OK, guys? Seriously? We're not idiots, even if your market research seems to think so.

Right now you're wasting untold millions on advertising campaigns that actually turn me away from your products, and that's not in either of our best interests. Let me give you some advice before I abandon consumerism entirely and just walk around with a rice bowl.

Don't scream. It frightens me. When I hear you shrieking about insane, end-of-the-year, below-factory-invoice, no-money-down deals, I start taking side streets to avoid your car lot because I'm honestly afraid you've escaped from somewhere and taken over the radio station by force looking for hostages with good credit, bad credit, or even no credit.

Please, please stop using phrases like "Up to 50% off!" We know what "up to" means. We know what "up yours" means, too.

You're wasting your time with the commercials of smiling wives and retired football stars and Bob Dole. It's painfully obvious that you're just trying to make me insecure enough in my masculinity so that I'll buy your vaguely described products in a desperate bid to revive my no-doubt lagging marriage. Ha! I laugh at your feeble attempts. I was insecure in my masculinity for years before you came along.

You almost had me with this one, but it turns out that $1.95 is actually closer to two dollars than it is to one dollar, even though it also starts with a "1." I'll admit you had me going for a while there, but I sat down and worked it out with a pencil until I got the hang of it.

All the free gifts in the world aren't enough to blind me to the 27 1/2% interest rate ("compounded bi-hourly!") hidden on the credit card application, even when it's written in teeny, tiny type on the inside flap of the envelope. In white ink. Backwards. In Navajo.

The bikini girls hanging on guys who drink the right beers? No luck. I don't know about you, but my self-esteem doesn't require blatant social reinforcement. Although, bikini girls… no! Bad advertisers! Bad!

"Collectors Items" never are. Special offers that are available only if I order "before midnight tonight!" lose their punch after the first week or so. "Limited Offers" are never limited enough.

A free gift that requires me to pay anything, for any reason, is – and this will shock many of you — not a free gift. "Free" does not mean "free with purchase" or "free with postage and handling" or "free with rebate." "Free" means you give it to me and I don't have to do anything after that. Let me know if I'm going too fast, here.

I want to go to a fast food restaurant and demand a burger that looks like the dynamic, plump, delicious-looking half-pound showcase on their poster. Not what I usually get, which more closely resembles a brake pad with cheese that's been assembled by blind, spastic chimps on espresso.

No matter how hard you try to make think that wearing your clothes will make me feel better about myself, it's not gonna work. Especially if it involves stretch weave.

Whenever I hear the phrase "Not sold in any store," I always gleefully add, "thanks to your local Better Business Bureau!" Sorry, can't help it, it's one of those compulsions you read about. At least I've stopped giggling in public when it happens.

I'm confused by salespeople who have known me all of twenty seconds but tell me something like, "I'm going to give you a break because I like you." So why, us being such good friends and all, couldn't he just give it to me? I never buy from people like this, but I do wink at them and smile coquettishly.

I realize I'm being crankier than usual today. There are indeed good businesses with fun and honest advertising, and they get my business because of it. I don't know what's come over me.

I've just been feeling kind of insecure lately…