I am starting to hate TV commercials.


Specifically those bloody “Target Market” cigarette commercials. Fer cryin’ out loud. When I saw LOTR a few weeks back, they had this idiotic “future prison” commercial where they were prosecuting a tobacco exec for the murder of however many thousand people presumably die daily of smoking. I don’t smoke, but it made me want to start simply out’ve sympathy. Personal accountability! Is it gone forever!? Does anyone who smokes not KNOW that smoking is bad for you? I mean, I’m all for not smoking, but crimony, couldn’t they find a way that didn’t make me want to apologize to Philip-Morris for the low quality of the people they were up against? Something as insidious as a tobacco company deserves a better class of enemy, for god’s sake!

Then again, the pot-makes-you-shoot-your-friends commercials also make me want to throw things at the TV, while yelling dire things. And the “pot makes you get felt up by teenage boys,” one also makes me throw my hands in the air–I smoked pot as a teen and I never got felt up by anyone that I hadn’t planned in advance to–um, that’s more information than you want. But still, the point stands that being a horny teen is a fairly normal state, and I don’t see those ads run saying “Hormones! They cloud your judgement!” Or about alcohol, for that matter, since I knew a lot more people who got drunk and crazy than stoned and crazy. Actually, everyone I knew who got stoned was usually far more interested in playing Magic like a fiend for six hours and eating Cheetos than in anything else. Mmmm…Cheetos…I mean, sure, pot’s NOT terribly good for you, no, but lying about it isn’t gonna scare people straight–they’ll just assume that since you lied about the shooting-your-friends part, you lied about all the rest. But I suppose “Yeah, it’s not great, but it’s probably not as bad as alcohol or smoking, but anyway, they’re both dumb, so just don’t do anything, okay?” is harder to sum up in a pithy catch phrase.

And then there’s the drugs support terrorism ads. “Buying drugs supports terrorism.” I feel like toasting the screen and yelling “So grow your own!” but I try to limit my screaming at the TV to a few minutes a day. I won’t get started on the war on drugs supporting terrorism in the same way Prohibition supported mobsters–I could go on for an hour–but I did get a kick out’ve the counter campaign proposed by someone or other–“Oil supports terrorism. How many miles does your SUV get to the gallon?” Or “Diamonds support terrorism. Where did your wedding ring come from?” both of which are equally true, but y’know.

All of which is an extravagant lead in to the fact that I took Gryllus’s suggestion and tried something cartoony, a Highly Generic Blue Canine Thingy, smoking. As with all my vague artistic stabs at things, expect a few more before I am distracted again, although since this one is not terribly interesting, I will probably be driven to at least do a few that have a certain stylistic definition, because generic bugs me.

Generic Smoking Canine
I’d say “Generic Blue Canines are all copyright ME ME ME!” but, y’know.

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