Oh, Please...!

Sorry for the gap in postings; life has been interesting of late... But (to borrow from the movies), I'm baaa-aack!

I have the kind of schedule that keeps me up late at night, so I have a chance to see quite a few commercials & infomercials that might otherwise not grace the photons emitting from my television screen. Some of them are truly laughable, others advertise products that sound so good, I go online to research them even before the infomercial is over. (Example: Lipozene. Short answer: don't bother.)

There is, however, something beginning to really annoy me about the majority of infomercials. (No, it's not the far-too-frequent fudging of facts; that's an entirely different can of worms). They insult my intelligence.

My current "favorite" is for a cute little device that will supposedly give me the ability to hear almost as well as Superman (my exaggeration, not theirs). I will leave it to others to test the various claims made about the capabilities of the device; I am simply having trouble getting past the opening moments of the commercial.

"Would you like to have sonic hearing?"

Hmm... Excuse me a moment while I check a couple of entries in a standard dictionary... Ah, here we go:

Sonic: of or pertaining to sound

Hearing: 1) The faculty or sense by which sound is perceived; 2) The act of perceiving sound.

Putting those two definitions together, it would appear that "hearing" is an ability related to sound, which means it is... sonic!

Wow. Big surprise (not).

A word of advice to advertisers: don't insult the intelligence of your prospective customers. Anyone who sees this particular commercial is likely to understand that "sonic" and "hearing" go hand-in-hand without the addition or intervention of your supposedly miraculous product. Would I like to have "sonic hearing"?  Gentlemen -- I already DO have sonic hearing! We ALL have sonic hearing without having to spend a penny on your product!

I will, however, give the advertiser credit for one thing: it is a rare gem of a commercial that manages to be so stupid within the first two seconds of airtime. (And please tell that otherwise very cute brunette in the background to not overact so much when she supposedly hears her boyfriend is planning to pop the question, okay?)

Annoying. Unimportant... but annoying.