I hate to bring up things nearly two months after the fact, but there was a travesty of monumental proportions during the most recent Super Bowl that I feel has not yet been adequately addressed. I am sickened by how this country has been infected by the amoral and perverted antics of such a select group of people with a stranglehold on the youth of America.

I am, as you have already guessed, speaking of the atrocious commercials that ran during the Super Bowl. For centuries, the commercials during the Super Bowl have been the only reason to watch it, sans gambling purposes.

What other reason could there be to watch the Super Bowl? Bragging rights? Are the people who live in the state where the winning team played half of its games going to call random people in the state where the team that finished second played half of its games and say "Ha! A team of mercenaries from Florida and California paid by some tycoon who might have been born in this state beat the team of mercenaries paid by a tycoon from your state!"

Super Bowl commercials used to be spectacular, cinematic masterpieces that cost more money to make than most skyscrapers and cost even more money to get the network showing the Super Bowl to put them on the air.

Nobody could ever tell what good or service the commercial was advertising, but that never mattered; even if you had never heard of the product before, you knew that after you saw the commercial for it that you had to have at least 20 of them.

And now what kind of garbage did we see every six seconds when CBS decided it was time for us to see more commercials? We saw rancid, moldy garbage, composed mostly of medical waste and runoff from artificial-hot dog factories, and that's the worst kind of garbage.

The only two commercials from this Super Bowl that stick out in my mind is one about flaming horse flatulence, and a Pepsi commercial that insinuated that had Jimmy Hendrix drank Coke instead of Pepsi as a child, he would have learned to play the accordion instead of the guitar.

Well screw you, Pepsi; how do you know Jimmy Hendrix wouldn't have been the world's greatest musician with an accordion, or even a concertina, in his hands? I happen to think that polka music is quite hardcore, especially with the sweet, harmonious sounds of the tuba.

The crappy commercials that ran during the Super Bowl are just part of an increasing trend in television. It isn't just the commercials that cost a million dollars per three seconds; all commercials suck.

The following is a list of the worst commercials on TV right now. What makes these advertisements especially bad, aside from the fact that they make me want to buy the products even less than I did before I first saw them, is that they exist in multiplicity. It's not that bad if you see one horrible commercial, but when you start seeing more commercials that are essentially the same as the original horrible commercial and reference the original commercial in case you forgot about it, you start throwing things at your TV.

And have you ever tried to get Taco Bell to buy you a new television because their crappy commercials made you fly into a rage and put a bowling ball through your TV? They seem to think that they aren't responsible.

But the worst part about these commercials is that people seem to think that it is a funny joke to make parodies of them. And not good parodies either; these people usually just repeat, verbatim, whatever idiot catch phrase is repeated throughout these series of commercials. In fact, I'm fervently writing my congressman to tell him to support legislation that would make parodying those horrendous MasterCard "priceless" commercials punishable by stoning.

As an added bonus, I will rate each commercial by saying which part of my body I would donate to charity if it meant that I would never have to see another one of these commercials again.



MasterCard.

A few years ago a credit card company made a commercial that showed someone doing something (it’s really not important what) and listed three consumer goods associated with that activity along with their prices. Then it gave some intangible emotion or something and gave its price as “priceless.”

OK great, real clever. But it stops being so clever after said credit card company uses that same formula to make exactly 870 trillion more commercials. Other people don’t seem to hate these commercials as much as I do, but that is because these people are wrong.

Rating: I would give away both lungs and my liver if it meant I’d never have to see another one of these God damned commercials again.



Geico

Geico, which sells insurance, is special because it has two separate series of commercials that I hate. One stars a computer-animated lizard, or “gecko,” and is a take on the fact that the word “gecko” sounds a lot like “Geico.” Of course, only in the first few commercials was it made apparent that the lizard was a gecko, which means only in the first few commercials does the premise make sense. Otherwise it’s just an insurance company trying to persuade you to buy insurance with a fake lizard.

The premise of Geico’s other commercials is that someone is getting some really bad news (they’re going to jail, they just lost their job, they found out someone just murdered their entire family, they’re getting a parking ticket, etc.). The person delivering the bad news says there is good news, which is always “I just saved a bunch of money by switching my car insurance to Geico.” I don’t really mind those commercials, although they are stupid, but I start to mind them when I hear people say “but I’ve got some good news ... I just saved a ton of money by switching my car insurance to Geico! Ha-ha, not really, but it’s like the commercial, get it?”

Rating: I think I could live without my knees if it meant I’d never have to hear about Geico for the rest of my life.



Penis pills.

This is not just a single product, but a group of products which is part of an even larger group of products, which are medications advertised during the evening news that are nothing but an old person doing tai chi in the park while a disembodied voice reads a novella-length list of side effects.

Usually when I see a commercial for some sort of penis medicine, I can’t tell that the medicine is a penis-related one. These commercials almost always fail to mention what exactly the pills in question do, and that is probably because people don’t want to see commercials that blurt out, “take this pill if you want an erection so massive it could give someone a concussion!”

Penis-pill commercials use innuendos and suggestive wordings to let you know what the pill does. For example, Enzyte, one such penis medication, shows footage of a guy named Bob who smiles uncontrollably and only partakes in actives with phallic symbols, like baseball or ballroom dancing, as a voice-over brags, “Bob is now stiff and rigid with confidence! He is a massive, throbbing shaft of meaty self-esteem, thanks to Enzyte!”

Rating: I can live with only like 10 percent of my heart, right? Because I would gladly give most of my circulatory system if it meant I never had to have the TV insinuate that I should ask my doctor about erectile dysfunction.