Me and bad news ads

I'll admit that when it comes to this incredible machine in front of me, I mostly stumble along like some stooge, knowing only what I have to keep my nose to the digital grindstone. This Dell will do a gadzillion tasks I don't know a thing about, but if someone were to show me the brave new world I'm missing, I'd forget the route inside of a day and a half anyway. 

There's this, for instance. Lately, these ads appear with annoying regularity. Mostly they try to grab my attention in the hallowed old way of the National Enquirer, spouting juicy stuff. at the grocery counter. This particular one simply assumes I'm all agog at royalty. I'm not. Princess Meghan is fetching--I get that; and I think there's some chatter about whether or not she and her sister-in-law hit it off, but I don't need her foibles in my life so I stay away (Oh, yeah, her dad's a jerk too, right?). 

But until I swipe it away, a couple times a day ornery pop-up headlines appear in the lower right-hand corner of my screen. I didn't ask for it, but then I don't doubt some errant keystroke of mine may have given it birth. "theweathercenter.org" it says for some reason I don't know. And Google Chrome. Maybe once an hour some celebrity--just now Steve Harvey (who's Steve Harvey?) will show up beneath the same title: "Sad news for. . ." I guess "enquiring minds want to know."

I don't. 

But the approach is arresting. It's always "sad news for," or some browbeaten equivalent. Here's one:  



Never cared much for the Clintons, and I'm certainly not going to start right now. 

Whoever dreams these things up and wedges them into my daily grind wants me to push that little green button. Well, I won't. But that doesn't stop the ads from jumping up out of nowhere to bless me with their gift of sad news.

What I can't help wondering is what ad guru determined that me and a million others would click on "sad news," as if we were hungry for someone/anyone to say something really dismal about some starlet's rocky marriage? Who thinks of these come-ons anyway, and who do they think we are? 

Here's my theory. Some Silicon Valley wonderboy's logarithm long ago determined my age. Whoever did, creates these things with this premise: I'm an old fart, prone to exasperation with a world I no longer understand. He thinks I'm as useless as a cream separator and therefore get pouty, prone to indigestion and the kind of windy exhortations one hears only in the minor prophets. I'm 70 years old and a pessimist--we all are. I get these blasted ads because I'm old. If I were 19 or 29 or even 49, I'd be on a whole different listing. Maybe I'd get bosomy females, but I wouldn't get a chorus of sad news takes.

How about this?



Only old farts think much about flushing their bowls. Someone with loads of money honestly believes I'm charmed by this stuff. Someone thinks I'll click on the darkness because at three-score-and-ten, real light has gone out of my life. Someone believes I love sad news. 

Well, I don't, dang it. Bring on the bosoms.