Your average, ordinary commercial for a medication that treats stuff that happens as a person ages (such as arthritis or rising blood pressure)

“Hello!” a smiling man (or woman, depending on the target audience of the show that is currently airing) says to you, even though you can’t possibly answer him unless you stalk and find him/her.  As he/she is talking to you, a violin concerto is playing in the background, or maybe someone playing something similar to “Here Comes the Sun” on a piano.  The person is walking through a park as well.

“I love to do tons of high risk stuff,” the person (who I’m just gonna assume is male, for the sake of easiness) continues, “like deep-sea diving near the Marianas Trench, bungee jumping from Mount Everest in nothing but boxers and a bra, giving my children piggyback rides in construction sites, and eating food with lots of salt and garlic.  I also have rock band part time, in which I do splits during every performance for no good reason.”

The man is now walking through his house, with no apparent noticeable transition.  “But recently, I’ve been suffering from arthritis, high blood pressure, depression, chronic back pain, chronic nosebleeds, muscle diseases with unpronounceable names, encroaching doom syndrome, influenza, addiction to alcoholic beverages, addiction to eating large sausage pizzas with anchovies in the crust, PMS, the Monday blues, seasonal affection disorder, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, an uncontrollable urge to join the antidisestablishmentarianism movement, antisociopathicpseudoneononconformism, and delirium tremens.  I asked my doctor about this, and he fainted by the time I had finished listing all of my symptoms.”  The man picks something up from the floor and winces as he comes back up.

“So I went to another doctor,” the man says, now in a cafeteria in a state penitentiary, “and he recommended Grogiozingatec-” (or anything else that either ends in “-tec” or has a lot of Xs, Ys, Zs, or Qs in its name) “-to treat all of this stuff.  XXXYYYZZZQQQ-tec, or whatever it’s called, has been proven to work in monkeys and Venus flytraps aged 18 to 867, and has been proven to work in almost every person.”

As a montage of the man making a fool of himself in various ways, such as runnig through a field of daisies while smiling with an expression that can only be achieved through psychadelic drugs, making snow angels in a blue business suit, or licking the camera lens, a disclaimer in microscopic text appears on the bottom of the screen, and an abridged version is stated, rather quickly, by a soft-spoken man with a calming, soothing, almost hypnotizing voice that you really pay no attention to:

“XXYYZZQQ-tec has not been completely proven to work in all people, including presidents, people from Botswana, Europeans, Latinos, Caucasians, Africans, people with low blood sugar, CBS news reporters, Al Gore, and people who have no health insurance.  Side effects that have been known to occur include dizziness, nausea, upchucking on your neighbor’s dog, postmortem depression, lower sperm production, less periods, spitting on your neighbor’s dog, vertigo, an addiction to songs by “Weird Al” Yankovic, hallucinations, daydream believing, lucid dreams, shorter attention span, addiction to Wikipedia, madness, starving, hysterical, anarchy, believing that Paul McCartney wrote “Hey Jude” about you, spontaneous religious experiences, delusions of grandeur, diabetes, wise-guy antics, Jughead-ism, the belief that bovines are blessed, achieving Nirvana, teen spirit, lack of a love life (whoops, you already have that!!), knobby knees, a door-shaped head, a heart-shaped box, giganticism, dance fever, disco fever, 102 degree fever, believing that you shot J.R., broken bones, nihilism, sarcasm, irony, the ability to fly, temorary invisibility, temporary insanity, virtual insanity, virtual reality, loss of awareness, losing your neighbor’s dog, and delirium tremens.  If any one of these has ever occurred to you, regardless of whether or not you are taking XXXYYYZZZQQQ-tec, please see your doctor immediately or consult psychiatric counseling.  This medication has been banned in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada, Cyprus, and Nigeria for unknown reasons.”

The scene focuses on the man again.  He is happy; he’s walking through that park again.  He starts to talk to you again, and people in the park, noticing him talking to no one in particular, look worried.  One person whips out a cell phone.  But, anyway, back to the man…

“XXXYYYZZZQQQ-tec helped me get my ridiculously privileged and spoiled life back.  It changed me, and it can change you, too.”  He hides the fact that that’s because the medicine contains psilocin.  The screen transitions to a white screen with the name of the medication, as well as its chemical name and some purple, swirling graphics.

“Ask your doctor if XXXYYYZZZQQQ-tec is right for you.”

Offscreen, the man from the commercial is escorted by nice men in white coats to the happy hotel, aka a psychiatric facility.

 

Wow, I should be a television producer!! ^_^

The teacher becomes the student…

Have you ever been forced to do something you know that you don’t need to do?  At least you’re not like John Kallam.  There is an urban legend that this man, who had worked in criminal law for years, written several books on criminology, and had even been an investigator in the Nuremburg trials, got a job at Fresno State College (California State University, Fresno today).  Since he only had a bachelor’s degree, the college forced him to get a master’s degree or lose his job (which the school rudely explained that they were actually doing him a favor, as they were making the rest of the teachers get doctorates).

So our dear John Kallam enrolled out-of-state, figuring that three months of seminars and nine months of intensive study at home would get him his degree.  But, ironically, the textbook he needed to use in the class was a textbook that HE wrote.

Hey–stranger things have happened, right?  But don’t you just love the irony here?

 

To read more about this… http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/textbook.asp