Dumb Male Enhancement Commercials

So last night I was eating a pizza in front of my TV. It was a Tombstone, pepperoni pizza and I overcooked it a little bit. Lacking the patience to wait for it to cool off, I burned my mouth on the sauce and cheese, and today my tongue still hurts because of that. I don't remember what I was watching on TV, but it was during the commercial break and I was basically ignoring the ads like I always do. A Cialis commercial came on, and I ignored it, but one phrase snapped me back into reality quickly and, I will say, almost produced extreme projectile vomiting.

They were advertising some new Cialis pill that you could take for your "male enhancement" and the announcer asked a question that I thought was rhetorical, but unfortunately it wasn't: What's your favorite part? Next thing I know, some old couple pops up on the screen and the woman says, "My favorite part is when it lasts really long."

I almost spit the pizza out of my mouth. The last thing I want to know about while I'm enjoying my dinner is some old lady's favorite part of her and her old husband's old "activities" together. I hate those commercials, even more than I hate just regular commercials. And there are some things about them that I don't get. The Cialis ad comes on with the porn music and all, but what's with the bathtubs? Maybe my education about "the act" has failed me in some way, but what does an old man and woman sitting in separate bathtubs, outside, on a hill, while the sun is going down have to do with sex? Is that a metaphor for something? It would have to be, right? Because nobody ever says, "Now, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they take off their clothes and go outside to their separate bathtubs that sit on the top of the hill in their back yard, which overlooks a meadow..." (If any of you know the answer to this, please enlighten me.)

And there are the commercials with that weirdo guy, I think Bob is his name. I guess those are supposed to be funny or something. Like Bob's neighbors are jealous of him because he takes a "male enhancement" drug and there is the most memorable shot of the guy standing there holding his water hose as it starts to slump and the water runs out. That along with other innuendos are in commercials like this. Bob is dressed up as Santa Clause at the mall and all the women there want to sit on his lap. And of course, there's the one where Bob is driving the race car, but I don't really get that one either.

My favorite (and by favorite, I mean quite possibly the most ridiculous) of these ads would probably be the Viva Viagra commercials. Because there's nothing better than getting together with your best friends in your old garage and singings songs about the pill that lets you have sex longer. I mean, I know that's what I do when I hang out with my friends... doesn't everybody? In fact, the only songs I know on guitar are worship and praise songs, and songs about Viagra. (I hope you are picking up the sarcasm here.) And don't get me started on the side effects...

I just hate these commercials, they're so stupid. Even with all the lame phone dating service ads and ones about downloading ringtones, the Cash-4-Gold commercials, and the Tag body spray, I would say that the male enhancement ads are the worst. Next time I'm eating pizza or any other meal, I hope I don't learn more than I want to know about an old couple's sex life. I don't care, don't want to find out, so please get it off my TV.

A Conversation

Quick... interesting or unique thought or observation...

Go... now.

Ok, um...

um....

um... I don't know. I got nothin'.

Come on, Matt, you have to have something you want to say.

Not really...

Just think about something that happened today and elaborate on it. You know, be thoughtful and all that stuff.

Well, I did go to the dump today.

Ok... did anything happen that would make a good lesson or... maybe something interesting... or something that will generate some comments?

Nope, although it did smell like coffee beans mixed with diarrhea. Maybe I could make that a metaphor for how the money for some people's coffee addictions could go to preventing African kids from dying from diarrhea.

I don't know... is that really even a metaphor?

I don't know.

Well, don't you have anything to say?

Can I complain about Christian radio?

Don't you already do that enough already?

Well, can I write about Barack Obama?

Look, why don't you try to take it in a different direction... you know, write about sports or your life, or Jon and Kate Plus 8?

I don't like writing about sports, I like talking about sports. My life isn't interesting, and here's my blog post about Jon and Kate Plus 8: Who effing cares?

(sigh)

Look, can I just post that YouTube video of Ashlee Simpson getting booed at the Orange Bowl or something?

Matt, that's lazy and you know it.

I don't care, voice.

You're a douchebag.

Shut up, I'm going to play Halo now.

I just found this article which gives accounts of some soldiers who landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. I thought I'd share it, because it really moved me. Not only the bravery of the men who stormed the beaches that day, but the horrors that they experienced and how they had to stop thinking just to keep it from getting to them. When nations wage war, these men and women bear the brunt of it, and I think we have to do whatever we can to avoid good people having to give up their lives if at all possible. Anyways, here's the link:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/06/03/dday.stories/index.html

This is the world I see

I was talking to somebody I know the other day and he was telling me about how he had been reading through the Old Testament, specifically the book of Daniel. "Man, there's some scary stuff in there," he said. I agreed. The prophetic book has all kinds of strange imagery that can evoke fear. But this conversation has stayed with me because of what this guy said next, which is something along the lines of what I've heard preachers say for years now - that if God doesn't judge America soon, he is going to have to apologize to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Of course, that's not in Daniel. It's in Genesis, but the Old Testament gives accounts of God judging the world and punishing people for wickedness. There was the flood. There was Sodom and Gomorrah. There was all the tribes who inhabited the promised land that the Israelites were promised. All of these people faced God's wrath, and so what of America, whose people are committing some of the same sins today and yet we haven't been invaded or led off into slavery? We haven't been destroyed with a flood or fire raining from heaven.

While I personally don't believe God regards the United States in the same way as Israel in the Old Testament, my issue here is not really a theological one, but a question of perspective. It's about believing whether or not our nation and the world we live in are getting worse and worse, more sinful, and more corrupt each day. Of course, certain end times theology that includes the rapture and destruction of the world as we know it (which I believe has been debunked by N.T. Wright) has contributed to this outlook as well. People are going to become more corrupt. They are going to turn away from God and practice more and more evil. It's supposed to happen this way...

But I wonder that even though things are extremely far from ideal, is it really true that we are getting worse? I mean, the present may not be all that great, but what makes anybody think that America's past is so much better than its present? At the countries founding, we had stolen land from the Native Americans. We forced them off of their land, fought wars against them, and killed them in the name of God when we were motivated by nothing more than greed and selfishness. We also imported human beings from Africa who had been literally ripped from their lives, homes, and loved ones. We shipped them across the Atlantic Ocean on ships in the worst of conditions, bought and sold them as property, and forced them to work for nothing. And then there was the fact that at our nation's founding, you had to be a white, property owning male to vote.

It seems to me that while lots of things in this world aren't great, we are at least in many ways making progress. You would think that if God was going to punish us, it would be for the things we did to blacks, Indians, and others. The fact that we might allow gay people to get married has got nothing on that. For those that long for the "good old days," when everything seemed to be nicer, simpler, and more Christian; remember that these weren't necessarily the good old days for everybody. Is there a black man or woman who would look back to the 1950s as a better time? I think not.

But, I assure you this: If tomorrow there is a loud trumpet blast and we Christians are zapped up into the air to meet Jesus in the clouds, or if some other nation invades and hauls us off into slavery, or if a terrible natural disaster (global warming? That would be ironic...) were to wipe us off the map, I promise that I will eat crow.