From the 13%, a catty observation: if you have a manual transmission you  can always push in the clutch and coast.  Story of my freaking life.  As I said before only 13 % of American drivers prefer manual transmissions -which makes me wonder why the other 87% haven’t realized what they’re missing.

Ok.  I didn’t think I would end up doing it, but the new HK Yaris is awesome.  NICE….  The only (very minor) complaint I have is that for some reason there’s no trunk release on the clickie which is sort of weird, but other than that I am delighted.  Jerry was sort of pissy about me having to take a bit of a hit on the trade in, but the incentives covered most of that.  I knew I would take a hit and in my mind it was better to do it before the other car depreciates even more.  The new one has the power features as well as side airbags and ABS that the other one didn’t have so that was really more of a selling point than anything else.

It amazes me the kinds of really gross advertising one sees on TV and hears on the radio these days.  There’s a radio commercial where some chick informs everyone that “size does matter” (and in a rather graphic way) as she’s hawking some kind of male enhancement nostrum.  Then on TV you get to see- even during prime time- commercials about men going to have the “Viagra talk” with their doctor, commercials about a lotion for “feminine itch,” another commercial for guys who have a hard time going pee, ad nauseam.  There is even an infomercial (granted I have only seen this one at 3 or 4 AM, but still) for old geezers to have Medicare pay for what looks to me to be a pecker pump.  No wonder Medicare is going broke, if they’re paying for 70 year old dudes to get boners.  Nasty.  There’s a reason why old geezers can’t get it up anymore.  Nature knows best.

Back in the day the worst commercial on TV was the Prep-H commercial.  Of course as kids we had no idea what the flying freak a hemorrhoidal flare-up was.  When the “Tucks” commercial came out we had no idea why someone was putting out a match with a moistened circular pad.  That seemed like quite a strange thing to do- light a match and then put it out with a wet piece of cotton.   Maybe this was why Dad used to send me over to the Revco to get his Prep-H for him.  I didn’t know what it was for, and I especially didn’t know that it was intended to be applied to a certain part of the nether region.  Had I known then what hemorrhoids are, or where Prep-H is applied I may have had some qualms about buying it, but knowing me probably not too much.  Ignorance may not have been bliss, but it saved Dad the indignity of shouting out , “I have a flaming case of  ‘roids!”  to the three or four other people shuffling about in the Revco.  As for me I really didn’t give a rat’s ass who saw me buy anything- or who thought I had a flaming case of ‘roids- as long as it didn’t involve Dad finding out where I bought cigarettes.  That would have hit me where I lived for sure.

I also found the commercials where they poured what appeared to be blue washer solvent on diapers and/or maxi pads to be most hilarious.  We knew what really landed in the diapers and in the maxi pads, but perhaps showing real green baby shit with pennies and pieces of corn in it and really gnarly bright red blood clots was just too graphic for the ’80’s audience.   Then again, the ’80’s did give us some of the bloodiest, goriest slasher movies in history.  A little realism in the commercials probably wouldn’t be any worse than a feminine itch product commercial coming on while I’m trying to eat dinner.  I really don’t want to think about strange women’s  itchy coochies when I’m shoveling down some mashed potatoes, alright?

I figure if you are going to get gross with commercials why not go for the shock effect?  Make it memorable.  Make some old bitty lose her lunch thinking about all those geezers out there with their pecker pumps and Viagra scripts.  It scares me.