I don't remember a lot about this commercial. I think the reason is whenever I saw it, I either muted it or changed the channel.

Some kid and his father are sitting somewhere eating burgers. The kids says, "So Dad, did you know that [So and So Burger Company] [blah blah] with the meat in these burgers? And, did you know…"

I'm not sure what the specifics were. But I do remember the gist. The kid was a corporate shill, hired to convince his Dad that going on a diet was wrong, and he should eat more burgers.

That ad has a hidden Part II that nobody knows about, set outside, a few years after Part I. In it, the father clutches at his chest, and falls to his knees. Burger wrappers waft by in the breeze. The son watches the life drain from his father. It starts to rain. The son pulls an umbrella out and opens it. A man in a black trench coat approaches, and hands the kid a big yellow envelope. The kid opens it. There's money inside.

That's the vibe I got from the initial ad. It seems incredibly blasphemous, in a family sense. I mean, we've all heard about "Super Size Me." We all know that fast food is bad. And here some kid comes spouting off corporate brainwashing info to his Dad. "So Dad, let me enlighten you. Eating fast food isn't bad at all. Your doctor was wrong about your cholesterol, too. Live large!"

It sickens me. And not because I'm against burgers. I like burgers. It's just one of those ads where they try and pass off something completely wrong and unrealistic as casual and good. Maybe someone will comment in defense of it. That just makes it worse, because they've already gotten to you!

Today, I watched some television. Hard to believe that someone with such an apparently intense disdain for TV's ads would "stoop" to sitting through a few, right? Well, it depends. Some shows are on equal footing with the ads they display. By that I mean that the show puts you in a mood where you'll enjoy ads of similar content. But other times, the situation is just incredibly different. Like watching "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles." That show is so far above anything else on television that it makes the accompanying ads just seem pointless. There's no hope for the ads to be "as good" as the show. So I tend to mute them.

At one point, watching a muted ad today, which may or may not have been broadcast during "Terminator," I realized this specific ad can be interpreted differently when there's no sound to confuse you. Yes, I do mean "confuse you," because there are hidden messages in this ad that you probably wouldn't pick up on while listening to some disembodied sales voice try to convince you do go out and buy.

This was a Valentines Day ad from JCPenney. Maybe you've seen it. Maybe you will see it. It probably won't make an impression on you, unless you mute it. Then you'd see what I saw.

What did I see? A heart-shaped pennant on a necklace, swinging back and forth. "Your eyes are getting heavy…" No big deal, right? I think they did that with two different necklaces. "Get her one of these, she'll love it," was the idea. But that's not what they really said. The truth is far more interesting.

At one point on the screen, there was a very clear message. On a solid back background, bright white letters spelled out a sentence similar to this: "Everybody Gets What They Want On Valentine's." Yeah, they sure do, next commercial…

…Waiiiit!

Let's think about this. JCPenney is selling jewelry, more specifically jewelry for women. Who buys this in preparation for Valentine's Day? Guys do. So if everybody gets what they want, and women will get what they want (jewelry), what will guys get?

What do guys want?

Guys want sex. JCPenney is saying, "Buy her our jewelry, and she'll be sure to put out."

That's just the "subtle" vibe I got from watching a harmless commercial without the sound. I guess it's like playing a rock record backwards…

Judas Priest is God!

**Note: After seeing the ad a second time, finally with the sound on, it has become apparent that the hypnosis idea was an intended gag. One of the audible voices says something along the lines of, "When you're happy, I'm happy." Then the primary message pops up, something like, "This is the day everybody gets what they want." In this new context, I think my original conclusion still makes sense.

The first time I saw the commercial for the new birth control pill Yaz, I wondered at their choice of music that was supposed to pump everybody up and get them psyched. The song was "We're Not Gonna Take It Anymore," sung by women (as opposed to Twisted Sister).

Sure, the music has a good beat, and is energetic. But the words! Listen to the words! It's like, "We just came out with this new pill, and we're not going to take it! Neither should you."

Obviously, the choice of song was meant to emphasize that women everywhere need no longer accept the devastation that can come with normal body functions. Minimizing discomfort is a product highlight, so the idea is, "We're not going to just accept a painful situation when this new pill can fix it!" But still, the lyrics seem even more perfect for the idea that YAZ is bad, and women everywhere should never take it again.

Sometimes I see a commercial and it just makes me feel sad for America. I used to just accept commercials. "That's how things are." But when you realize what a commercial is, and what it's trying to do, it loses its appeal and easy acceptability. A commercial is a brainwashing device. It is trying to control your thoughts, behavior, actions, and spending patterns. That's why even the smoothest of the smooth commercials can seem evil. Indeed, I think the smoother a commercial is, the worse it is, because it's better at manipulating the public for its own selfish ends. To manipulate the public effectively, it has to convince us all that doing X is good for us. But why should we really do X? So companies can make money. Of course, successful consumer manipulation is great from a business perspective. But commercials like that are bad from a "leave me alone I'm an American and this is a free country" perspective. Then there's that whole argument that, "Well if it bothers you so much, don't watch TV." Forget that! Try muting the commercials, channel surfing, or if you've got DVR, just kill the suckers and zoom to the future.

Honestly, sometimes I do think about giving up TV altogether just because of the advertising, especially when it pops up during a program.

But Super Bowl commercials are a different story. They're cool, man! Well, most of them. GoDaddy's was kind of lame.

A friend of mine works at a TV ad agency, and he recently came across some research material describing ad placement techniques during television shows. You know, those annoying, intrusive blocks that obscure your favorite programming? Here's the text:

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We have come to the conclusion that there are further steps that need to be taken in order to maximize ad effectiveness during television broadcasts. Seeing as how this is a fairly new market, overlay ads have many options that need to be considered.

Firstly, placement. Our research indicates a pattern which has been holding consistently for the past eighteen months. While most people tend to look away or ignore an ad when the programming area is compressed, and the ad is shown in the new empty space, they have less propensity to do this when the ad is instead placed over the viewing area. To be clear, we should not simply squeeze a television broadcast (i.e., a show) to make room for an ad. That gives the viewer incentive to limit their perception to just the program viewing area, and they completely ignore our advertisement. Instead, we must leave the show on 100% of the screen, and simply lay our ad over a portion of the entertainment content. Testing has produced evidence that the bottom portion is best. We can technically get away with doing this, since at the most we're only obscuring 20% of the viewing area.

In addition to the "where" issue, there is also the matter of "when." When is it best to show an ad? When viewers are paying the most attention. Therefore, researchers should be requisitioned to watch programs and determine when a viewer is more likely to be curious about the area displayed on the bottom of the screen. For example, during an episode of a mystery television show, the detective discovers a note. He reads it silently to himself, displaying it for the audience to see. Most of the text is near the bottom of the screen. In order to get maximum attention, we should allow the audience the "token second" to view the note, and then obscure it with a relevant ad. That way, we've just gotten our share of eyes which would otherwise have avoided us at all costs. But this is only the half of it.

Further tests indicate that there are far more appropriate moments to show advertising, even when the audience isn't looking at the bottom of the screen. This all comes down to the moment of climax. Most television shows and movies all work toward a short, compact moment, where audience focus is at its peak. Viewers watch from the beginning, are taken for a ride, and are eventually made aware that the most important moment of the show or film is going to occur at any given moment. When it does, they are riveted. We have found that ads obscuring show content during these intense climax moments are, on average, clearly perceived up to 300% more often than those overlaid during non-climax moments. What's more, due to the emotional intensity of these moments, the sales message of an ad will tend to last longer in a person's mind if received during the climax. So obviously, obscuring the most dramatic and intense moments with advertising is the way to go.

While these techniques do prove powerful, preliminary polling shows that audience members are becoming increasingly frustrated with having their programming directly obscured by ads, especially during the points of climax. One viewer even went so far as to say, "They ruined the whole show." But we feel that these frustrations will eventually fade, assuming we continue to effectively communicate that there's nothing viewers can do about it. Of course, even if their displeasure continues to grow, our bottom line is what matters most.

[This was handwritten at the bottom:]
If viewers think they can get away with watching content on the internet with the advertising removed, then we must make up for it by shoving our ads down their ungrateful throats.

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Just kidding. I wrote the whole thing myself. But I think I captured the general truth of the matter…

When this commercial was first aired a few weeks ago, I thought it was stupid. It's like, "Hey, look at these dancers! Aren't they cool? Our product must be good! In fact, it's lame. But don't pay attention to that, look at the dancers!" "Watch me move, not my Juke (cause it's stupid), Watch me move!"

That's the vibe I got. Then I noticed something. The first dancer makes a somewhat odd face while dancing, but it's no big deal. The second dancer makes a horrific face. It's not very appealing. Here's a link to the commercial so you can see. It happens at 0:10.

Weird, huh? I find myself shielding my eyes every time I hear that familiar jingle. If you didn't get a good enough look, just wait until it comes on TV again. I think you'll be unpleasantly surprised. And there's still one more reason this commercial bothers me!

Juke… Juke… I know it's like Jukebox, but the word seems dirty. It sounds kind of like dookie, another word for fecal matter. So the phrase "Got my juke," seems to evoke an image of someone dancing around holding a piece of excrement. Fresh out of the oven, and as moist as can be!

If it wasn't for this one commercial, I might not feel so negatively about the Juke. After all, it looks pretty neat. But it's too late. "Juke" — eew!

Sometimes when I'm watching a commercial on television, I reflect on how the polished message of the company is truly absurd, and how it could be conveyed as such.

Take for example, a commercial for some low-calorie food item. I'm not sure which. The tag line is uttered by a woman enjoying the guilt-free snack. She says, "Hey, a girl's gotta eat." Which implies, "Hey, a girl's gotta eat this."

So I figure, just because she says it, doesn't make it so. But how best to parody this commercial?

I imagined a montage of women saying, "Hey, a girl's gotta eat," while doing something to demonstrate that blind catchphrase obedience is not always a good thing. First, a random lady sits down to a plate of cheesecake. An entire cheesecake. Fork in hand, she stares dreamily at the dessert, and says, "Hey, a girls gotta eat." Not so bad, right? Some people, women and men, have actually done that. I know I've wanted to. But the montage continues downhill from there.

A few clips later, a heavyset woman is sitting in a pile of empty pizza boxes, candy wrappers, and assorted garbage. Her face is covered with food, including chocolate frosting from a cake she's eating off the floor with her hands. "Hey, a girl's gotta eat," she says.

It just keeps getting worse, until finally, a morbidly obese woman is out for a stroll. Across the street, she sees little Jimmy Carver, a gaunt orphan, receive a gift from a compassionate stranger. At the pretzel stand, a woman buys him a salty treat. The woman herself is poor, and that's the last money she had, but she knew that little Jimmy would appreciate a pretzel more than she. It's the first food he's had in days. Upon receiving the gift, his face lights up. He can barely bring himself to eat the pretzel, it's so beautiful. As beautiful as his smiling benefactor. Tears can be seen in the eyes of the pretzel vendor. Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, the obese woman decides on a course of action. She lumbers across, stopping traffic, and makes her way to the pretzel stand. Pushing aside the kind stranger, she grabs the pretzel out of little Jimmy's hand and takes an enormous bite. Mouth full, she mumbles to saddened orphan, "Hey, a girl's gotta eat."

Sure, that was pretty gruesome. And sure, let's all hope it never happens in real life. But the moral of the story is, you can rationalize any action, but the rationalization doesn't always make it right.

And what really grinds my gears about the original commercial and its use of, "Hey, a girl's gotta eat," is the fact that it's obvious a girl's gotta eat. Everybody needs to eat. And there are plenty of alternatives to the food product in question. It's like using, "Hey, a guy's gotta breathe air," as a rationalization for breathing Coca-Cola's Bottled Air For Men.

Bottom line, the commercial could have given women a better reason to choose their product than to simply say, "This is food for girls, so girls, eat up!"