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I’ll admit it, I watch too much TV.  Unlike lots of folks, I don’t just sit there like a potted plant.  I constantly complain about bad plots, breaks in continuity, and of course, commercials.  The gap between the imaginary world of advertisers and reality drives me nuts. Whining to my wife and dog isn’t enough; I’ve got to write entire blog posts about it.

Initial translations were thought to be  commandments and such, but recent interpretations actually show the ancients were using the tablets to play sudoku on the couch. (Image from flickr dot com)

Tablets/Laptops

Ad Portrayal: Tablet users design surf boards, organize food drives and find sources of potable water for refugees in the Sudan.  They also use their tablets to take pictures of breathtaking scenery and refer to online astronomy charts while out in the wilderness at night (Despite being a million miles from anywhere, there’s a good WiFi signal).

Harsh Reality:  Tablet users are playing Bubble Witch Saga, watching porn in the powder room, or checking Facebook for likes on recently posted photos of their cats and/or nephews.  They occasionally “lose” the tablet just to keep the kids from hogging it.

Pick-Up Trucks

Ad Portrayal:  Pick-Up owners are driving to work sites, parking entirely too close to the hearth at the steel mill, and generally playing key roles in building the infrastructure that makes this country great.  The guy doing the voice-over sounds like he’s from somewhere in the Rockies, unless it’s Dennis Leary who sounds like Dennis Leary.

Harsh Reality:  No one is allowed to put anything dirty in the back of Dad’s truck, including but not limited to: mulch, play sand or lumber.  Despite the truck being equipped with Bluetooth for safe, hands-free communication, Dad never answers when his brother-in-law calls because he needs help moving.

This photo serves to illustrate both pick up trucks and SUV’s towing boats. You can thank me later for killing fewer digital trees to illustrate my blog. (Image from allfail dot com)

SUV’s

Ad Portrayal:  SUV drivers navigate through mud, snow and over all sorts of rugged terrain as children play happily in the back seat.  Dads reconnect with their children by taking the whole family to the Grand Tetons while towing expensive looking boats.

Harsh Reality: There are damn few boulder fields in suburbia.  A few weeks ago, one of the kids dropped an almond butter and jelly sandwich behind one of the fold down rear seats. It smells like it might be fermenting.  Having these killer car payments often prevents SUV owners from buying so much as a dinghy to tow.

This is either an old fashioned restaurant, or a bunch of craftsmen getting wasted after hours in the cobbler’s shop (Image from zazzle dot com)

Restaurants

Ad Portrayal:  Healthy, good-looking people have incredibly tasty looking food delivered by a perky, knowledgeable waitress.  There are frosty pints of beer handy to wash it down.  The diners look like they’re having so much fun, they might not even get around to actually eating anything.  The camaraderie is so thick, you can cut it with one of the handy butter knives.

Harsh Reality:  The waitress has a hairy mole on her cheek and an Eastern European accent which make the specials at this Tex Mex joint sound like they are composed of boiled cabbage and beet greens.  Our trio of diners could each stand to drop twenty pounds.  The patrons at a nearby table are loud, and not in a good way.  Somewhere else in Svetlana’s section, a small child wails in his high-chair and throws re-fried beans with reckless abandon while his parents pretend not to notice.

E.D.. Medications – Single Dose

Ad Portrayal:  A rugged-but-sensitive looking guy finishes fixing a broken section of barbed wire fence out on the back forty.  His pick-up truck gets stuck in a muddy rut on the dirt road.  He ties the draft horse from his trailer to the front of the pick up and pulls himself back onto dry land. His MacGyver-like solution to the dilemma is clearly just another day in the life of a fellow who gets things done.  He looks like he might be the guy doing the voice-over work on the truck commercials when he’s not working his ranch (but not like Dennis Leary).  He pulls up in front of the cozy farmhouse, where the warm lights in the windows are a symbol for the waiting arms of the gorgeous woman who awaits him.  If “Old Yeller” aint up for hunting , MacGyver can fix that too.

Harsh Reality:  Misinterpreting his wife’s sleeping moans as those of desire, Mr. Fixit slips into the bathroom and pops a little blue pill.  Upon returning to the bedroom his wife is silent and there is unpleasantly aromatic evidence that her moaning was not actually desire-related at all, but rather directly tied to the sizable amounts of pinto beans in her meal earlier at the Tex Mex joint.  Despite the lack of romance in the air, the pill does it’s job.  After some grumbling, the husband decides to sleep on the couch, and maybe catch up on some emails on the tablet.

Kim Kardashian in my post; Check! Cialis and Viagra in my post: Check! and Check!  All three put in my tags to shamelessly boost blog hits; C.H.E.C.K !!!

E.D.. Medications – Daily Use

Ad Portrayal:  Another good-looking guy sorts through boxes in the attic with his wife and stumbles upon a well-worn record album.  His wife, despite looking like she is a generation younger than him, is immediately touched by the guy’s selection of the music (which would likely be relevant to only one of them).  They commence to slow dancing among the boxes as late afternoon sun slants into the storage space.  The picture fades to dark, and we all know what comes next.

Harsh Reality:  The guy takes these pills everyday, along with fish oil and baby aspirin.  When cleaning the attic, he comes across a record album.  He cannot play it, as he hasn’t had a turntable since his junior year of college.  He shows his wife the album.  After a moment, she berates him for keeping old crap and tells him to put it in the junk pile.  The daily-use ED medications will later be expelled from his body,  as he sits in the powder room, trying to reach the next level of Bubble Witch Saga on his tablet.