So I’m home for the holidays, and I happen to see some truck commercial on TV. I can’t remember what truck it was for, but it was about this guy who had an adrenaline deficiency that he treated by buying himself a big ol’ macho truck.
My sister said, “Maybe they shouldn’t be joking about this. There probably are people in the world who have that problem for real.”
I said, “There are people in this room who have that problem for real.”
Maybe my sister is kind of self-absorbed or forgetful, but I do indeed have an adrenaline deficiency that I have to treat with twice-daily medication. But I’m thinking it would be more fun to have a truck instead. I wonder if this would be covered by insurance. Perhaps I could get one cheaper from Canada. Or maybe I could just write to the truck manufacturer and tell them their ad deeply offends me, and threaten to sue for emotional distress. Then maybe they’d be willing to settle out of court and give me a free adrenaline truck.
If that fails, I guess I could just send a letter to Oprah.
I was going to pit this very commercial. I hate it. Hate hate hate. Check it out, I’ve got little wavy “hate lines” radiating from my head now. Why? Because the guy is diagnosed with “adrenalinitis,” which would literally mean “inflammation of the adrenaline.” Not the adrenal glands, the hormone itself. Which is of course a ridiculous concept. I hate that the writer, rather than taking a minute to find out what you’d really call “too little adrenaline,” (off the top of my head, it’d be hypoadreno-something) instead lazily tacks on the suffix -itis 'cause it sounds all disease-y ‘n’ stuff. Lazy, and wrong. Hate hate hate.
Yeah, that ticked me off too. The correct term for an underproductive adrenal gland is hypoadrenalism. My particular medical problem is secondary hypoadrenalism caused by hypopituitarism, but that’s a mouthfull for anyone.
Is that true? I was aware that “adrenaline” is not what those in the medical profession usually call the hormone (although it’s the name I use in conversation, because otherwise people have no idea what I’m talking about), but I didn’t know it was actually incorrect to do so. Did their mistake on this point cause you emotional pain and suffering? If so, would you like to join my imaginary lawsuit?
You see, the first time I saw that commercial was after last weekend’s viewing of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I got this image of the truck forcibly injecting adrenochrome into you when you sit down.
I’m imagining Hunter Thompson curled up in a tight ball in the driver’s seat, beat red, sweating, gobbling like a turkey and raving about Satan and serried arrays of bitch tits, while Tomoyasu Hotei bangs out that demonic throbbing riff like some merciless elder god from the wrong side of creation. Yeah, that’d be an awesome commercial. I’d buy me a truck like that in a heart beat.
