Metro.

I'm always jealous of the people on the el train who are reading a copy of the day's Metro in the morning. I usually have to stand and I end up fiddling with my phone rather uncomfortably on my way to work.

Anyway. While glancing over a shoulder today I saw a story that caught my eye, so I made a point of tracking one down this morning after I got off the train. Now, I know the Metro's not worth anything more than skimming the surface of news, but they still put a most disturbing slant on the whole thing. Here are some highlights/lowlights (depending on how you look at it):

- The article that caught my eye was about how a former prisoner at Gitmo has made a tape vowing to continue terror attacks against the U.S. The headline reads: "Out of Gitmo, still preaching hatred." The implications of the headline are supposed to strike fear and defensiveness in the reader. Come on folks, if you held me in a shady-ass prison where nobody outside of it (except the president who put you there of course) knew what actually went on inside and treated me like a non-person (as just about every prisoner in any U.S. prison is) and I got out, I'd be pissed off. I'd especially vow to terrorize the people that put me there if my mind had been drowned in nationalism/religious extremism BEFORE I went in. Duh. What (nonsense)*. "Oh no, the people that hated us before hate us even more know after we dehumanized them and terrorized them psychologically!"

- The very next page was full of more (malarky)* than any page of any newspaper I've ever read. There was a blurb about N. Korea's readiness to to test a missile that would have enough strength to hit the U.S. (PANIC!) Right next to it (no joke, IMMEDIATELY NEXT TO IT) is a spot about IBM's undertaking of building a super-computer to manage the U.S. nuclear arsenal! "This computer's so freakin' cool! We'll be able to control all of our WMDs from one place!" Please see the irony. PLEASE. Striking fear in the readers by talking about an "enemy's" nuclear capability, then talking about ways to improve "our" own stock. You've gotta be kidding me. What (silliness)**.

- Beneath those two wonderful pieces of writing was an ad. I hate ads. They're lies. The (ultimate) point of every ad is to say "you are not enough of a person without this," so you go out and buy it. They're heinous.
This one in particular really set me off. It had a picture of a couple, their faces slightly covered, though the woman's more visible (eyes closed, mouth open, soaking it all in), the man taller, their chests pressed firmly together, but with the info at the bottom just low enough so you can catch a glimpse of the top of her right breast. The words at the top and between them read; "The Couple That Lasers Together, Stays Together."
Wow. Just what we need. More ads telling us that we're not enough for our siginificant others, and that it stems from our physical "imperfections."

I think lawyers are more trustworthy than people in marketing. In law, there's at least a hint of honesty and justice at the beginning. It just gets rubbed out by the broken system. In marketing, the idea is to get people to buy something, regardless of what it does to them. It's a purely selfish industry. Sorry folks. It's nonsense. Aint no need.

* bullshit
** jackass-ery