DirecTV NFL runs ads for its "Sunday Ticket" package; many of them feature what is supposed to be a caricature of a crusty old prick who crabs at the viewers over the new-fangled DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket and how ridiculous the whole concept is, and, by extension, the incredibly pussy sense of entitlement that the viewer must feel over having access to DirecTV's absurdly wussified Sunday Ticket package.

The idea is that these play as parody: nobody takes this horrible dumbfuck seriously, right? You totally want Sunday Ticket! Except I don't--this decision is made easier by the fact that I'm stuck with my building's cable package--and I emphatically don't, because I resent DirecTV for subjecting me to this fucking creep in the first place.

The actor playing the fucking asshole is obviously talented (hopefully at playing things other than a repellent assole); I really believe him, because he's really irritating to me. These ads irritate me so much that I take secret glee in noting that in virtually every spot, he is shown alone: his estranged family has left him, his co-workers pay no attention to him, nobody at the Shriner's dinner will sit with him. He's just this awful old man making fun of you, the viewer, for exhibiting interest in the product being advertised.

Frankly, I think these ads are what are making me sick. I'm being consumed by loathing for this poor actor--who has become sort of real to me, to the extent that I derive schadenfreude from his clearly unhappy life--and also with cognitive dissonance over a series of ads that routinely dump loads of feculent sarcasm over its own product.

(Yeah, I'm still sick, and it fucking sucks. Happily, my doctor has no idea what's going on! Good thing I'm going in again on Thursday so he can continue to not know! I'm ready for him to fondle my balls now if it will lead to some conclusive diagnosis. He'll probably tell me to try getting a haircut.)

My father called the other day to ask how I was doing, and we had a chat about that--he's experienced some of these fucking neuropathies before, but I'll be damned if I can figure on a genetic explanation--and then moved on in the conversation. My folks visited recently, and they made a stop at Trader Joe's. I don't think they have Trader Joe's in Idaho, and they certainly don't have one in my hometown. They had bought some canned tuna in oil.

My father really loved this tuna. I mean, he loved it. He loved it like a mother loves Velamints. (Your mom didn't love Velamints? Your mother must have been defective, or possibly not trying to give up smoking during pregnancy.) He asked me if I would go back to Trader Joe's and pick up some of this tuna for him. I told him it was no problem, because really, it wasn't, and we needed to do some shopping anyway.

We went, and I found the tuna. (Things that are weird? Typing "tuna" over and over. Sucks to be you, ichthyologists!) I asked an employee to check on how much of the stuff they had, and she went into the back to look, and returned to tell me. I called my father.

"They have three cases of your tuna," I said. "How much do you want?"

There was no pause. "All of it!" he cried. Three cases.

I went to the cashier. "Whoa! You got a lotta tuna, buster!" Yes. Yes, I do. I felt the tremors coming. I was actually buying close to three hundred dollars of canned tuna. For my parents, who live by themselves in Idaho, and who I guess are joining a militia.

On Wednesday, I will take 144 cans of tuna to UPS and find out how much, exactly, it costs to ship same to Idaho. I'm going to have to fill out that fucking lading form and in the "contents" field write in "tuna." This is going to be disturbing, of course, and probably my arms will start tingling and I'll probably have a TIA right there when the UPS guy goes, "Whoa! That's a shitload of tuna!"

I'm expecting a call next week where my mom furtively asks me if I can score six cases of Velamints, and my entire nervous system will burst into flames, and that crusty DirecTV bastard will stand over my twitching body and call me a pampered pussybaby while he chews his sandwich, and I will know satori.

"Samadhi alone is not enough, you must come out of that state, be awakened from it, and that awakening is Prajna. That movement of coming out of samadhi, and seeing it for what it is, that is one hundred and forty-four cans of tuna."