Hokiest Lifetime Movie of the Week Title:

"Mother May I Please Sleep with Danger?"

Are you KIDDING me?!

Another Commercial Break

A Stouffer’s commercial shows a family preparing and eating one of the company’s meals along with the voiceover, “Made with real ingredients.” Isn’t EVERYTHING made with “real” ingredients. Isn’t poop made of real ingredients?

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I like the commercial for a woman’s face lotion that claims the product contains an “injectable skin rejuvenating ingredient." Once again, I’m not a doctor, but isn’t just about any non-solid an injectable ingredient? Heroin, crack, meth: are they not all injectable? Oh you ad writers. I think you’re doing injectables.

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What about the alarm system ad where a guy is lurking around in broad daylight wearing a ski mask and peeking through a fence hole at a mother and daughter playing in the yard. When they go inside for lunch, he kicks in the front door and stands in the foyer for a few minutes before running away at the sound of the alarm. Of course, the alarm folks call right away and the mother says, “Somebody just tried to break in.”

Now the ad people think we’re so stupid that we don’t know the difference between somebody fiddling with your door lock and someone standing in your foyer. But if the victim says someone just broke in, then it might imply to us dummies that the alarm system didn’t work. So please remember this when someone is standing in your foyer wearing a ski mask and holding a weapon—this means they’re in.

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New Book Idea:
Title: Memoirs of an Amnesiac
Page One: The End

Barking Dogs

You know how some people look up their ancestry and only find out that they came from kings, queens, and so on? One day, after receiving a random ad on family research and being rather easily distracted from real work, I decided to look up my father’s family “Coat of Arms.” As I traveled through family crest after family crest, reading such valorous mottos as “Courage, Trust, Bravery” and various inspirational Latin religious phrases, I finally came upon my father’s Irish family crest and motto: The Raging Dogs. This explains why my aunt, who like so many people with dreams of grandeur and ancestral royal relations, destroyed all of my uncle's research on the family heritage. (It also explains many other things, such as my urge to howl at full moons.)

Anyway, speaking of raging dogs, I have this dog, Bear, that we rescued who came with a very bad barking habit. We’ve had quite a few dogs over the last 20 years and when you get them young, you can intervene successfully with the barking problem, but Bear (at one year) came with a terrible barking habit.

Okay, I admit it. I can’t be mean to any dog. So just shoot me. I can’t put some sort of shock collar on an animal and I would like to annihilate anyone who has a dog’s vocal chords removed. What kind of monster is that?!

Nevertheless, ever the fan of “As Seen on TV” products, I ordered the Bark OFF. Supposedly, this product emits a sound that is offensive to dogs when they are barking obsessively. And this is important: THE SOUND IS INAUDIBLE TO HUMAN BEINGS. However, theoretically, dogs hear the sound, and eventually stop any prolonged barking behavior. The device is not attached to the dog but is within 20 feet of their barking proximity. Sounded okay to me and it’s only ten bucks, so what the heck.

Well it took quite a few weeks to receive it and when I finally got it in the mail, the product didn’t include the 9-Volt battery, so I asked Jack to pick one up on his way home.

So I come into the kitchen and Jack is barking into the Bark OFF. I ask the obvious, (but I don’t even know why I ask anyore) question, “What are you doing?” He says, “I’m testing it to see if it works.”

After laughing until I see that he’s annoyed, I point out that the sound only works on dogs and not humans, but possibly it will work on humanoids like him. He doesn’t seem to find the humor, but that doesn’t stop my razzing. Seems like the joke’s on me. When we have neighbors over for a cookout on Memorial Day weekend, several of the guys pick up the device and ask me about it. I tell them the whole shebang about the sound being only for dogs’ ears and . . . inevitably they bark into the thing.

Now I’m talking about smart people here! Does Bark OFF work? I don’t know yet. I just can’t tell. Every time I turn it on, all the men in the neighborhood start barking.