Straight Arrow

Among my favorite commercials on T.V. right now is the one for an attorney trolling for clients who have taken Accutane, the acne drug. It says something like:
If you or a loved on has taken Accutane and sustained a serious injury or death; call the blah blah blah law firm. Are you for real? How am I going to call you if I am dead?

I know what they are trying to say, but English teachers all over the land should be using this as an example of how not to write. Not that I know any better - I can't imagine how my friend Regina, the English Professor, feels when she is bombarded with the myriad egregious grammatical travesties I commit each and every blog. I mean I love commas, this much is clear, and I overuse the parenthetical thought. I mean, why not just include it in the text? And where it this all going anyway? He is talking about commercials for no good reason! He's hit rock bottom. He has nothing left to write about.

The poorly written lawyer commercial made me nostalgic for the old "Head On" commercials they played at the end of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy:
"Head On, apply directly to the forehead..."
I decided to get online and look it up to see if it was still in the stores. It apparently is. Does it work? Not according to any of the research I read. It certainly isn't as affective (effective?) as an aspirin.

Which brings me to aspirin, I guess. We have all heard that it is quite a miracle that aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) in its current form was discovered a long time ago 1899, lest it would have been caught up in the rigmarole of today's pharmacological industry. Though the plants from which it is synthesized has been known for thousands of years to contain broad therapeutic powers, Bayer was the first to put it to market in the all important pill form. In fact, the lead developer of aspirin for Bayer is also credited with the creation of the water soluble pill. There is some tongue in cheek data that indicates that a drug indicated affective (effective?) for so many maladies would cost $90.00 a pill and be available only by prescription.

And yet, for such a magnificent drug, it is marketed straight down the middle, without using gimmicks and shouting. Who thinks that shouting a slogan like "apply directly to the forehead" is helpful to the curing of a headache? But it was crude and it worked. It sold tons of product that didn't work.

Did I stumble on something obvious here? The more capable a product is, the less it has to be shouted about. Conversely the more shouting being done might seem to indicate that this thing might be something less than what it is purported to be.

Right. Not a revelation I admit, but important none-the-less. Here's why. I am about to go back into sales. Instead of shouting about how good I am, or my company is, or my product is, I am going to show it. I am going to make sure I don't need to be marketed, but instead known and trusted. I am going to quietly (as much as that adverb can be attributed to any verb being performed by me) go about proving my effectiveness.

Sorry no jokes or punchy twists of phrase. Sometimes you just have to be straightforward. And lately I haven't been feeling the funny. Not that I have been sad - far from it, just not witty as such. Which usually happens when I am essentially content. My humor comes from the same place as the poorly written law firm commercial... when life isn't working out, sometimes you gotta shout about it.

I am sure there will be ample opportunity to be funny in the future. After all, the newness of the new job will wear off and the realization that I am still working for a living will sink in and I will find something to be funny about. For now, though, it's straight down the middle.