I just got back from Christmas vacation where I visited my parents and watched more network television in one week than I have the rest of the year combined. Each year, I come back with a bunch of quirky observations about what's on regular TV these days. Here's a quick updated.

The Family Feud writers are still desperately trying to write all their questions in a way that an 85-year-old grandmother will have no choice but to answer with, "I'm going to say 'his penis', Steve".

Farmers Only Dot Com is still trying to convince rural viewers that any girl from a town with over 100 residents is a real "c-word". That's right: "Country-inferior'.

CAPTION: "Wait, how do "gluten-free", "vegan" AND "raging alcoholic" even go together? And, in rural people's minds, which one is worse??"

But, by far, the grossest, most dinner-ruining commercials on TV now (and for the past decade) have been the ones with the family of purple bears that just loooooove them some Charmin toilet paper.

Here's one of the early ones:

The fact that these are cartoon bears doesn't negate the grossness of what these commercials are explicitly about: fecal-encrusted clumps of toilet paper that cling tenaciously to your rectum. Brother Bear there bends over AND does a hand-stand so you can get an unobstructed view of his filthy poop-chute. How is this on TV at ANY time, but especially during the dinner hour???

The fact that these bears don't have butt-cracks, much less anuses, seems not to matter. Nor does the fact that if a bear actually did need to wipe it's own ass from time to time, NO amount of ANY brand of toilet paper is going to do much good. Anything short of a pressurized industrial water hose is only going to smear it around a little bit.

Are dingleberries even a concern for actual bears in the wild? You'd have to ask a bear expert like that guy who got eaten by them in Alaska or, I presume, Bear Gylles (admittedly, I'm not actually sure what Bear Grylls does or why he is famous. The only thing I know about the shitting behavior of bears is that they do it in the woods.

Here's another one of these thirty-second waking nightmares:

In this (literal) crapfest from a couple of years ago, there's some kind of juvenile bear sleep-over going on. One kid bear is so overwhelmed by the complete awesomeness of the Charmin that he actually comes back into the basement to tell his friends just how gloriously clean his sphincter now is. Brother Bear (we assume the same one with the paper shit-clingers from the previous commercial) opines that Charmin gets your asshole so clean you could go TWO days without changing underwear. Mother Bear overhears this and is horrified. She shouldn't be, though, because none of the boy bears are wearing underwear. Or clothes of any kind. They're sitting around in their bare/bear fur playing video games in a basement. It's like a sleepover at Neverland Ranch if Michael Jackson had been into furries.

Oh, also...NOBODY wears underwear in the Charmin Bear family. Although the absence of undergarments does argue for the urgency of reliable TP, it makes me wonder how Mother Bear even has a concept of "underwear". Finally, Brother Bear calls out one of his friends who goes by the nickname "Skids". Yucccck. Since none of the bears wear underwear, we're left to assume that any skids are going to be left on the sofa and chairs. Double Yucccck.

This is the most recent hell-scape that the folks at Charmin have unleashed on us. The Bear family, who for unspecified reasons have turned blue, are really, really into how soft Charmin is.
For a moment it looks like Mother and Father Bear are going to get it on while using a package of Charmin as a sex-towel. But it's even more horrific as we find that the whole Bear family is in on what appears to be a fecal-wiping orgy about to break out. Check the look on Brother Bears face when he wipes the Charmin on his cheek. I think he just had his first cubjaculation.

Finally, Sister Bear speaks for all of us when she says, "This is getting a little weird".

Amen, Sister Bear. Amen

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