God says to Mute Your TV

I've got some ideas on this whole matter of commercials.
This endless black hole of commercials...

Let's see: The average American watches x hours of tv.
x % of tv time is commercials.
The average commercial spot is x seconds.
Thus, the average American watches x commercials.
(answers below)

Seriously...I ask you, how many things have you bought because of a tv commercial?
Let me ask this another way, what percentage of tv adverts are selling something you're actually in the market for??
For me, it's virtually none.
I HATE TV COMMERCIALS.

Let me state this again: I HATE TV COMMERCIALS.

How do I hate thee?
Let me state the ways:
1) You waste my time
2) You yell at me
3) You waste my loved one's time
4) You waste x hours total of humanity's time.
5) You yell at everyone else, too.

And by "yell", I mean they clamor for your attention. Commercials are expressly designed to arrest your attention, hold it, and make you feel good about the product. They are endlessly repetitive, both within a single commercial, and in repeating the same commercial ad nauseum. They make me sick. I hate them. I don't want them forced on me. I propose a solution.

old solutions
a) I know, you'll say just don't watch tv, then. I already avoid it like the plague.
b) Mute the commercials when you do watch. I do. And I yell at my wife to mute it every goddamned (excuse me, gosh darned) time. People are not even aware that they are zombies glued to watching commercials about crappy widgets you don't need. It's annoying and stressful, and I'm fricking going crazy in my house with these stupid bullshit retarded commercials all the time. Geezus christ, already.
c) record the shows and zip through the commercials. (still annoying, but less so)
d) buy or rent the shows on dvd after the season is over (aha! maybe they're online- even better) -possibly the best idea, at present
e) there's this product called mute magic that supposedly has a fairly good success rate at identifying and muting commercials automatically, but it would probably mute parts of shows or fail to mute some commercials, I would assume. There's also a patented mute button ring.
f) Kill your tv. Just don't own one. Break it. Omg, it would feel so good if I could, jesus. I want to nuke mine, personally. Argh. Gr.

MY SOLUTIONS
What If.....
g) cable tv had a paid option to mute your commercials for you automatically for a fee. Seriously, why don't they just divide how much money they make from selling commercial air time and divide it by their number of viewers, and call it a deal.

H) NO TV COMMERCIALS. I'm going to send this bill idea to my congressperson. It's as follows:
-No commercials on any tv networks. BUT!:
-There will be an interactive (for cable users) COMMERCIAL STATION.
It would work like this:
a.You would indicate what you're in the market for (voice-command?), and
b.ALL the commercials for those products would become available for viewing.
(This could be historical as well as current, by company, by region, whatever...)
c. Finally, you could order shipping and handling, if you want to order the product at home.

Like, there could be a virtual store, with absolutely everything in it, with 3d goggles if you really want to get crazy, and professional shoppers, who save gas, or ride bikes, or take the bus, and work on commission or as independent contractors or something, who bring the world to you. That's just me getting crazy with this idea.

But seriously, a commercial station. That would rock. Some people like commercials. There could be superbowl commercials, people's favorites, award-winning commercials, worst commercials, local commercials, whatever. This is the best idea ever. Make commercials fun again.

World, MAKE IT SO! (lol)

Television Statistics
According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube. Compiled by TV-Free America; 1322 18th Street, NW ; Washington, DC 20036 (202) 887-4036

From an individual's personal study of primetime shows, ( link), this data was collected:
1952 - 13 percent of the time was spent watching commercials (only 4 minutes out of every half hour!)
1958 - still 13 percent
1964 - 17.8 percent
1977 - 18 percent
1994 - 24 percent
2004 - 30 percent
2006 - 30 percent
2007 - 30 percent
2008 - 32 percent
These were all for main line shows aired during prime time hours.

The average length of a commercial is 15-20 seconds, some site said.

Thus, 32% of 4 hours (240minutes) is about 77 minutes, or 4620 seconds, which is:
231 (20 second) commercials. An hour and 17 minutes every day of commercials.
Do commercials even work?

My God. I Hate TV SO FriCKING MUCH.
Multiply that by 365: 84,315 commercials in a year/individual.
America's population is 303,824,640 (July 2008 est.)
YOU do the math. It's overwhelming.
Okay, I will: America, all together, watches 25,616,974,521,600 commercials a year.
That's over 25 TRILLION commercials.
How many years are spent, collectively, in just this one category of wasted time?
Answer: Americans collectively watch 44,510 YEARS watching tv commercials PER DAY.
(which translates to 16,246,150 collective years per year).
What are we doing?? watching truck and dish soap commercials (for example)
Every Single Day.
Yeah, there's dvr, I know.
It's a rough estimation. Ballpark. plump when you cook 'em.

I conclude with this link. Commercials crush your soul. Grow up, people.
Commercials make me hate life, hate people, hate America, hate capitalism, and hate the companies, tv stations, and sheeple watching tv doing that do nothing to stop this goddamn nonsense that's wasting everybody's precious time. That's no way to live.

On the other hand, though, you should know I love libraries with an equal and opposite fervent passion. Amen.

UGH
Here's more info:
Education Secretary Richard Riley attributed the decline in reading and literacy to "too many students...spending too little time reading and too much time watching mind-numbing television." Most educators agree that excessive television-watching:
-Induces cognitive passivity;
-Stifles/displaces creativity, reflection and imagination;
-Displaces opportunities for play and social interaction;
-Shortens attention spans and increases hyperactivity;
-Cultivates visual processing skills incompatible with print-based skills.
Time spent reading in the U.S. fell by a third between 1965 and 1985.

"couch potato syndrome"
Millions of Americans are so hooked on television that they fit the criteria for substance abuse as defined in the official psychiatric manual, according to Rutgers University psychologist Robert Kubey. Heavy TV viewers exhibit six dependency symptoms--two more than necessary to arrive at a clinical diagnosis of substance abuse. These include using TV as a sedative; indiscriminate viewing; feeling loss of control while viewing; feeling angry with oneself for watching so much; inability to stop watching; and suffering withdrawal when forced to stop watching TV.

YEAH
1887, Arthur Balfour, speech (in print), The Benefits of Reading, LINK.

I know, I know, embrace all the world with an abiding love, yada yada. I still hate the fricking commercials.

Our society is sick. Everybody is a walking billboard. Cars, clothes, bags. People want to be like characters from movies, who are scripted by professional writers. God is a character, too. Love has to be a certain way. There's always something quirky about people, something interesting, even when it seems like everybody is part of a machine. What if everybody was original, and all the cars were custom, and everything was truly unique? Artworld. Then, something the same would be artsy, I guess.

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