America is Advertising Deluxe.

I was never really involved in that green-parka-wearing-Naomi Klein-Nike-bashing-stone-throwing-anti-globalization/commercialism movement in the late 1990s. I mean I read No Logo, and I agreed that brands and advertising is taking up too much public space, I just wasn't that into throwing stones. Living in the US now hasn't made me want to pick up a brick and throw it through a McDonald's window either but it has certainly tested my tolerance levels on advertising. In risk of sounding like the European communist most American's think I am; But wow, America has taken the idea of commercializing life to a whole new level. I was watching the Final Four in the NCAA (that is the semi-finals in the national college basketball tournament for those Europeans not familiar with the concept) on Saturday and maybe I was in super-communist-mood but everything seemed to be about some kind of product. The commentators kept on saying this thank you speech to Goodyear for providing the air pictures every time they came back from advertising break. And some award was handed out, and it wasn't named after like a great person who had done something great - it was named the Chrysler award and they guy who got it just kept on thanking Chrysler. I live with the ad breaks every 5 minutes (the most annoying ones being that between the last scene of a show and the end credits) and the complete commercialization of being ill (the funniest thing is when they list all the deadly side effects of an erectile dysfunction pill after the cheery man on the screen has said it saved his life - side effects include death, nausea, memory loss, and lifelong erection) but it is really weird when the boundary between what is advertising and what is not is so blurred. In Sweden, by law, we have a little jingle that say *ads* so you know. What happens when the news gets sponsored? How do you know the information is right? Anyways. Rubbish, its 1st of April and we are meant to be funny and I am just being Reclaim-the-street-communist.