Note: When our anxiety gets the best of us, when our emotions are running the show, sentences come out of our mouths….completely short-circuiting the thinking process. Also, our Emotional Guidance System knows everything about how other people should live their lives…

The thinking part of our brain…considers the long-term effect of our words…our thinking brain also but not that chronically insecure demon inside us…ready to tell the world what we “think.”…That cute little big-mouthed demon is particularly adept at noticing ways in which people are living their lives differently from ourseleves…and asking the question, “What’s wrong with those people?”

This is a dangerous and unfortunate practice since whatever monstrous and stupid behavior you dare mock in others…you will be fated to one day to not only accept…but to relish.

When I was in college, if I spotted a car with a small dog hanging his silly head out the window, his ears flapping in the wind…I could be relied on to point out my superior choices in life by asking, “What kind of person wants to tie themselves down with a house dog? What’s WRONG with those people? Do they just not have enough to do that they want to run home a couple of times a day to let out the dog? There are enough things you have to do in life, what could possibly possess a person to voluntarily take on a bunch of extra work?…You know, I knew a person once who let her dog sleep in the bed….actually this wack job had two dogs sleeping in her bed.”

His name is Sammie Davis Jr. after a one-of-a-kind entertainer. Sammie’s mother is mostly shih tze and his father was one of those traveling men with a twinkle in his eye your mother warned you about. He’s getting along pretty well with Crazy Dog. Sammie’s a baby, which means he wakes up in the middle of the night and plays “leap frog” with himself on my back.

The method most often used is the LOOSE CONNECTION ploy. Advertisers use what we call a “loose connection” to establish a FALSE cause and effect.  For example:  Joe Montana (16 years in the NFL) is in good shape.  Joe wears ”rollers” from Sketchers.  Therefore: Roller shoes caused Joe Montana’s in-shapeness. Put on those Sketchers, baby, and, you too, will be ready to run onto the field at the new Cowboy Stadium….

Shop at Walmart and watch the pounds drop…and on and on and on….The weight loss industry depends on the EGS, particularly the Emotional Guidance Systems advice: “It won’t hurt to buy all this worthless equipment and all these pills.”  Yeah, if you don’t count the soul-sucking loss of personhood.

Ah, but the weight issue can wait.  We have the War on Drugs to bust first.   

Swanson frozen food commercials suggest that thawing their products and sitting around the table as a family results in closer relationships with your children.  As soft hymn-like music rises in the background, a blond family of four laughs and exchanges winning smiles around the table as they dish up lasagna.

According to Swanson, these early lasagna experiences mean you’ll have better relationships with your kids when they’re teenagers than will foolish parents who ignored the Swanson advice.  Thus:  Swanson Frozen Lasagna=Drug-Free Teens.

Why is thinking about loose cause-effect issues important?  Because…cause-effect thinking sends us off onto all sorts of crazy generalizations, such as “I’m late, so I have to be in a bad mood….I’m not beautiful, so I can’t wear a bathing suit….my kid’s in jail because I had a job while he was in high school….even….I’m not happy because I married the wrong person…I know. That’s a biggie.

Swanson should maybe pass their incredible good news up the line, say share their genius with the folks in Washington.  Stay with me here, this lasagna solution can solve all sorts of problems: 

Swanson Frozen Lasagna=Drug Free Teens=Billions of Dollars Saved=Murders Down 40 Percent=Border Problem Solved=Millions Go Off Welfare=Less Unemployment=Fewer Houses Broken Into=Prisons Emptied…Who knows where lasagne can take us?

Now tell me the advertising world isn’t joking with this one.  Joe Montana, football great, actually says by wearing these shoes he stays in the best shape of his life.   Okay, that’s just funny.

Another ad says by wearing these shoes, you can have the body you’ve always wanted without going to the gym!  I’m missing something here….walking from the den to the kitchen is a workout? 

I’m in….and I remember I left in the middle of the “Attack of the Devil in the Blue Bathing Suit.”  Next one, promise.