Sometimes

Lately every time I have to listen to or watch an annoying advertisement I tell them to "shut the fuck up". It doesn't make people stop trying to sell me stuff, but it makes me feel just a bit better. As of now I mostly say it in my head but some day I might snap and then I will say it out loud, in public. Probably I will be on an airplane at the time and I will get kicked off, The last flight I was on I had to hang my hang my coat over the seat in front of me so that I didn't have to watch the pre-take off advertising. Which like the safety announcements can not be turned off. SHUT THE F UP. please. I guess that is why we all travel with headphones and earplugs. I refuse to be a captive audience.

I have got my defense mechanisms but they are are going to get me anyway someday, because I can't figure out how to stop the deluge of junk mail from coming to my front door. You will find me dead someday suffocated under a pile of credit card offers and cataloges targeted at the middle aged woman. Show up at my mail box and there will be a mound of oblong envelopes with nothing to say and all you will see of me will be an upraised finger. STFU. I don't want your stuff. thanks.

There is a demon in my television and at times I posses it

As many of you know, for the most part I am a mild mannered and one might even say genteel individual. I believe in the importance of being polite and I frown upon excessive swearing or "cussing" without due cause. However, sometimes the television.....

This didn't happen until Fiona moved out. The madness started to creep in afterwards. It is like the television could see that I was alone in the house, alone but for a white fluffy cat, and then it attempted to creep insidiously into the corners of my mind.

The other night I came home from a long office day and turned on the aforementioned television. I was sitting there watching ancient reruns of "Friends", half asleep on the couch with Anabel purring on my lap.

Then it happened. The demon I mean, I could feel it reaching its sinuous tentacles out attempting possession, attempting to brainwash me. I am not sure how long it was there staring at me before I noticed it, but notice it I did. Because in the middle of a shampoo commercial in which a sultry European voice promises strong, soft and shining hair. I found myself sitting bolt upright on the couch yelling "SHUT THE FUCK UP, SHUT UP!". The demon thus exorcised, I turned off the TV. I had visions of smashing the entire box Office Space style, but instead I coaxed Annabel out from behind a bookshelf and went up to bed with a novel.

It is true, I may be going mad. And you may pretend not to know me when you see me ripping out pages from the grocery store magazine rack or cursing the Stella Artois advertisements at the Landmark Theatres. But Reader, beware the demon that lurks within the network cables and sprawls on glossy print. She is waiting for you to let down your guard. She will coax you, amuse you, seduce you, annoy you. But if you let her in she will steal your soul and sell it for a premium.


I mean, really, just shut the fuck up.