Writing about writing.

I’ve about had it with a couple of commercials.

The shocking car crash thing was pretty cool, and effective… the first 1,256,329 times I saw it. But now, with All State insurance and Volkswagen both machine gunning our airwaves with the nice-drive-in-the-car-oh-my-god!-smashing-screeching-air bag-deploying thing, I really don’t care.

Another television commerical element I’m sick of is the Kay Jewelers “every kiss begins with K!” jingle. I think this goddamned sing-song verse is played more than Jingle Bells during the holiday season. I swear that I hear that stupid line more than I hear phones ring during the entire month. It’s just plain infuriating, and that’s without even getting into the not-so-subtle implication of what you’re buying when you buy a diamond.

In Tom Zoellner’s The Heartless Stone: A Journey Throught the World of Diamonds, Deceit and Desire, we are given insight into the marketing strategies that shaped most of our cultural opinions about buying diamond jewelry. “Some rules could never be broken, especially the one hammered at men throughout the twentieth century: Diamonds will help you seduce,” Zoellner writes. “The sexual bargain around the stone emerged almost completely from its subtext in a 1987 ad that featured an exhilarated young couple frolicking atop a floating pool toy. They are dripping with water and he is lying between her legs in an unmistakably copulatory position. ‘Once she said ‘yes,’ I wanted her to have a diamond that would make her say ‘wow,” said the ad. In other words, she has agreed to sleep with him, but now his potency is on the line. Her bliss–and his worth as a man–are dependent on his ability to whip out the stone.”

So besides being annoying, “every kiss begins with Kay” is telling us that every romantic interaction begins with a trip to the jewelry store? Wonderful message there guys. Presented in a horrifyingly irritating way.