We Interrupt This Message To Bring You Your Life

We all go around vaguely aware that we are beseiged by advertising on a daily basis, but I suspect it's got so ubiquitous most of us barely realize what an onslaught it's become. In the advertising industry, clamoring constantly for our attention with messages that can somehow rise above the ad pollution has become an art form. The other day I heard a segment on the local NPR station devoted to ads that are now going to be placed in the little bins they give you at airport security check to put your shoes, watch, wallet, and coins in. In a brilliant bit of unintentional comedy, an ad executive defended the new practice, which I consider so benign compared to computer pop-ups and billboards as to render it almost non-existent. If any advertising is going to fly beneath the radar, pardon the pun, this is it. Still, the earnest exec tells us one of the advantages is that each bin will have an identifying mark so it will be easier to tell which is ours once it gets to the other side. What about the fact it's got my stuff in it? And, he said without a hint of irony, they'll be more hygenic. Hygenic, I thought, why? How hygenic does a tray with my shoes in it need to be? For that matter, how hygenic can it be when someone else's shoes have just been in it.