Day 1199: "Drug Side Effects: Ad Nauseam"

Day 1199: "Drug Side Effects: Ad Nauseam"

I like to watch the Evening News, specifically NBC's Nightly News with Lester Holt. Partly to see where the hell Miguel Almageur (guy with the perfect hair and grey patch - ever serious in his reporting anything from Cabbage to Castastrophe) ends up, he is ubiquitous. 

Unfortunately, it is getting tougher and tougher to watch the news because of the ads. I have figured out the Target Market has to be really old dudes with wiener, acid reflux, memory, and other aging issues.

Sure I could hit 'mute' if I could remember where I left the damn remote the last time ads came on (memory issues?)...we seriously need a Siri or Amazon thingy where you can just yell to your TV, "Hey, shut the hell up" and a sweet voice says back to us, "Okay, I have muted your television, just tell me when to unmute."

But the ads, even though they are annoying, the SIDE EFFECTS drive me nuts, half the ad is always the side effects. With some melodic and soothing voice, somehow speaking at the speed of sound telling us the 18 pages of potential side effects in 30 seconds.

"Do not take Penis-taxol if you are allergic to it."

"Penis-taxol may cause death."

"Do not drive, walk, or talk, while on Penis-Taxol."

"Some people, while using Penis-Taxol have reported a sudden drop in blood pressure, which lead many to fall off cliffs."

So ridiculous, but then I smiled, when I read my Old Man Newspaper that kills trees, and someone burns gas to get it to my door, as I still love to read it, every day, but this gem was in Saturday. In the very, very highbrow and esteemed, "News of the Weird" column:

(I am still evolving.)

Way to go, NORWAY or "NoWay" (Norway isn't a member of the EU and they are doing okay in my mind if they are doing this?)

http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/nw160619.html

"In May, the Norwegian Consumer Council staged a live, 32-hour TV broadcast marathon -- a word-for-word reading of the "terms of service" for internet applications Instagram, Spotify and more than two dozen others, totaling 900 pages and 250,000 words of legal restrictions and conditions that millions of users "voluntarily" agree to when they sign up (usually via a mouse click or finger swipe). A council official called such terms "bordering on the absurd," as consumers could not possibly understand everything they were legally binding themselves to. (The reading was another example of Norway's fascination with "slow TV" -- the success of other marathons, such as coverage of a world-record attempt at knitting yarn and five 24-hour days on a salmon-fishing boat, mentioned in News of the Weird in 2013.) [Wall Street Journal, 5-25-2016]

We hear you, Norwegians, even if this TV approach is true to your passive aggressive nature. (i.e. Minnesota is full of Norwegian Americans.)

Slow TV. Love it.

Keep in mind, these drugs they promote on the Evening News are some of the 'softer/gentler' drugs, I laugh (inside my warped mind) of doing Adriamycin (a chemo drug) and see how a soothing voice could tell you about how much of a cock punch and tit twister Adriamycin is.

Side effects of Adriamycin were explained on Day 291:

Norwegians, can you tell us the side effects to eating Lutefisk, starting with Lye? (See you in 33 hours.)