Saklad | Skeletor | Boing, boing, boing

This will only be funny to a very thin slice of the people I know.

Of course, this is based on the incorrect assumption that comprehension (of several neo-geo-cultural references colliding, in this case) equals amusement. It is probably actually funny only to me.

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My housemates went to a Tool concert, and I tried to imitate the vocalist's voice for them, but M said it was, if anything, a very good Skeletor voice.

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Skeletor is the villain from the TV show He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, part of the pantheon of 1980s U.S. TV animation that, while serving the practical purpose of episodic ads for toys, was actually engagingly written. Given the raw materials, anyway. We have been watching these again since getting cable.

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If I do eventually acquire a technology that lets me not watch ads, I will use it, despite my awareness that I really like some ads. To take a recent example, last night I saw an ad for Seeley mattresses, the one with the little kid bouncing on a bed. I found it hideously funny, as it intended I find it, due to its visuals and sound effects -- which stop short of being overblown -- written into Philip Glassian measures of repetitive minimalism, and still telling a complete story in two parts. I nigh fell out of the papasan.

I believe that Sturgeon's law applies to TV advertising just like it does to TV programming (and every other manner of media): one out of every 10 examples is worth experiencing. Unfortunately, due to the nature and format of TV advertising, you can't choose the ones you want to watch, like you can with TV shows. So for a given hour-long show you will still get, in the commercial breaks, about 12 minutes of excrement -- noisy excrement, also on fire and with clowns -- rubbed into your eyes. It's a losing ratio.