I can never watch TV with my 50-year-old father. Why? The minute “Law and Order,” “Nash Bridges” or a Celtics game fades out to a commercial break, his thumb irrevocably turns to “change channels obnoxiously fast for precisely 120 seconds.” Oh, and nix the Nash Bridges part, that’s actually my favorite show and guilty pleasure, he’s not a Don Johnson fan. As a child, I was always upset when he would switch the channels, but in my wise older years I have learned why: Advertising triggers synapses in my brain that give me uncontrollable urges to beat people in the head with mining equipment as a method of stress relieve caused by the asinine plots, actors and products being displayed on television. Allow me to discuss advertisements that don’t work.

The first failed ploy is, well, anything featuring kids. The most recent batch Brita Water Purifier commercials are a great example; children with apparent mental handicaps are asked to name absolutely ridiculous things that they fear might be creeping in their water. Of course, though they appear relatively coherent, they name such things as seahorses and mermaids. No kid, you’re not seeing any aquatic life in your water – actually, that’s your parents feeding you LSD for lunch. If you see mermaids in your water, a $20 filter won’t help you, nor will it erase the obviously traumatic childhood you must have endured to assert such a claim. Years of therapy might. Other failed advertisements featuring children: Ovaltine, Welch’s Grape Juice and anything related to Walt Disney World. If only their mothers remembered their diaphragms.

Second on my list is male “enhancement” or “corrective” drugs, the advertisements of which neglect to state what their product actually does. Things like “Bob” having a “big spring of confidence” thanks to “Enzyte” makes me want to “projectile vomit” my “lunch” everywhere. Second runner up is the plot used in Levitra commercials, because erectile dysfunction and not being able to throw a football through a tire tied to a tree correlate immensely.

Just when I though that it was safe to see a movie again, the Motion Picture Association decides to pull a new ridiculous policy from their bottomless rectum of bad ideas. Their latest claim to fame is planning to slap an “R” rating on movies that glorify and/or feature characters partaking in excessive smoking. Even Walt Disney is being shot dirty looks by those in favor for this policy due to their depiction of smoking in the PG-rated “Holes” and G-rated “102 Dalmatians.”

Newsflash: I started smoking the good old fashioned way: peer pressure. In fact, when I saw Cruella De Vil smoking one of her Benson & Hedges look-alikes, I had no desire whatsoever to smoke. Chances are that the youth of our nation don’t hang out at supermarkets and try to get their older classmates to buy them a pack of butts just because some lady in a fur coat with a white face and pointy nose tells them to. Most movie characters who smoke are depicted as old and grizzly men with facial deformities and a hacking cough or women who look and talk like old and grizzly men with facial deformities and a hacking cough.

For those of you just tuning in, today’s column is brought to you by the letter “S” and the literary device known as “alliteration:” Slippery Slope. If some uptight conservatives determine that any films featuring excessive smoking must be banished to the “R” rated section of theatres, the possibilities that will inevitably follow are as endless as the balding middle-aged baby-boomers who support them. Just think of it: MTV features reality shows where the characters are clad in nothing more than computer generated mosaics most of the time, while engaging in a virtual smorgasbord of debauchery as they plunge into a dark underworld of drinking, drugs and sexual deviance. Children are afforded the pleasure of watching a handful of twenty-somethings drink until vomiting, have sex until the roommates come home (and perhaps join in) and eventually pass out on whatever upholstered furniture is available.

So instead of a little lung cancer, we’ll have children who are intimately familiar with the genitalia of MTV celebrities and who are more eager to engage in (gasp) premarital sexual activity. And before you know it, there will be handfuls of prepubescent highschoolers with more crabs than Narragansett Beach running around having no choice but to smoke cigarettes as an outlet to relieve the stress of having a STD at age 13. If you ask me, coughing up a lung on occasion builds character. Sexually transmitted diseases never helped anyone.

It’s obvious that my argument is taking an abrupt turn into left field. And I hope that in doing so, you’ll realize the point of this whole argument – eventually children will have to come to grips with the real world. If they’re unable to resist the urge to smoke a cigarette just because Nicholas Cage enjoys an occasional puff in his movies, let’s hope they don’t watch Austin Powers, because it would sure be a tragic if every kid growing up demands eleventy-billion dollars from the US government in exchange for not drilling a nuclear bomb in the earth’s “mag-ma” core.

Okay, so my friend and I were sitting together at lunch the other day. When the topic of gay marriage was brought up, I responded that civil unions, marriage or whatever else the notion is termed is a moot point as far as I'm concerned and as far as the church and government should be concerned, too. What is a “moot point?” Well, there’s this guy at work, and every time you criticize him about anything, he says it's a “moot point.” Like you'll say, “Hey, Bob, could you stop dripping ketchup on the copy machine?” and he'll say, “That's a moot point.” So we put toner in his Big Mac.



The relevance of that previous anecdote is about as pertinent as all of the arguing over gay marriage. Society seems to forget that its standards and practices often change with its culture. Things like slavery, segregation and N*Sync have been discarded in favor of practices that are more consistent with the time we live in. We are now aware that persons of color are no different from the rest of us and that all of the synthesizers and faux-percussion in the world is no real substitute for talent. And I’m sure that in a decade or so from now, the same attitude will be expressed for our whining about gay marriage: that homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, etc… are all people and what they do in their own time and how they choose to express their love is not for the church of government to decide (though often in-laws are another story).



So maybe I'm not a fervent supporter of gay marriage (as it seems that most people get their panties all bunched up at the very mention of this topic, whether they are for or against it), but it's mostly because this whole thing is a non-issue. Does it really upset straight conservatives that two members of the same gender wish to profess their love in the form of a bone fide marriage? It sure does upset the church, though! Oh, that's right. I keep forgetting that an invisible man who lives in the clouds frowns upon two men giving each other a ring symbolic of their mutual affection and saying "I do" in one day of marital bliss. What a random thing to frown upon.



Moving on, once more, our culture and society is changing. There are no fewer or less gay people than many years ago, but there are fortunately places in this nation where those once oppressed for their sexuality are now able to live their lives in relative peace. The entire notion of homophobia is silly. My (choice/biological disposition; whatever) to like other men is my business. My sexual preference is such a minute personality trait in the grand scheme of things. I'm a computer science major, I like feeding ducks on occasion, I often have hair colors not found in nature. All of these things I would share with a person before even thinking about bringing up my sexual preference. I’m not forcing anyone else to accept my beliefs or that of others, but doesn’t it seem logical that the opposite hold true? Shouldn’t those who are against homosexuality keep it to themselves as those who are homosexuals are expected to keep their affairs private? I don’t know. Maybe URI’s Students for Conservative Activism (whose social gatherings, I’m sure, are two hoots and a sockful of yowzas) enjoy a world of double standards, but I can’t say that I do. Maybe this is really just some ploy to distract us from the true problems our nation is facing, maybe it’s a relevant argument. Or maybe I could re-write “Pride and Prejudice” on Post-It notes.



But the entire point is that, with pronouns removed and shared medical coverage aside, everybody is upset over “a person marrying another person.” In these times of terrorism, fear and concern over all that is wrong with the world, is the fact that two people care for each other really that big of a deal?