Hobbies

I've decided I won't be productive tonight. I don't feel bad about this. So I'm watching CSI on CBS. I get two "normal" channels: CBS and ABC. I also get the Korean Broadcasting Channel. But regardless, I saw a commercial for Lyrica. Lyrica is a prescription drug designed to treat Fibromyalgia. The commercial's heroine was a woman who worked at a jewelry store as a beader. Her selling statement, about why people who have chronic tenderness and pain in their muscles and joints should ask their doctors about Fibromyalgia was: "... So I can get back to what's really important in life."

Okay. I love beading. I regularly think of it as one of my preferred hobbies, next to creative writing, cooking, and sleeping. But I found this drug commercial absolutely ridiculous.

Keep in mind, I'm a pretty cynical person, and I'm aware that commercials are excellent manipulators, so I like to point out their unavoidable logical fallacies. When would beading ever be what's really important in life? It was the woman's job to make jewelry, to bead, but even then... what a lame job.

And then I realized something. It wasn't that I hated the fact that Fibromyalgia wouldn't allow someone to get back to "what's really important in life." It totally, maybe, probably can. What really bothered me about this commercial is that something as fun, yet unimportant, as jewelry making, could be someone's main reason in life...