“Back in Russia, where they’re still getting acclimated to the whole capitalism thing, most TV advertising took a straightforward approach to persuasion. Thus, even though I don’t speak Russian, I had no trouble understanding Russian ads. They were all along the lines o: “Oh, no, there’s a stain on the tablecloth! What will Mom do? Thank goodness for this effective detergent!” Not so in Japan, where sophisticated consumers have grown bored with simple persuasion, forcing advertisers to get wildly inventive. Japanese TV ads have at this point evolved into an abstract mishmash of symbols and sounds. Your average thirty-second Japanese commercial is something like: Here’s a man holding a giraffe. Now the giraffe morphs into a rainbow. The rainbow is friends with a talking pencil, and they live together on a spaceship. A few seconds of laughter! A snippet of loud reggae music! Fad out. At least half the time, I have no idea what the product being advertised is or what it does. And yet I very much enjoy the ads. They’re like short-acting hallucinogens.”

“Most of all, immunize yourself from the drug companies efforts to convince you that you desperately need their advertised products. If you really needed the product, it is unlikely that drug companies would be spending money on advertising. Remember, there aren't many ads for insulin on TV.”

“As I continue to sip at the chest-warming liquor, entering ever-deeper states of inebriation, a mauldin thought begins to take shape in my whiskey-addled skull. My notion is this: We are each of us our own container ship, transporting our various cargoes through the ocean of life. At ports along the way, we may stop and pick up a new lover, a spouse, a child. At other ports we unload precious items - friends move away, relationships end, parents die. Even when we’re lost in the deepest fog, we must try to keep our watch, not be the cause of any tragic collisions, and to do what we can to keep our cargo safe. In the end, of course, your ship rusts out and is not longer seaworthy. So, I suppose, in this analogy, the afterlife equates to being bought by a Greek shipping line.”

“The program is only the excuse to get you to watch the advertising. Without the ads there would be no programs. Advertising is the true content of television and if it does not remain so, then advertisers will cease to support the medium, and television will cease to exist as the popular entertainment it presently is.”

“The wonderful thing about extended travel - the whole lifestyle, with the come-and-go friendships and the rootless freedom - is that it breaks you out of ruts you’ve carved into your everyday life. But when you never stop traveling, travel itself becomes a rut. At some point, you’re no longer gaining a richer perspective on your life. It’s more like you’re running away.”

“Sometimes when I’m watching TV and I see a horrible commercial I think, “Only an asshole would buy that.” Then I think, Wait a minute! The advertising agency did research on their client’s target market and which channel and TV shows the ideal demographic watches, right? This would mean a carefully chosen ad campaign to get the product in front of the likely buyers, who in this case, are assholes. And I’m on the chosen channel, which means that I am one of the assholes of interest. Then I get spooked, because how’d they figure out that am asshole? Scary how well they know me.”

“He smiled at me. “Have a good time.” “Thank you.” The music was definitely working, I thought as I started to shut the door.“Don’t get laid,” he added.”