The Marco Island movie theater is like no other I’ve ever seen. It has booths with tables and soft arm-chairs, and there is a large menu where you can order real food, salads, steaks, wine, desserts, etc, so nobody has to resign themselves to stinky popcorn.

Films that can conceivably be considered intellectual (according to Hollywood standards, that is) never come to my area. Even Anna Karenina was never shown in my town. So we have decided to watch The Great Gatsby while in Florida because we will probably never get to see it otherwise. My belief in the high level of Florida’s civilization evaporated, however, when I saw this warning attached to the film’s schedule. Yes, I’m sure 12-year-olds will be irreparably damaged by seeing “smoking, partying, and brief language” of the great American classic.

I don’t have television at home but when I’m on vacation I watch it to see what I’m missing.

There is this program about prisoners jailed in a stationary barge in NYC.

“Mike is here on a drug charge,” the voiceover explains.
“Josh is incarcerated on a drug charge.”
“Jose, Pedro and Juan. . . drug charges. . .”

“Justin is here for a parole violation.”

Oh, finally, I think. A real criminal.

“He is now serving the remainder of his drug conviction.”

The camera moves to a women’s penitentiary.

“Jessica is serving a sentence for drug possession. So is DeShawna. Breana started serving her drug-related sentence. . .”

All of this probably serves some purpose but I’m not sure which.

Commercials make you feel bad by showing you photo-shopped, digitally enhanced images of impossibly beautiful, incredibly thin or ripped men and women with perfect hair, amazing skin, and phenomenal outfits. You realize that you don’t measure up compared to them and feel compelled to buy the product the ad campaign is pushing to become more like the people in the ad. Right?

No. That’s absolutely not how it works.

Ads that make people feel bad would never be watched. In order to attract viewers to the commercial and, consequently, to the product, an ad should make viewers feel good. And what is it that makes people feel better than anything else? Having their beliefs confirmed, of course.

I’ve seen this happen many times. A bunch of ultra-intelligent people is sitting at a conference, listening to a talk. In the midst of profound insights, the presenter suddenly mentions something extremely well-known.

“Spain lost its last colonies in 1898. . .”
“Lazarillo de Tormes belongs to the genre of the Picaresque novel. . .”
“In the last years of his life, Galdos was blind. . ”

Suddenly, the eyes of the bunch of ultra-intelligent people glaze over. An expression of a near-orgasmic bliss graces their faces and they begin rocking as if in a narcotic stupor. No brilliant analysis or powerful insight makes them as happy as hearing what they have known, heard and repeated for decades.

This is how political campaigns work, and the news channels, and the newspapers, and even comedy shows. And, of course, this is how ad campaigns work, too. They show you the comforting picture of what you think the world should be like and you buy the product to reward the company for letting you inhabit, albeit just for a second, the universe that seems so right and correct to you.

So instead of commercials forcing us to believe that the world should be populated by cyborg-like creatures of total perfection, we are the ones making the ads so obsessively dependent on showing nothing but these images.

Nobody believes me when I say it but I insist that Connecticut is a very stupid place. I’ve lived in different states in the US (CT, MD, IN, IL/MO), and I am convinced that something is deeply wrong with Connecticut. See this, for example:

James F. Jones Jr. announced Monday that he will retire next year — a year earlier than planned — as president of Trinity College in Connecticut, The Hartford Courant reported. Jones has been under sustained criticism from many alumni since last year, when he announced that all fraternities and sororities would be forced to become coeducational. College officials characterized the retirement decision as unrelated to the Greek uproar, but the Courant reported that many alumni critics are dubious, given the extent of anger over the Greek decision.

You’ll say people in any state can go into an uproar over something this trivial. Yes, maybe. But in CT nothing but this ever happens. The state’s economy is disintegrating. If nobody notices that it is only because a couple of ultra-rich enclaves skew the statistics and prevent anybody from noticing the nearly third-world poverty of the state.

The state looks like a war has been going on in it for at least a decade. I haven’t seen such incredible poverty as in CT anywhere in the US, and I have crossed the country many times by bus and by car. In the meanwhile, people create drama over some stupid fraternities in some little dinky-wink college.

The Midwest is definitely a lot better off than this scary place.