Quick! Stop Breathing!!!!

Ok, I’ve been late night channel surfing again. You’ve got to love those infomercials. They’re a sheer goldmine of information that you’d never guess otherwise. For example, take the following informational nuggets:

Exercise is good for you.
Eating healthy is good for you.
Hurting yourself is bad.
Smelling good is preferable to smelling bad.

I’m glad someone told me. I’ve been sitting on my backside 24/7, eating lard, stabbing myself in the thigh with a pencil while trying to work up a really good, world class stink.

Where would I be without infomercials?

Today’s nugget actually was important though. Apparently, the air inside your home can be up to ten times more polluted than the air outside! A very serious man in a white lab coat told me this.

I couldn’t help but be impressed.

Those lab coats are always a good tip off, anyone wearing a white lab coat is obviously very serious, clever and official…I mean, they couldn’t possibly be just some guy off the street who bought his lab coat at a surplus store.

Trust me, white lab coats are guaranteed, iron clad, irrefutable proof of authenticity.

Well this ‘doctor’ laid down some serious science. He had bar charts and everything. Computer animations! Get this; he had one of those pointer thingies. He even had a pocket protector and a little stand on his desk with his name on! How could anyone not take him seriously? Truly, he is a medical mastermind.

Well, I was sitting there, all impressed and completely mesmerized by his super authentic animated bar charts. (Each bar was even a different colour, truly we live in an advanced age.) But then he looked directly into the camera, and gave the grave news. Now brace yourself, this is world shattering:

“Breathing the air in your home is dangerous.”

Errrrr…

As opposed to what?

Not breathing? Should I start holding my breath now? I hate to interrupt, Dr. Labcoat, but don’t I need to breathe to live? Isn’t even polluted air preferable to none at all?

Well, you see, Dr. Labcoat’s solution to the air/no air debate was to buy a very expensive and fancy air purifier from him. Apparently, if I don’t buy this air purifier, I’m seriously endangering my health, my family’s health, and if I don’t buy this thing, I’m obviously a very unconcerned and downright evil husband, because I’m not protecting my wife’s life. Unless I buy his air purifier right now (5 easy payments of $179.99) she will get sick and probably die!

How could I let this happen? How could I have ignored the flatulence-soup like air in my home?

Maybe it’s the fact that the entire human race, myself included, have been breathing air for their entire existence and haven’t had any ill effects has thrown me off a little. In fact, we’re all under the misguided notion that breathing is a necessary part of life! Who knew I was slowly killing myself through breathing? Maybe I should stop my heart beating also. I must be causing awful wear and tear on those valuable muscles.

Well, obviously, I had to do something about this now. I stopped breathing. No more evil, shit laden air for me! No Sir!

I’m not quite sure what happened after that. Maybe I was a little too late in taking action. Apparently, blackouts and searing lung pain is a symptom of having already breathed bad air. All I know is that when I picked myself up off the floor, Dr. Labcoat was still talking. I sat back down and started to pick the Doritos out of my hair. Somehow they had mysteriously jumped from the table onto the floor, and the table was also on its side.

I’m pretty sure the crap in my air was responsible.

I continued watching, I wanted to hear everything that this white lab coat clad, God among men, medical professional had to say.

Continue he did. Dr. Labcoat took his special filter and mixed it with a glass of water, held the putrid stinking fluid at me and said: “Would you drink this? Because that’s what you’re breathing right now!”

“Well, yes!” I replied “I would certainly drink it, but then again, I am mentally subnormal.”

A thought struck me. At first I thought it was just a sharp piece of Dorito stabbing me in the head, but after a moments consideration, I decided that it was definitely a thought.

“Hey Dr. Labcoat!” I said. “Isn’t that a little contrived? Isn’t taking the impurities from a filter that’s probably been running for a week, that’s filtered a few hundred thousand liters of air, then condensing it into an 8oz glass a little unfair? I mean, isn’t that like the difference between farting in a car with the windows rolled up and farting on a mountain top?”

It appeared that Dr. Labcoat was far too busy to actually answer that question. I wasn’t worried though. He was obviously so important and clever, that there is obviously something about his experiment that I didn’t understand.

You see, it just appeared to me that his experiment was saying the same thing as saying that dropping a single grain of dirt into a glass of water and drinking it would have exactly the same negative health effects as eating an entire football pitch. I mean, the collected impurities from a few hundred thousand liters of air all put in one place must prove something.

The fact that I’d have to breathe over a hundred thousand liters of air to take in enough impurities to colour the water in an 8oz glass obviously mustn’t count

Clearly, I must have missed something. After all, he had a white lab coat…Oh, and he was wearing glasses as well! There’s authority for you.

The experiment is obviously so advanced, that it must be completely beyond my comprehension. Curse my feeble 140 IQ!

I must be so stupid. For example, if the air outside is only 1/10th as polluted as the air inside, like Dr. Labcoat said, I would have done something stupid like, say, open a window.

Instead, what I should do, is something really clever like spring $900 for an air filter. In fact, make that $5400, because apparently I need one in every room!

I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been…I breathe all the time! Who knew it was killing me?

Now I know you’re all terrified by now, but I’m going to go even further.

Another man in a white lab coat (and this one even had assistants, it showed them in his office and everything…and I thought the first Dr. Labcoat was impressive!) told me that not only is our air filthy, but our water is a big, disgusting health hazard as well.

He very valiantly offered to sell me a device to clean it for the low, low price of just 4 easy payments of $33.33. I think that’s reasonable for a life saving device of paramount importance. I mean, it’s not like he’s asking me to pay him $99.99 or anything!

Holy Shit! Not only is our air bad, we have to filter our water as well!

Hmm…

Not only should we not breathe, we should stop drinking water as well. I feel so stupid. I’ve been killing myself all my life!

(Just a thought, perhaps our water would be a bit cleaner is the first Dr. Labcoat would stop washing his air filter in it. I’ve seen him do it. He does it every night at 3am on the TV Guide channel. I know his message is one of importance, but does he have to show us over and over? He washed his filter 13 times last night…on the same show! Oh well, I obviously just don’t understand someone of his gargantuan intellect.)

It’s amazing that the human race has even managed to survive!

I mean, those idiots in the past just relied on cleaning, opening windows and their immune system protected them. They even believed the outmoded concept that coming into contact with diseases and things built up their immune system, making them less likely to get sick in the future.

No thanks! I think I’ll just stick with my hermetically sealed, completely disinfected, filtered air, filtered water, completely sterile home, to hell with my immune system…for all I care, it can whither and die!

It turns out Howard Hughes wasn’t a psychotic germophobe, he was just way ahead of his time!…Not sure where the storing your own piss in carefully labeled jars comes in though, but I think I’ve proven I just don’t understand geniuses.

Anyway, I have to go now. I don’t know how many people have touched this keyboard before me. I also have to ditch all my clothes and buy a complete wardrobe of disposable paper garments, complete with surgical gloves and masks.

(Oh, and in case you can’t tell… I’m being sarcastic).