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I was watching The Today Show this morning when it suddenly felt like the commercials had been going on forever.  So I did the logical thing -- I hit the "record" button and later went back to count them.

Twenty-two commercials.  I am remembering the lovely days in  Ireland where the commercials were all grouped at either the beginning or the end of the program, and the program went on uninterrupted.  How civilized.

Walt has been noticing evening commercials and wondering if I is assumed that the programs we watch are all geared toward old people, since there seems to be a preponderance of commercials for medications.  (Some day I really want someone who created it to explain the side-by-side bathtub commercial to me.  How does that POSSIBLY make you think of physical intimacy.  For one thing, the tubs are at the edge of a cliff, presumably out in the middle of nowhere and there are no clothes to be seen.  Did they have help, or tiptoe through the tulips nude.  So the guy takes the little blue pill, or whatever color it is, and it works.  They have to get through TWO bathtubs and either make love on the ground or in a small bathtub.  But that commercial has been running forEVer.

I don't know what demographic the morning commercials are aiming at.  Maybe you can figure it out.

1. the movie All the Money in the World
2. Papa Murphy pizza
3. Baskin Robbins ice cream pizza
4. Tobaccofree.com, about the evils of second hand smoke
5. Panera
6. Tylenol
7. Cheerios
8. Peanut butter chocolate Cheerios (which sounds ghastly)
9. the movie The Shape of Water
10. Lindor chocolates (does anybody eat one of those truffles as slowly as that woman does?
11. Some internet connection
12. Blue Basic dog food
13. Robitussin cough syrup
14. Paradontax tooth paste
15. St. Jude's hospital
16. The importance of milk in the diet of an Olympian
17. Symbicort medication for COPD
18. Kohl's
19. Ross for clothes
20. Palmer's Coconut oil with a half-naked woman meandering through a forest pouring coconut milk over her body -- kind of the ice cube challenge with coconut
21. Boot Barn (it starts out with a bunch of vignettes asking "what is love?" and it turns out that love is boots.
22. Ross again, this time for house decorations

At least there was no Stanton Optical commercial.  Those are my least favorite commercials and they run one, then another commercials runs and then Stanton is back again with the same commercials.  They are a tad less offensive than they used to be, but I still hate them.

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So this is apparently the White House all tarted up for Christmas. Isn't it warm and inviting? Looks like something out of a Bergman movie.

Was there ever a better representation of the past year and the cold heartedness of the current administration? I can see a tree for the millions who are about to lose their health care, a tree for children who will no longer get nutritious meals, a tree for schools whose funds will be given to Charter schools, a tree for the land in Patagonia that has just been taken back by the government.  There is a tree for big game animals, whose future is uncertain.  There's another tree for immigrants hoping to escape horrendous environments now denied admission to this country.  There is a tree for the undocumented children who might be deported to countries they have never visited.  There is a tree for the forgotten of Puerto Rico, and a tree for the impending chaos that is about to happen in Jerusalem.  So many trees.  

Yes, it's all very jolly.  

At the end of the hall is #45's stocking.

It's full of coal.