Dear ABC, NBC, FOX, CNN, USA, MTV/VH1 (which are really the same thing), TBS, TNT, and whatever channel Tyler Perry is on nowadays,

Hey guys, it’s me again. You must not have gotten my last letter about your commercials, so I will have to rewrite it and update it. You need to stop airing these awful commercials, because they make me want to punch children and such. Please forward this message to whoever would be in charge of that.

You may remember how, in my last rant about TV commercials, I highlighted Taco Bell. Well, T-Bell doesn’t throw in the towel when people hate their commercials, so it’s round two, baby. (And no ear-biting this time.)

First, there was the incredibly stupid Taco Bell 12-pack. Now, there is the commercial about the Doritos Locos Taco. I want to highlight that Loco does in fact mean crazy, and that does illustrate the relative sanity behind this idea. Are we as a people so lazy that we cannot simply eat chips and then Taco Bell and then destroy a public bathroom? Must we shorten that list? Apparently so, and, as Taco Bell says, Matt Christiano drove 965 miles to try one. “Well played, Matt.” Well played, indeed. (I was being sarcastic, Matt. You have no grasp of money or logic, and shouldn’t be allowed behind the wheel of a car.)

It takes years and years of medical school to become a dentist or an orthodontist, but what if I told you that with literally zero medical training, YOU could be fixing the gaps in your teeth? Well, meet Ora-Bands. They are essentially little rubber bands that you put around your teeth to pull them together. Oh, I’m sorry, did I say essentially? I meant they are rubber bands. Really, really, tight rubber bands. Have fun re-enacting the movie “Saw.”

I find it insulting as a viewer when commercials present a situation as stupid and unbelievable as the self-titled “DiGiorno Scam.” The scam consists of tweedle-dumb cooking up some DiGiorno-brand frozen pizza. Then, tweedle-dumb waits for his roommate, tweedle-dumber, to arrive home. The pizza has most likely gone cold, and tweedle-dumb apparently has the patience of a psychotic killer stalking his prey, but that’s not the point. Tweedle-dumber enters and exclaims “This is delivery pizza!.” These are four words that need not be said, because nobody has that poor of observation skills. Then, tweedle-dumber feels the obligation to chip in for the clearly not delivery pizza, because he is that stupid. Tweedle-dumb, being a morally-deficient psychopath, accepts the money. Scam successful!

Except… that is not a realistic situation. This is what would actually happen. Roommate #1 makes himself a pizza and eats it before it gets cold. Roommate #2 comes home and says, “Did you order delivery?” Roommate #1 gives roommate #2 a cock-eyed look and says, “Do you have a concussion or are you really this stupid?” Well, according to DiGiorno, all roommates are that stupid. Let the scamming commence. (If this has actually worked for anyone, please let me know in the comments section. Seriously.)

To Roll-N-Grow’s credit, it is tedious work making a gigantic garden. But I think the part that makes it worth it is the satisfaction that all the flora and the life in front of you is thriving thanks to work you did. So, I am confused as to the purpose of Roll-N-Grow, a mat that is laid out like a slip-n-slide, which shoots out plants miraculously once water is added. I can think of one reason and one reason only. Who looks for a shallow grave under a bed of flowers? Mobsters, listen up, Roll-N-Grow is your new best friend. (Insert ‘pushing daisies’ pun here).

Maybe it’s my fault for watching too much television, or for just being plain old cynical, but commercials for products like MaxTall Shoe Inserts make me doubt that humanity will survive much longer. Let’s run through this commercial. It begins with the words ‘PAY ATTENTION!’ flashing against a red background as the voiceover says, “Guys, pay attention! How would you like to have an extra two inches?” Well, you got me hooked, TV equivalent of every ‘size enlargement’ email ever. But thankfully, they are referring to height—two inches of height, to be exact.

The example they use three times in the commercial, (because they know that their target audience is pretty slow), is a beautiful girl standing next to a hideous guy who looks like Penguin from the batman, without the eyepiece. There is a tape measure placed between them, showing that she is two inches taller than him, so naturally she wants nothing to do with him. But, he puts little clear things in his shoes to make him taller, and POOF, hot girl wants the slightly taller hideous guy.  The commercial says, somewhere along the lines, “Nobody will ever know you are wearing them!” Until you take them off, and you are not only just normally-sized, but also a liar.  (Side note: The commercial rattles out some fake statistic that short people are not respected and do not get success. Winston Churchill was 5’6”. Suck it, MaxTall).

The AT&T 4G Speed Dating commercial is awful on multiple levels. First, there is something psychopathically scary about a paranoid judgmental weirdo who, upon hearing you say three words, searches you on a social networking site to verify your every word. Second, there is something horribly depressing about a dishonest dirt bag who has been accused of lying so many times, that he is able to repeatedly attempt to come back from being caught in a lie. And finally, there is something infinitely confusing about a shameless loser posting their favorite pickup line to a website, and still trying it out, being fully aware that the person they are trying to use it on knows they are lying. This commercial is the epitome of pathetic. But it’s faster with 4G.

Sticking with the topic of douchebags and phones, we arrive at the Nokia Lumia 900 commercial. It features a guy sitting at a table by himself, when a girl, apparently named Megan, sits down next to him. His first thought is, “Whoa, Megan Landry alert. (You can’t make this stuff up).”  Instead of saying hello, or something human and normal, he decides he’ll draw her in by showing off his phone, starting with its “curved edge.” Because what girl doesn’t like curves on a guy? Then he moves through the menus to open up a video of him kayaking with friends, so Megan can see that he’s “got lots of friends.”

That’s the best part. He finds it important that Megan knows that even though this unaware jerk is being rude with his phone, he still has a basic concept of human interaction and friends. So Megan asks him, “Hey, what kind of phone is that?,” and the guy ‘suavely’ says “Oh, Megan, when did you get here?” And only after making an ass of himself does he realize that she was asking so he would look up and realize people were waiting on him to turn off his damn phone so the meeting could begin. I’m not an advertising major, but “Nokia: We are Jerks” probably isn’t a good slogan.

And with that, I will take my leave. Also, you should all learn from Priceline. Shatner makes your commercials watchable. (Don’t worry, I got you Captain Kirk.)

From Russia, with sarcasm,

Dylan