to blame (wink, nudge, point at noisy, greedy, selfish, lazy neighbor.) Go ahead and kill that golden goose- but don't blame the goose when you don't find any eggs in there when you are done.

You can almost HEAR the whip cracking, can't you?

Because moving, even a little, really sucks

Oh yays, now I can just bleat at my television instead of wearing out my fingers clicking my Medieval remote control! This is how people must have felt when the wheel was invented. Or maybe the light bulb.

Seriously, though. I guess that if I had grandchildren (and no, I am not old enough to have grandchildren) I could amaze them with stories of how grampa used to have to get off the damned couch and turn this big, heavy thing called a "dial" which protruded from the non-HD, non-70-inch, non-color television which looked more like a big ugly box than a big ugly window. Back when "plasma" was what people had in their blood, and had absolutely NOTHING to do with tvs.

Continuing my story, I'd tell them about the invention of "remotes" which weren't very remote- they had cords attached to them. Then the remotes lost the cords, but we still had to wait for something good to come on the tv, and if we missed a show, we were out of luck (oh, and if nothing good WAS on, we'd find something else to do. And no, that didn't include surfing the net, because surfing was something you did on the ocean, not a net. It might be hard, but I'd try my best to explain how there was Life Without Television, the Internet OR Cell Phones back then.)

Then I'd tell them about how grampa managed something called a "video store" back when he was in Graduate School, and how people would actually have to leave their houses to browse our library of "tapes." At the risk of aging myself, I might tell them the story of how grampa sold 300 copies of "E.T." six months before it was even released to the general public, $24.95 each, and how people would have to "rewind" their movies when they got done watching them. But maybe not- I don't want to scare my own grandkids, after all.

If I still had their attention- and they hadn't already abandoned me to talk to the X-box- I might even expand on that Life Without Television thing- about how the people of my generation actually spent a lot of our time outside, playing tag and hide and seek and a thousand other games we invented with our own brains without asking a single question of an electronic device, and without Googling or using a single App. Not even once. Maybe they'll think we were geniuses. More likely, they'll just think Grampa and his friends were really lame. And that their lives were really, really sad.

I think I'll skip the part about how, after turning the dial controlling the antennae, we'd run outside to watch it rotate so it was aimed toward Plattsburgh, New York, so maybe we could get a picture. I don't think they could handle that. After all, they are just kids, and they are living in a world which allows them to just sit on their butts and tell the X-box what they want to see or do. And what a wonderful world it is.

This guy should correspond with his brain more often

This commercial features a guy who takes the time to write little mental notes to each side of his brain, and is careful to include the term "dear" when he does it. It seems he's gone and used "our" hard-earned money to purchase as KIA, and now justifiably feels the need to explain why he's done such a thing. To both sides of his brain. Individually.

He concludes by suggesting that upon the purchase of this overpriced piece of junk, his brain threw a hissy-fit and assaulted him with condemnations. "Now shut up, and let me drive!" he demands. Yikes. Hey, buddy- we all have those little voices in our heads every once in a while. They usually show up when we are about to do something really stupid- like spend luxury car money on a KIA. Those voices come from our Inner Common Sense. Sometimes we listen to them, sometimes we don't. But the argument we have with them comes before the moment of decision. Once we've made our choice, they tend to go away.

At any rate, I hope this guy isn't really having this conversation with his brain while he's driving. I hope that the protests coming from inside his skull aren't really so loud that he feels compelled to repeat the talking points the slick salesman at the KIA dealership read to him, and then tell his brain to "shut up." And I especially hope that he really does want his brain to stop distracting him so that he can drive, and not so that he can get back to texting, adjusting the seat temperature, updating the GPS and doing all those other things that commercials for expensive cars urge us to do instead of drive.

"Shut up and let me drive." Hey, no one's stopping you, pal. Except, apparently, your brain. Which you argue with a lot. Weird.