Read The Douchebag Bible Online
Authors: TJ Kirk
5. Attractive people are all inexplicably using dating services,
so your ugly ass had better get in on that action.
Is there even one among us who really believes this? People—men
in particular—are so controlled by their sexual organs that many
advertisers wisely choose to ignore their brains altogether. Will
men who know damn well that attractive women don’t use
telephone dating services suspend their disbelief long enough to
cough up a credit card number? You and I both know the answer.
6. Penis Enlargement Pill (
Extenz
) is "scientifically proven"
and if it didn't work then its makers could not possible afford
to put commercials for it on television.
What I adore most about this commercial is its shaky attempt at
logic. Rarely does a commercial attempt to employ logic—even of
the shaky variety—so one has to give them a measure of credit for
their attempt.
7. Without a drug called
ProGene
, you will be a completely
unsatisfactory lover. Graphs are presented to prove this fact.
They’ve got charts! How could anyone ever possibly resist the
fact-laden persuasive power of a brightly colored pie chart
insisting their urgent need for a particular product?
Actually, how could anyone not resist that?
8. With
AutoZone
, you can restore a shitty old car that you
found on the side of the road to working
condition if you work on it constantly for months on end.
This commercial really touched my heart. A teenage boy finds a
dilapidated car on the side of the road with a note in the window
that reads “If you can fix it you can have it.” So the boy gets a job
and works his butt off until he has all the parts he needs to slowly
repair the car. His tenacity and resolve exemplify the American
Spirit!
As does his stupidity.
He spent his summer getting parts to fix a shitty car that
someone abandoned on the side of the road when he could have
just saved up to buy a used car already in working condition.
So, what can we extrapolate from these commercials? I won’t
force any conclusions on you, but here’s the conclusion that I’m
forcing on you: human beings, especially Americans, are the most
gullible assortment of rubes to ever walk this shit-covered ball of
filth and bacteria that we call Earth.
Now, this may strike you as unfair and unreasonable, and
I will concede that it is.
However, it also happens to be true.
Our Heroes
Our heroes are not scientists or explorers. Challenge an American
on the streets to name 10 scientists off the top of his head. Ask
them if they know the name of even one current astronaut. Watch
them fumble stupidly.
Our heroes are not artists. We might lovingly embrace a
director or a singer every now and then, but usually only if they’re
directing movies about exploding trucks24 or singing about how
great America is and how much they like expensive things and
sexual intercourse.
Our heroes are not actors and actresses. We’ve turned
them into our public freakshow, putting the pressure of our
intense scrutiny on them and then waiting for them to snap under
the weight of our merciless judgment.
Our heroes are not everyday people like us. We’re a bunch
of fat, complacent slobs. We’d be idiots to admire one another.
We pay a little bit of lip-service to firemen and police and
soldiers—but at the end of the day those people have no impact
on most of us (other than those cited in vague allusions to
“keeping us safe” and “fighting for our freedom”).
If you think soldiers and firemen are our real heroes than
ask why so many homeless people are veterans. Ask why firemen
don’t get multi-million dollar endorsement deals. Ask why you’ve
never seen a panel of guys sitting around a table talking about
24 I’m looking at you, Michael fucking Bay.
their favorite fireman or how amazing a certain cop’s takedown
of a particular criminal was.
But there are two factions of people in America these days.
There are those who have heroes and those who have to act as if
they do not. I will write about the latter first and segue into a
discussion of the former from there.
A lot of my friends, whom I consider to be among the
smarter living denizens of shitball #325, say that they have no
heroes. I view this as partly a response to the inanity of what is
considered heroic in modern America and partly a consequence
of the look-up-to-no-one trend started by Kurt Cobain in the early
90’s. Kurt was a reaction to the ridiculously flashy and fake
rockstars dominating the scene at the end of the 80’s—guys
gallivanting around in yellow spandex and purple codpieces,
wailing like banshees about rocking your body and touching your
body and tasting your body and doing a whole assortment of
other unseemly things to your body. With Kurt, the idea of the
rockstar as a God-like figure who was simply better and cooler
than you in every possible way went to its grave. The rockstar was
now just an everyday guy—perhaps with a bit more poetry in his
or her soul, but otherwise indistinguishable from the masses.
Playing a gig in jeans and a T-shirt was now not only okay, it was
expected. Dressing up in flamboyant costumes was now looked
upon as the behavior of a poser.
Since then, those rules have been relaxed to admit more
25 Sometimes referred to as Earth.