with the light from the tv running parallel to you

I don't watch a lot of tv these days. I'm actually considering getting rid of my cable. I could save some serious dough that way, but it would cause some serious trouble when hockey season starts. Football, I'll be able to watch without having cable. Not hockey, though.

Anyway, lately I've been watching a good bit of tv. It seems like these damned Volkswagen commercials are on all the damned time. Maybe it's just me, but I'm annoyed by them more than most other commercials.

After running a series of comedic "stereotyping is stupid" ads, they're running a series now about the four-star crash rating the Jetta has. You know the ones.

The message is that if you buy a Jetta, especially a Campanella White one, the following will happen

• You'll be surrounded by friends who are wonderfully witty, ethnically diverse, and very good looking.
  
• One day when you're driving with one of said friends, a driver of an American-made truck will either blindly pull out of his driveway or run a red light, slamming into your new white Jetta
  
• the car will be damaged slightly, and all passengers will be uninjured, leaving you to exclaim "Holy Shit!"

I've been thinking about those commercials and how they might also take a different approach. Sometimes the Jetta driver might be alone in the car. Sometimes he might be in an accident where he is at fault. Sometimes his friends might be ugly. And white.

I wouldn't suggest that they go to this particular extreme, but I have an acquaintance who was recently in a very bad single car accident in which he was driving a new Jetta. He was doing something very stupid in addition to being drunk. He lost control of his vehicle, slammed into a tree and ended up unconscious. It took rescue crews 2 hours, using the "jaws of life" to extract him from the car. The car was completely demolished, but somehow he escaped with "only" two broken arms, some broken ribs, a dislocated knee, and some facial lacerations.

I don't know whether it was the safety engineering or the "hand of Todd" (I suspect the former), but this guy has no business being alive right now. I hope (but doubt) that he has learned a lesson.

now playing:

Broken Social Scene Broken Social Scene