Every Sunday, and I'm sure many are familiar, when you pick up the paper, there's plenty of ads pilled up in the middle. Some ads are useful. Local stores giving you insight about various savings on necessities such as food and clothing. However, the ads that irritate me the most are the electronic ads.

In large, bold print, they give the price of the merchandise. One computer for instance, a Sony VAIO Notebook was selling for $899.99. However, upon closer inspection, it was selling for $1199.99, that is, after $200 in mail-in-rebates and an additional $100 in instant-savings. That's $300 off the mark of the ACTUAL PRICE! What I'm told is that if I so decide to spend $1199.99 on a laptop, I'm obligated to go through a lengthy process of getting these saving, rather than saving time altogether if they would simply put these items on sale for the same amount. I know it's not that simple, because these companies wouldn't be pulling this kind of stunt unless money was being made from it all. I could care less they're making money off it, however it's simply that this whole stunt is pulled on just about every item in the ad.

And just to get off-topic for a moment, one thing I noticed was that the processing speeds were not listed on any of the computers. It would seem to me that computers have reached a point where processing isn't as important, because to sum up computers today, they have mainly four uses: Music, games, videos and Internet connection (which is really just the other three all in one). Only one of those actually requires good processing. Word Processing, or any other actual form of productive work? Ha! Computers today are just big media dumps. It's not about processing anymore. It's simply a matter of hardware space and screen resolution.

Another things that gets me angry is the overkill of advertising that these electronic ads shove into the whole mess. Just about every TV is displaying a movie that is in theaters or going onto DVD format. As if it wasn't enough that I need to hear about these movies during the commercials on television, or various other forms of media. It's sickening to realize how much advertising the average day is compounded with. There are DVDs that prevent the user from fast forwarding through the previews. It doesn't take long to imagine why that is. While cigarette ads are in bad taste to show well, just about anywhere, liquor ads are fine as long as there's a message about moderation.

Meh.