“Mr. Green, He’s So Serene, He’s Got a TV in Every Room” – Pleasant Valley Sunday, the Monkees!

Being in my forties now and researching buying houses and land, I am struck by how many consumer ads I am flooded with. I get that I am in my prime purchasing years in my life, and once I own a home, I will need to make repairs and get at least some furnishings and appliances, but the endless advertisements for dinning room sets, roof replacements, insulation and building systems, solar panels and especially those gutter leaf guards. As apparently leaf-filled gutters are the biggest menace ever to the suburban house-owner. I get it — leafs plug gutters, they rot, make gutters heavy and overflow, rotting the boards near them, then eventually the gutters fall from the building if not cleaned. Just like vinyl siding is convenient, even if it’s often poorly applied and accelerates underlying rot, as is case in one house I looked at earlier in the summer.

Maybe I am particularly annoyed by the web and podcast advertising as I don’t own a television so I’m not bombarded with television messages all day long, and I’ve cut back dramatically on listening to NPR as it’s mostly stories about how wonderful Kamela Harris is and how Donald Trump is a dark cloud of nation. And maybe it’s a good change over what was the advertising I got a few years back, which all way praising the benefits of Better Help and Mental Health Therapy, then weight loss and meal plans, then financial advisors. I get targeted advertising is just trying to sell to interested customers.

But it makes the whole idea of owning a home all the more repulsive. Buying a new house — you’ll want to consider renting a dumpster for all that shit you’ll inevitably rip out and not want to bring into your new life and instead send to that growing mound of toxic filth on the outskirts of the city. Don’t forget the convenience of garbage service, as the advertiser remind you. You can toss it one bin for pretend recycling! Don’t even think of burning it, that’s illegal even out in the country. And you’ll want home internet, because nobody can live without high-speed internet in every room. Got to recycle the paint, that you inevitably won’t use up, because they’re is lots of state money now for paint take-back programs. And so forth. Even thinking of buying a home, or expressing any kind of interest, fills you feed with so much repulsive advertising crap on all the things you will want to buy.