That's it, you've gone too far

So we live in a consumer society that is driven by advertising. I get it. I participate in it. I sometimes even enjoy the feeling that I just have to go out and buy whatever new thing is being pushed, even though I'm surely old enough to know I will just feel cheap and used in the morning. What if we all suddenly developed resistance to advertising and stopped buying stuff? We would bring a curse upon all our houses - stocks would tumble (that's what stocks always do, unless they're soaring or crashing) liquidity would become a big problem (even bigger that the problem with understanding what liquidity means) and in general, the economy would go down the toilet. Now I've never been down the toilet, but there have been a few occasions when I've been up close and personal with the toilet after a particularly enthusiastic party, and it doesn't look like something you want to go down. So let's just agree we all need to keep buying stuff all the time, forever and ever, amen.

That said, there are moments when the advertising culture just takes it over the line. One of those moments came last night. I'm watching the World Series, and all of a sudden they're talking about how everybody in American gets a free taco next week because some guy just stole a base. They show it on the scoreboard and make this plug for a minute. Free Taco Bell taco. Whoop-dee-frickin-doo.

During the next commercial break, I'm flipping around and we end up watching Jeopardy for awhile. I come back to the game later, and here they are again, going on about the stupid free taco. And they're showing a replay, and the free taco sign, and interviewing the idiot king of Taco Bell, who, of course, just coincidentally happens to sitting in a $1,000 seat close by. Three ridiculously long, drawn out, rhapsodic pieces on the lame ass 39 cent free taco. Let me remind you, your honor, that the defendant perpetrated this heinous act during the World Series! The Fall Classic, ladies and gentlemen! Is this the legacy our forefathers wished to be bestowed on their progeny? One of the great, revered moments in American sports, a World Series game, besmirched by goofballs running off at the mouth about a free taco? (And if they actually eat a few of those, it won't be only at the mouth where there will be running off.) I had to turn the game off after that, before Curt Schilling pulled a bean and cheese burrito out of his bloody sock or something.

So Mr. Taco Bell Inc., I ask you, sir - have you no sense of decency?

May he who came up with this idea, and he who let it happen in a World Series game, be visited by the e coli fairy soon.