EYES WIDE SHUT

  The girl on the beach, her tan dark and her bikini bright, is shading her eyes as she watches a cruise ship in the distance.  The group of men surrounding a tavern table, their suits and ties black, the haircuts distinguished and their faces happy as they toast a white tequila. The lone, sleek automobile snaking down the road while mists of a surrounding tundra chase it beautifully.  Young, thin women dancing carefree and warmly, laughing and pulling men in close as, at the last second, a deodorant name flashes across the screen.  These are just a fraction of the things that commercials will tell you what will make you happy.  And what else do they have in common?
  Not one of them will make you happy.  In fact, some are downright dangerous.
  Alcohol is a admitted depressant.  Driving a car built for speed on a winding road is safe . . . if you drive Formula One cars for a living.  Cruise ships?  That's a lot of money to spend sick in bed with the latest stomach virus.  The list goes on and on.
  But that, as they say, is the tip of the iceberg.
  The pschycololigcal effects can do much greater damage.  The bodies the men and women have in 90 percent of these commercials are probably make up 10 percent of the population.  Models pedaling their lotions and anti-pimple cream while commanding radiant skin and supposedly dandruff ridden heads, tossing lush, glowing hair around their shoulders, can hurt much more than a germ infested cruise ever could.  Flat stomachs and muscled arms abound.  If you buy this, you look like this and feel like this.  Oh, really?  I hadn't heard a Porsche and Old Spice were the paths to Enlightenment.
  And now, not only do these companies harangue you with their wares, promising you a full life, with great wisdom, beauty, success and happiness, they are now armed with cookies, tracking mechanisms designed to follow what you follow and send the trail back to the advertisers.  These things are designed to wrangle all your greatest likes, insecurities, and standard of living into one great package where they can blitzkrieg your senses with even more of their bile.  Even now there are "super cookies."  These, as their title suggests, are much greater than your average "cookie."  Once upon a time you were able to delete these hound sniffing mechanisms, now, alas, you are not.  God knows what else is being developed or is already out there in cyber-space, targeting not only the masses, but you personally.  What other devious plots have this conspiracy-like level of companies hatched now that they have you one on one?  I do not know, but I am sure that instead of sociologists, they now have psychologists in their employ.
  Keep your eyes open.