Color Me Satisfied

The ad I hate the most made Slate's list of the worst commercials of 2006. You know the one: it tries to sell Intel Core 2 Duo processors with bizarre white people dances and awful music and a totally unattractive woman who makes me mildly uncomfortable. And unless you're into some weird stuff, you hate it, too.

Watch it if you dare:



Others on the list include one for restless leg syndrome drugs. I think any drug commercials on TV ought to make a separate list to bad and inappropriate advertising. What morans among us use TV ads to determine what drugs to take? Isn't that the job of your doctor, anyway?

And what doctor's going to admit to prescribing drugs on the basis of TV advertising? I mean, we all know that they prescribe drugs sold by the hottest pharma reps or with the best junkets.

The Christmas Spirit

I visited my in-laws for Christmas this year. It was my first time not being with my parents on Christmas since I knew what Christmas was. I mean, when I lived in India, I spent my first two Christmases without my parents, who had moved to the US and left me in the care of my grandparents. But at that time, Christmas wasn't nearly as important as Diwali, Uttarayan, or Holi.

Anyway, this year it was at my in-laws, without my parents. And boy, did we ever get into the Christmas spirit. We had three separate parties. We had gifts. We sang carols. We had a visit from Santa Claus. And we ate, drank and were generally merry.

What may surprise the reader, though, is that there were only two Christians in the bunch. Everybody else was a Hindu or Muslim. And I guess that's why I entitled this post 'The Christmas Spirit.' What other season would bring all of us together in the spirit of family and love? It was a beautiful homage to the love of God and the blessings bestowed upon us. And it didn't matter one bit what book you think God wrote. All that mattered was the message of peace and harmony in those books.