The Douchebag Bible (27 page)

5. Attractive people are all inexplicably using dating services,

so your ugly ass had better get in on that action.

Is there even one among us who really believes this? People—men

in particular—are so controlled by their sexual organs that many

advertisers wisely choose to ignore their brains altogether. Will

men who know damn well that attractive women don’t use

telephone dating services suspend their disbelief long enough to

cough up a credit card number? You and I both know the answer.

6. Penis Enlargement Pill (
Extenz
) is "scientifically proven"

and if it didn't work then its makers could not possible afford

to put commercials for it on television.

What I adore most about this commercial is its shaky attempt at

logic. Rarely does a commercial attempt to employ logic—even of

the shaky variety—so one has to give them a measure of credit for

their attempt.

7. Without a drug called
ProGene
, you will be a completely

unsatisfactory lover. Graphs are presented to prove this fact.

They’ve got charts! How could anyone ever possibly resist the

fact-laden persuasive power of a brightly colored pie chart

insisting their urgent need for a particular product?

Actually, how could anyone not resist that?

8. With
AutoZone
, you can restore a shitty old car that you

found on the side of the road to working

condition if you work on it constantly for months on end.

This commercial really touched my heart. A teenage boy finds a

dilapidated car on the side of the road with a note in the window

that reads “If you can fix it you can have it.” So the boy gets a job

and works his butt off until he has all the parts he needs to slowly

repair the car. His tenacity and resolve exemplify the American

Spirit!

As does his stupidity.

He spent his summer getting parts to fix a shitty car that

someone abandoned on the side of the road when he could have

just saved up to buy a used car already in working condition.

So, what can we extrapolate from these commercials? I won’t

force any conclusions on you, but here’s the conclusion that I’m

forcing on you: human beings, especially Americans, are the most

gullible assortment of rubes to ever walk this shit-covered ball of

filth and bacteria that we call Earth.

Now, this may strike you as unfair and unreasonable, and

I will concede that it is.

However, it also happens to be true.

Our Heroes

Our heroes are not scientists or explorers. Challenge an American

on the streets to name 10 scientists off the top of his head. Ask

them if they know the name of even one current astronaut. Watch

them fumble stupidly.

Our heroes are not artists. We might lovingly embrace a

director or a singer every now and then, but usually only if they’re

directing movies about exploding trucks24 or singing about how

great America is and how much they like expensive things and

sexual intercourse.

Our heroes are not actors and actresses. We’ve turned

them into our public freakshow, putting the pressure of our

intense scrutiny on them and then waiting for them to snap under

the weight of our merciless judgment.

Our heroes are not everyday people like us. We’re a bunch

of fat, complacent slobs. We’d be idiots to admire one another.

We pay a little bit of lip-service to firemen and police and

soldiers—but at the end of the day those people have no impact

on most of us (other than those cited in vague allusions to

“keeping us safe” and “fighting for our freedom”).

If you think soldiers and firemen are our real heroes than

ask why so many homeless people are veterans. Ask why firemen

don’t get multi-million dollar endorsement deals. Ask why you’ve

never seen a panel of guys sitting around a table talking about

24 I’m looking at you, Michael fucking Bay.

their favorite fireman or how amazing a certain cop’s takedown

of a particular criminal was.

But there are two factions of people in America these days.

There are those who have heroes and those who have to act as if

they do not. I will write about the latter first and segue into a

discussion of the former from there.

A lot of my friends, whom I consider to be among the

smarter living denizens of shitball #325, say that they have no

heroes. I view this as partly a response to the inanity of what is

considered heroic in modern America and partly a consequence

of the look-up-to-no-one trend started by Kurt Cobain in the early

90’s. Kurt was a reaction to the ridiculously flashy and fake

rockstars dominating the scene at the end of the 80’s—guys

gallivanting around in yellow spandex and purple codpieces,

wailing like banshees about rocking your body and touching your

body and tasting your body and doing a whole assortment of

other unseemly things to your body. With Kurt, the idea of the

rockstar as a God-like figure who was simply better and cooler

than you in every possible way went to its grave. The rockstar was

now just an everyday guy—perhaps with a bit more poetry in his

or her soul, but otherwise indistinguishable from the masses.

Playing a gig in jeans and a T-shirt was now not only okay, it was

expected. Dressing up in flamboyant costumes was now looked

upon as the behavior of a poser.

Since then, those rules have been relaxed to admit more

25 Sometimes referred to as Earth.