Laudator Temporis Acti

The more I watch the boob tube, the more convinced I am that Edward Abbey had it right in Desert Solitaire. The interlocutors in the following dialogue are a tourist and Abbey (working as a park ranger):

"Don't you have a TV?"
"TV? Listen lady...if I saw a TV out here I'd get out my cannon and shoot it like I would a mad dog, right in the eye."
"Goodness! Why do you say that?"
"What's the principle of the TV, madam?"
"Goodness, I don't know."
"The vacuum tube, madam. And do you know what happens if you stick your head in a vacuum tube?"
"If you stick your head..."
"I'll tell you: you get your brains sucked out."

Here are three (of a gazillion) things that especially irritate me on TV lately:

• The Volkswagen Jetta commercial, in which two airheads use their Jetta to go buy a loud stereo system. The way they gyrate in time to the "music" reminds me of the disease known as Saint Vitus Dance.
  
• The Pull-Ups diaper commercial, in which Bach's Goldberg Variations serve as background music. This is tantamount to blasphemy and sacrilege. If it's absolutely necessary to desecrate this sublime music, how about using it in a sleeping pill commercial? Bach supposedly wrote his variations to cure Goldberg of insomnia.
  
• The visitors to the Big Apple who appear every morning behind barricades at Rockefeller Plaza, in hopes of getting their grinning mugs and childish signs ("Hi, Mom!") captured on camera for the Today show. I have trouble recognizing that these goofy, gesticulating cretins and I belong to the same species.
  

Where's my cannon?