Notes from the Edge

Posted by Geo

Well here it is on the cusp of the weekend. I always look at Thursday like that. It’s not Friday, so it’s too early to celebrate, but it’s so close that you can feel Friday. Almost smell that Friday air, which is much different than Thursday air. But it is not Friday yet. It’s only Thursday, and so in that same little spurt of elation there is a deep depression that settles in. That, I’ll probably get killed crossing the street later on tonight. It’ll probably happen at 11:59, so I will never get any closer to Friday than that, kind of depression.

Well, hopefully Friday will get here soon, it’s been a long week, and I need it. In the meantime, I have been watching more TV than usual, keeping my elderly mother company, and I noticed that TV has changed a lot in the last few years. I’m not sure when I stopped paying attention to TV, it’s been a while though, years, and when I do watch the TV, I’m watching movies or a recorded series where I can skip the commercials. But when it’s live TV, their words, not mine, you can’t just push the skip button. Well, you can, but nothing happens you are still watching a hemorrhoid commercial, or, OMG, Hail to the V. My mother seems to take all of this in stride, I was mortified.

So the last few nights I have had an education about where TV commercials have gone in the last few years:

“Have you or your son grown breasts?” A perfectly fine question to ask someone living next to the Love Canal but not one I expected on my TV during Prime Time. And the poor kid, I’ll assume it’s the son, looks so down about the breasts I suppose he has grown. I started to immediately feel bad for him and his dad who obviously really has grown breasts, and then I realized, wait a minute! He grew breasts! If that had been me at his age I would have been hard to get out of my room. And men, as we age, grow them anyway. Don’t think so? Check out grandpa at the beach some time. Yep, some day you and the significant other will look in the mirror in your old age, and it will all pretty much look the same. But just as I started to once again shift back to feeling bad for the kid and the old man, the kid is kind of pretty looking, and dad has something close to triple D’s working there, an attorney came on and I knew it was going to be alright. The kid would get his breast problem fixed and the old man would probably get lipo or maybe a support bra.

Whew, I thought. That was rough to watch. But little did I know that the frickin’ commercial ride was just beginning. The Bum lady was next, asking people how they kept everything clean. If she didn’t have that English accent she’d never get away with it. I could see me trying to have a discussion about it… “So, Bob, what do you think of your bum?” Bob would probably never talk to me again. And truthfully, I don’t want to know anything about Bob’s bum. Nothing at all.

That commercial was followed by a sad faced woman who had apparently had her trans vaginal mesh tear. Damn. She was beside herself. Couldn’t even look in the camera. I could feel her pain too. The last time I watched TV you couldn’t even say trans vaginal mesh. But no worries there, because another lawyer was right there. She’ll get some new trans vaginal mesh for sure.

I’m thinking that the commercials must be over now, but no, here comes a smiling older man telling me how he had no idea he had low T, but it’s cool now because he can use this roll on product and bang, he’s batting 1000 again. And you know that’s true because the woman with him is smiling. “Yes,” her smile says, “He is batting a thousand!” Hmm. Lucky him, but maybe not, because there is the lawyer again telling you that that same stuff they just were selling in that commercial will probably cause you all sorts of problems, maybe even kill you. Now I don’t know what to think. Believe the lawyer or the smiling man? Then the commercial for the ribbed condoms came on and grabbed my attention, and, Wow, what luck, they both happen to have one of those very same condoms in their pockets.

I don’t know about you, but going back to the movie after that was sort of a nonplus situation for me. I couldn’t help but wonder if any of those poor bastards in the movie had trans vaginal mesh problems, or unexpected breast growth, low T or if they needed a condom they would have one so handy. A few of them seemed pretty down, could be, but maybe I just need to start skipping commercials.

What’s going on here…

We are at work on new material. Fall is the date for it. Tomorrow morning is my first day back at full time writing. I am looking forward to that. The heat has let up and it is cooler. I hate to complain about the heat at all because up here the cold will be back soon enough, but the cooler weather is appreciated. I will leave you with some links…