Life is Perfect in AdLand

By David Sherman

Used to be when commercials flowed like flood water from cable news or hockey games, I killed the sound, saving my ears for tales of treachery and malfeasance from the south and penetrating insights from hockey commentators.

“Trump proved again today he’s an incompetent lying asshole,” or “Canadiens looking to score. They need to move their feet.”

But now, I kill the sound for the game or the news and listen, ear drums taut, to the ads. In AdLand, happiness and fulfilment rule, multiculturalism is a given, people have fun even while undergoing cancer treatments.

If nothing ails you, AdLand will convince you they have what you need and buying it will make you happier than Trump in a dressing room of naked teenagers.

In AdLand’s utopia of manicured lawns and split level homes, there is no racism or economic inequality. In this two-dimensional world where consumption breeds contentment, at least until the next commercial, people of all colours, religions and sexual preferences are blissed out.

Nothing makes us happier than dog food in a bag, delivered by the boxful. It sets the hounds to dancing and owners into paroxysms of pleasure.

Men urinate like Old Faithful at Yellowstone, thanks to a remedy found at Walmart and women frolic through white sand beaches thanks to a psoriasis medication. At only $1,300 a weekly dose, executives at Big Pharma are also frolicking in white sand.

In the land of commercials, with the exception of the aggravating spot featuring a pink rabbit beating on a drum – or is that a sign of the DTs? – heaven on Earth is as easy as getting your hands on the right meds. Those whispers about possible heart attack, stroke, death, kidney failure, TB, liver damage or cancer do not intimidate the dancing, smiling, ridiculously happy people who also look great, have good clothes and live under a pretty good roof. Nah, those numerous side effects happen to other people.

For us at home, take two and call your travel agent in the morning. Tropical sand is only a few hours and a pit stop at the pharmacy away.

Guys who swallow a “clinically tested” testosterone supplement not only develop bodies like a young Mark Walhberg but are instantly wrapped in the arms of a woman dressed in bare flesh, their legs wrapped around her perfect waist, undoubtedly a product of the various meds sold on the promise of easing bloating, gas and excess weight or strict adherence to an all-lettuce diet.

Not only does his desire and performance improve, but an icon of a male crotch – this can be you – emits pulsing, radial waves. You can feel the potency coming for you, pushing you to gallop to the nearest Walmart.

There’s another miracle drug for the sagging slug of a man who is pictured in bare feet, pajamas and robe, sliding into slippers – the sad, broken victim of frequent and/or urgent urination. His condition is so severe he has to put on a robe and slippers for the anguished five-step walk to the washroom.

But once he’s downed the “clinically tested” formula, he sheds his abundant sleepwear for designer golf clothes to cruise a beautiful golf course with beautiful men, all laughing, not a care in the world, not even their handicaps. And, to make sure you get the message, the screen then fills with people partying around a giant series of fountains, water falls and geysers of what appears to be clear, cold water. With this miracle urine enhancement, you will not simply pee, you will evacuate spring-fed gushers, good enough to bottle and serve to a lawn party of thrilled neighbours of all colours and creeds who want to share your urinary bliss.

Excretory nirvana also comes with an array of highly absorbent underwear, adult diapers or external urine collection devices. All these products bring wide smiles to the incontinent and their thrilled-beyond-words caregivers.

In AdLand paradise, every couple are people of colour or biracial, every pack of friends watching a game is an international stew similar to the army platoons of Second World War movies. An Italian, a Puerto Rican, a Jewish man, a Muslim, a Sikh and an African-American walked into a bar and …

But, it’s not only meds that bring untold pleasure. You can give yourself a new lease on life by cashing out your life insurance. Instead of leaving it to a loved one, spend it now. Makes sense, and, in AdLand, lest you feel guilty that you're spending riches you had once planned to leave to your grandchildren, those same recently disinherited tykes come running into the happy, greying folks’ arms, thrilled they’ll be getting zip when Grandpa and Grandma have moved on to a place that accepts neither cash or credit cards.

Tom Selleck is now a regular on the benefits of reverse mortgages, where you decide to give the bank your house and they make payments to you in your dotage. While Tom and his moustache tell you this is better than Swiss cheese, there is some small print about possible foreclosures.

You might be living in the street in a few years but for now, you can get cash to pay for a white-sand vacation with those former psoriasis sufferers and newly-minted geyser urinators. The testosterone-enhanced, though, are locked away in their suites, proving their newly acquired performance prowess to smiling, exhausted women.

AdLand is Paradise. Gay people can embrace or dance with their puppies without Republicans threatening them with shotguns. There’s a cure for every ailment, even Trumpitis. Because in Ad Land, strings of commercials last longer than news segments. You can dip your eyes into Paradise and when the always intense Wolf Blitzer interrupts to tell you the latest Breaking News outrage shaking the walls of the Situation Room, hit mute, and by the time you’ve finished pondering the difference between clinically tested and clinically proven, AdLand relief will return.

In truth, there is nothing new in the news. Reality is still a bummer. But when contemplating the next geyser eruption, testosterone-infused semi-naked dance or a livingroom where the home team wins and people of every colour are Bud buds, who needs reality?