Maybe Not This One…
I don’t have trouble sleeping, thank goodness. If I did I’d certainly seek out assistance, I can’t function well at all when I’m tired. I’d think twice about taking Rozerem, though; based on the TV ad that gives me the creeps! Any commercial that generates conversational buzz, that clearly imparts the product name and provides food for thought long after it runs has hit it’s target, no doubt. However, I wouldn’t want nightmares about Abraham Lincoln and a beaver sitting at my kitchen table waiting for me while there’s an astronaut cooking for himself in the background. The ad is entitled “Your Dreams Miss You”. OK—I think I get it, we’re supposed to stay awake figuring out why these three characters would be in our dreams to begin with; thus promoting a need for the product! (Then there’s the commercial running for “Head-On”… it gives me a headache; I guess it’s supposed to, that’s the point.) I don’t need to be supplied with insomnia and headaches from slick marketers; thanks, but no thanks. I can come up with my own material to fend off sleep and create a migraine but I prefer to dream instead of finished quilts, a tidy studio space where my fabric is all neatly folded and shelved and projects are finished weeks ahead of schedule! Good-bye Abe, you have no place here!
No worries, dream on…
Life is Good!
6 comments:
I'm surprised this upsets you so much. It irritates me that sometimes drug commercials seem to try to convince people they need a drug to solve a problem that they maybe didn't even know they had. Such as "social anxiety"(who doesn't suffer from that from time to time???), remember the little round blob who was sad and worried before he took whatever it was??? and then he bounced happily all over the place. But I don't consider Abraham Lincoln, a beaver, and a cooking astronaut a nightmare. I have unusual combinations in my dreams all the time. In fact last night I dreamed of a high school friend---I ran into her and her 3 daughters who looked like little stairsteps (funny because they are 28, 26, and 24 or thereabouts now) but in my dream they were little girls and there was a little boy sitting there as the smallest step.She only had the 3 daughters in reality. The pharmacy where I used to work in Florence was involved somehow and also in the mix were little 8 oz. cans of beer----8 oz???? A few weeks ago I dreamed of a deceased friend who was asking a group of us (all friends) what we thought of level billing and why we liked it.????? And in my dream I kept thinking "why do you care, you're dead??" One of the friends had tried to tell her that she was dead and she was no longer speaking to him. I know that you went to the trouble of analyzing the dream in the commercial and why they chose the characters they did.And I really did think it was a ground hog because of ground hog day being in Febuary along with Abe's birthday.So I missed the whole eager beaver symbolism. "Whatever". Maybe I can get you to analyze my dreams????? Regretfully, I never dream of finished quilts or an unlimited spending spree at Mary Jo's. Why is that?????????
"It irritates me that sometimes drug commercials seem to try to convince people they need a drug to solve a problem that they maybe didn't even know they had."
Can't agree more. My wife (a budding quilter) is a Physician Assistant and constantly has patients coming in telling her to prescribe this or that medication because they saw the ad on t.v. and it is exactly what they have been looking for. They are often offended when she attempts to determine her own diagnosis. Heaven forbid!! She's questioning the diagnosis of the television commercial??
What really bothers me, though, is the cost of this advertising. It has to be billions, right? I mean, each of these spots is at least in the hundreds-of-thousands, and there are so many of them. Tack on to that the thousands (millions?) of lunches purchased for doctors' offices every day by drug companies. Yep, that's right. Drug companies buy lunches for the entire office so they can come in and talk about their new drug. Often, they just drop off the food and go. It is so prevalent that some offices advertise free daily lunch as a benefit of employment.
How much cheaper could drugs be without these massive expenditures? Every doc I've ever talked to says that the "drug lunches" have no affect on what they prescribe. They prescribe per the symptoms, what a concept.
SO.....
this sleeplessness commercial irritates me for all of the above reasons, AND I and agree that it's basically just creepy. Listen, if there is a talking beaver waiting for me when I finally fall asleep I think I'd rather stay awake. And I must have seen this ad a couple of dozen times before I even knew what it was for.
NOW... on the other hand...
there is a car commercial out right now that looks just like a pharmaceutical ad. The affliction is something like "small car-itis", and the car is the prescription for having a car that is too cramped. It is so like a pharma ad that I didn't even realize it was a car commercial at first. It even has a completely unexplained man spinning with a puppy at the end, and the name of the car written like a brand name for a medication.
Now that's funny. OK, time to get to work...
quiltkeemosabe-- Don't be surprised that this upsets me. There's many reasons on many levels...you know I don't like surprises; to begin with, and the characters in question would be a surprise! (I dare say to anyone!) That's most likely more of my control issue problem... and I don't need a drug for that. Ha!! Only more things/events/people to organize... oh no!!
Jim-- I hear what you're saying, too. "Yes, for crying out loud write me rx's for this and this... I don't care what you think you know, I need it because I saw it on TV!!"
At first I was going to write, "snicker" because of the quality of your rant. Then I got to thinking about how angry I get when there's a drug commercial and it is totally -- I mean TOTALLY -- unclear what the drug is for, but at the end we're told to "ask your doctor if Crappola is right for you." Sheesh! So I'm not snickering, GF, but rather hollering "bravo" for both the passion and articulation of your splendid rant!
Nancy-- I guess if anything bugs us enough we can all become splendidly articulate in our rants!!
"ask your doctor if Crappola is right for you"
Man, I needed a good laugh-out-loud moment.
Thanks Nancy.
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