American Beauty?

Everyone agrees advertisers seek to place ads for their goods and services where the most likely consumers will find out about them. So what does it say about me* that the radio show I tune into every afternoon while making dinner has ads for viagra, services to help you register an invention you made in your creepy basement, offers FOR A LIMITED TIME to buy special gold coins, and GPS tracking devices so you can "find out the truth." I had no idea I was a paranoid, grandiose, impotent baby boomer. Into this putrid mix of angry man ads as our nation led up to Valentines day was a tantalizing product for the man who really wanted to get his third wife back. At first I couldn't discern these messages from all the other cacophonous enticements that offered this fear-based listening audience opportunities to show this fucked up world how much better and smarter they were than everyone else. But each evening, as I chopped onions, boiled water, and sauteed whatever was getting fuzzy in my fridge, all the noisy messages about Valentines day began to emerge from their urgent, nay frantic advertising brethren and an image started to coalesce. After hearing the ads for the 60th time, it finally hit me, visually: Wait, did they just say you could send a dozen five-foot roses to the special someone victim? And not just that but, oh christ, you can also send a six foot teddy bear? Why can't these misguided lummoxes -- who don't think it's insane to send over a gargantuan stuffed toy and roses the size of corn stalks -- get out of their dim basements and start inventing a way to live that does not involve terrifying those whom they feel deserves their attention? All of January the ads played on, relentlessly urging listeners to send these creepy things "right to her door." Yeah, right to the address she thought you would never get. But hey, you bought that GPS tracker, and dang if it didn't turn out she's holed up in that dismal apartment complex just a few miles from your condo. Great, maybe I'll drive by a few times tonight after heating up some manwiches for dinner. Just to see if she got my beautiful presents. And Flapnation, here's the most terrifying news of all: the roses cost $700.00 dollars, the bears around $300.00 and if you thought that was the terrifying news, read on if you dare. When I went to the website to see this crazy shit for myself, I found that most of it had sold out. Now, I'm no marketing guru, but if you really wanted to target a service effectively, I think it would be VERY elegant to add a link to a service that offers fast-track restraining orders. One-stop shopping for both recipient and sender.

*it says I have a weird reaction to yelling, anger, and invectives. For some reason I can unwind from my day spent with hundreds of children by listening to adults acting more childish than actual kids while they argue about politics. Something so relaxing to me about how bat-shit crazy everyone involved in the show acts. **Flapdude commented on both items. To the giant teddy bear, he suggested it's a sublimated desire for a blow-up doll on the part of the sender, and he opined that the giant roses were reminiscent of something from Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. Which might explain their price tag. 700 dollars! I think they really DID get harvested from the center of the earth.