Things I Don’t Need…

And Don’t Want You To Try To Sell Me.

The TV stays on about 23 hours a day here at my house. I like to sleep with the TV set playing in the background.

I enjoy turning on The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, or some other channel that doesn’t broadcast any reality shows—and snoozing comfortably for hours.

EXCEPT…early in the morning and almost all of late night Saturday/Sunday when the companies operating these networks choose to sell their souls to the DEVIL—airing hour long segments of stupid, mindless “infomercials”.

AHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhh! Not another INFOMERCIAL…

I absolutely HATE waking up to some smiling, pseudo-photogenic idiot that is trying to sell me something I don’t want or need. One of these products, for instance:

A Little Giant Ladder—you’ve seen this ad featuring the giant, 450 pound, pear-shaped buffoon at the home improvement show demonstrating the severely overpriced ladder that contorts into 27 different dangerous looking shapes and forms. You can have one for only $359.99 plus shipping and handling.

Anything with giant rubber bands, fiberglass bows, shock absorbers, or counter weights, designed to work on my “abdominal muscles.” I don’t care if Chuck Norris or Chuck E. Cheese endorses the device, I don’t want one and I’ve nearly damaged my TV throwing the remote control at the picture tube.

Any “Hair System,” “Hair Club,” or other device, program, religion, cult, scheme, or method of altering or attempting to hide the effect of gravity and age on the number of active hair follicles that exist on the top of my ever aging, ever graying skull. I have this theory that the bodies of human male’s have a fixed number of hair follicles, determined at birth. In my case, gravity is causing an increasing number of follicles to slip off of my head and take up residency on my nose, my chest, my back, and my posterior. Like the comedian Galliger says, if things keep progressing at the current rate—if I live to age 60, I’ll be combing a spot in the middle of my ass…

I most definitely don’t want to buy a package of information telling me how to earn a small fortune placing tiny classified ads in every newspaper between here and Timbukto. Has anyone actually been stupid enough to buy into one of these programs? If they have, they wouldn’t dare admit it in public.

I don’t want a collection of books and videotapes outlining any “system” designed to allow me to purchase millions of dollars worth of investment real estate with no credit and Zero dollars down. The two rental properties I already own are enough trouble, and I had enough problems closing a 100% cash deal—“zero down” has got to be an impossibly hard pain in the ass. Again, I wonder how anyone can be this stupid?

I don’t believe that there is really much money to be made installing public Internet terminals in truck stops and strip clubs here in coastal Georgia. As usual, the ad touts that there is no selling and no technical skills required—all you have to do is be able to fill out a bank deposit slip. Hah! If these machines were actually the cash cows that they are promoted to be in the TV ads, why don’t the manufacturers and resellers spend all of their time installing them in every McDonalds and coffee shop nationwide and collect the massive profits for themselves?

And finally, while we’re at it, let me emphatically state that I absolutely do not want to ask my physician about prescribing any drug advertised on TV in an ad that doesn’t tell me what condition or illness the drug cures in the first place. Why could I possibly want to ingest a drug that makes any part of my body stiff for four hours while I walk around my neighborhood with a stupid grin on my face?