By a show of hands how many of y’all watch tv on your computers from your cable tv networks provider? Oh, shit. If I’d known that I’d probably still write this entry, as is evidenced by my writing this entry.
The do commercials a bit different when streaming shows bygone (by a day or a year), but, yes, xfinity on-line is not commercial free. I think they show different commercials, I’m sure they edit them differently. For the former it might mean that they charge different rates, for the latter, I think it depends on the lenghth of the show, it’s obviously not cut the same.
So I have seen the same three Viagra commercials in 60 second, thirty second, and 15 second spots. The long ones are fascinating with the choice of model, the choice of boudoir (though all three have a moment where a window is being opened or uncovered) and choice of logic. Most of the commercials, however, are taken up with side effect warnings and counter indications. The 15 second spots are almost all medical. The serious but playful lady tells you to ask your doctor if you are healthy enough for sex. She doesn’t even giggle.
Me I giggled. Not at the long ones, the long ones I try to get inside the advertisers head. It’s a delicate and thin thread to walk between seduction and insult. Most of the guys I know who have taken Viagra claim that it was purely recreational and that it made the sex great. I think most are lying on one or more of those issues. The short one. Heh. Given the doctor troubles I’ve been having I can’t imagine asking my doctor without giggling. I mean to myself. I think first off I’d have to explain the birds and the bees to him “… so you see doc intern, when a bee really loves a bird he fucks her …”
I don’t know a way of saying this without it sounding weird but — my doctor, my last two doctors (which makes four as two of them couldn’t actually practice without an attending) haven’t even seen my penis let alone judged its relative turgidity against its relative flaccidity. I think doctors don’t do a hard on test though. But, shoot, every other doctor I’ve had has at least done the turn your head and cough thing. I’m not even sure I’ve taken off my shirt for this recent batch.
In general, I assume, there are doctors who will always say yes and doctors who will always say no when you ask for Viagra. But I doubt either of them do a hard on test. Cardiology patients are a different story. I mean I still don’t think they get a hard on test, but they do get a stress test. Even so, the short version of the ad doesn’t say Ask if you are healthy enough for Viagra, it says ask if you are healthy enough for sex. If I were a celibate monk and my recent batch of medical clowns told me I was in too bad a shape for sex, I’d go right out of the office and try to get laid.
That’s only half of what makes me giggle, the other half is what the reaction might be, seeing how I have almost the opposite problem; if the GF whispers to me I can’t stand up for ten minutes without embarrassment. I just mean it would be funny to see the deliberation on their faces. Honestly if sex were mortally dangerous to me … I can’t think of a better way of going out.
I’m pretty sure there’s a few Viagra commercials out that designed for women. I mean if your husband can’t get it up (and most cases are psychological, so it must feel like they are refusing to get it up for their wives) you have like three choices, and derivations thereof, Adultry, giving up on sex too, masturbating a lot. Viagra is offering another choice. I still think most of the Viagra ingested in this country is recreational. And some small, but significant number of that lot think that taking it is going to get them laid by a Viagra model the same way as a sweating bottle of coke or a sizzling burger works in the ads. For that matter using certain feminine hygiene products involve a picnic and a day at the beach.
No matter how aware we are of the way ads manipulate we still succumb to some even ones we thought were ridiculous the other ninety nine times we saw them. I haven’t watched regular TV in a while, the ads on streaming-that-comes-with-cable-service seem heavily weighted towards pharmaceuticals; anti-depressants, the latest thing in fibro-myalgia treatment, Viagra, allergy medicine, zit cream, stuff for ailments I’ve never heard of, and other things that you often need a prescription for. I haven’t been back to Oregon or Colorado since they passed recreational marijuana use laws. I would love to work on an ad campaign for recreational marijuana. Or, even, an ad campaign for medicinal marijuana which has much fewer side effects than Viagra or any SSRI or prescription fibro-myalgia.
In all the anti-marijuana campaigns (I’m talking about cops coming to grade schools to lecture) the point they emphasized the most was that it was a gateway drug. That after you smoke dope you are going to shoot up heroin and jump out of a window. In a very simplistic way that probably had a grain of truth in it, mostly because you had to visit a criminal in private to get the marijuana and as cool and mellow and not-the-type-of-guy you thought your friendly neighborhood bud dealer was, you must have considered that people who didn’t live in your neighborhood might have been working with a different sort. Illegal activities attract criminals. Viagra doesn’t suggest you get wood to go looking for a ho’. Both the sex and the bud don’t care about the consumer, but illegal drugs and prostitution takes what should be victimless and shakes them up with perps and cons. So, yes, it’s possible that the illegal dope peddler trys to get you to invest in something more spendy and that makes you more dependent on him or her.
I’ve never seen a real study of the effects of marijuana that honestly concludes it’s addictive(like fibro myalgia treatments) , or that a side effect is suicide ideation (like most SSRI’s) or that it’ll lower your blood pressure or give you an erection lasting more than four hours (like Viagra). Still, there aren’t any ads for marijuana. If we were still doing flash Fridays that’d be my prompt; write a Green Cross commercial. I’d do it myself but I wouldn’t even think of posting until the top ten off the top of my head were written.
Like Viagra I think even in medicinal marijuana states, there are some docs who always say yes and some that always say no. Getting high is the main side effect of marijuana, but it’s medicinal use is not as a cure for the terminally sober or dysphoric. I’d almost like the idea of having that argument with my doctors except for the possibility of winning it. If I wanted marijuana I’d get it the same I have my whole life, well, my whole dope smoking life. I’ve both kind of outgrown liking the high and what you kids are smoking these days is too fucking potent and skunky. I’ll admit, though, that t does do one wonder medicinally for me, it’s really good for a tummy ache. If I could buy a bong hit over the counter at 7-11 I’d probably do one as often as a do tums. More than twice a year less than once a month. Tums, however, is not a couple of hours commitment.
Unlike Viagra, I think there are lists of marijuana friendly doctors. A list of hard on friendly doctors would be damn suspicious. I know, it felt weird to type too, but it’s true, it’s not quite a double standard as they are wildly different substances for wildly differently uses, but still, it makes sense for dope advocates to put together a list of doctors sympathetic with their medicine and it’s just weird to think of a lobby concerned for widespread boners. I’m sure there is a grower somewhere who insists they have a strain of hybrid weed that gives you wood, but, yeah, no.
That’s the thing that bugs me about medicinal marijuana all the strains with allegedly specific uses. It sounds like snake oil at a carnival. No matter how earnest the seller or grower is, no matter how much he or she sincerely believes the claim, I think it’s a cross between being stoned and the placebo effect that makes one strain more effective for, say, clotting blood and another for, say, bunions. Yes, I’m using a bit of hyperbole, but still have heard and read of strains that treat things equally far fetched for marijuana to treat. Viagra makes no bones about being a one trick pony (all puns intended).
Yeah, no, no, ok. I’m gonna roach this entry.
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