It is Friday morning at about 7 a.m. I am sitting at my computer getting some good quality Internet surfing time in before class. I've got my signature four tabs open in Firefox: YouTube, Pandora, Twitter and Google (for news and other various searches).
I'm unshowered, unshaven, plugged in and happy.
Pandora is on one of my favorite morning stations: the Son House blues station. Those old blues tracks are quiet because of the aged recording technology used on them, so the volume is all the way up.
I've got a hot cup of coffee in my hand while I'm reading about the health benefits of relatively unknown foods. Quinoa. What's that, I wonder. To the Google search bar.
I find what looks like an informative article on the origins of quinoa. I'm about three paragraphs in when--right in the middle of Son House's quiet guitar outro to 'Death Letter'--my world is turned upside down.
CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU'VE BEEN SELECTED TO RECEIVE A $100 WAL-MART GIFT CARD!!!
My right arm jerks backward and throws boiling coffee onto my T-shirt, arm and lap. I convulse with the sudden adrenaline rush of a man who thinks--if only for a second--he is about to be ambushed and nearly fall out of my chair. My heart is racing, and--if I wasn't before--I am awake now. I reach for the volume button, but it is too late: the Internet audio ad has already ended.
We've all had these moments; we've all been ambushed by these ads. And if I was really getting $100 out of it, it wouldn't be so bad. But we all know there is always a catch. It's always after a $20,000 purchase or a 'charitable' soul donation to Wal-Mart Inc that we get our $100 compensation for the pain and suffering caused by these terrifying ads--and, for that matter, who has ever really gotten that gift card?
These companies with Internet audio ads are so generous. Free vacations, gift cards and a healthy case of PTSD? Who wouldn't want that?
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