#81 - Pickup Line
Recent television advertisement, I think part of Chevrolet's "An American Revolution" campaign, features large Silverado pickup trucks plunging through the mud and muck at various enormous construction projects: a new skyscraper, a canal, and so on.
The macho, laconic voiceover declares something like: "You may not be working on the new office complex or building the new canal...but your truck could." In other words, you may have absolutely no use for this gas-guzzling, oversized monstrosity...but you should buy it nonetheless.
The ad, particularly the canal segment, has a strange, surreal Halliburton quality. It seems to hint that you will, of course, never in your life be awarded a contract by the government to oversee the building of a canal (does anyone build canals anymore, anyway?), but if you purchase a Silverado you can pretend that you have the power to do so, just in case. At least, that's what you can feel pleased about as you sit in traffic on the way to work, watching your fuel tank meter descend into the red.
16 November 2005