A Study In Canadian Obnoxiousness

Canadian culture is a funny thing. On one hand we're rich with a plethora of genuinely stimulating artists and works. And on the other hand we're rich with Canadian Tire commercials. For those of you among my readership who don't live in Canada you'll probably be unfamiliar with Canadian Tire. It's a chain of hardware and household goods stores. I believe they call it Canadian Tire because it is, in fact, Canadian, but don't hold me to that until my team of researchers get back to me from their laboratory. I also believe it is called Canadian Tire because no matter which Canadian Tire store you walk through, it's guaranteed to smell like Tires. But what I really want to talk about here right now is not so much the Canadian Tire stores, god bless them, but rather the Canadian Tire couple.

"The Canadian Tire couple?" you say?

The Canadian Tire couple is this married couple featured in most of the major Canadian Tire advertising. They're in all the television commercials and they can sometimes be seen in the catalogues and in the mailout flyers. They're all over the place in Canada. I'm even tempted enough to say that they are quite possibly Canadian icons. How fucking sad is that? A whole nation of generally bright, gifted people represented to the world by two fictitious characters from a series of television commercials. But more on that later.

Here's what really bugs me about the Canadian Tire couple and you just knew that something was going to have to bug me about these asshats. What bugs me most is that they are quite possibly the most obnoxiously smug couple on the face of the earth. Seriously. I suppose it was destiny that two people so vain would somehow get past their self-love and coalesce into some sort of freakish superpower of self-admiration and verbal masturbation.

Here's what happens in every Canadian Tire commercial that ever gets to air...

1.) Canadian Tire couple invites a neighbor over to their house.
2.) Canadian Tire couple proceeds to show off some new gadget available exclusively at Canadian Tire that makes life infinitely more convenient.
3.) Canadian Tire couple ends with some fucking joke or prank that they find mildly amusing.
4.) I vomit through my eye sockets.

And there's always one point in each commercial where one of them, depending on who is showing the new product off says to the neighbor, "Oh Tom, or whatever the fuck your name is, you lead a life of so many complications while I Canadian Tire couple member can go about my normal business of polluting the broadcast signals thanks to this ever-so-fucking handy new gadget available exclusively at Canadian Tire stores and online at www.canadiantire.com. Why you don't just kill yourself faced with all the inconveniences that you face on a daily basis is beyond me." Every fucking commercial is just like that.

Ask yourself what you would do if you were constantly talked to like that by one of your neighbors. After a while you'd probably snap and and impale them on a couple of rakes. I wouldn't blame you. And why Tom, or whatever the fuck his name is, keeps going over to that house to be talked down to like that is beyond me. He must be a glutton for punishment or he's slowly compiling a list of reasons for him to slit his own throat from ear to ear and leave a suicide note that reads:

I didn't have the new Motomaster Mechanical Dildo Caddy. I'm just not good enough. Good-bye world.

And really, a lot of the products that are featured are essentially nothing more than mechanical dildo caddies anyway. I remember watching them expound on the virtues of a fucking portable DVD player for 35 minutes once. A portable fucking DVD player! We're not talking about essential technology here. And it's so convenient too! You can hang it from the ceiling of your car and keep children amused and it folds right up for ease of storage! Available exclusively at Canadian Tire stores or shop for it online.

You see, when I start talking like that you wish there was an internet technology that allowed you to punch me in the nuts. I thank god that you don't have the technology for that yet.

And now to get back to this whole Canadian identity thing. Isn't it sick that we, as Canadians can look to the Canadian Tire couple as pseudo-cultural icons? How fucking strapped for icons are we in this country that we would let a couple of condescending jerks represent us in the eyes of the world.

"Gee, world, you wouldn't have the problems that you do if you would have purchased the Motomaster Mechanical Dildo Caddy available exclusively at Canadian Tire stores or shop for it online. I guess you're up shit creek, you fucking morons."

I suppose if there is any solace that can be taken in all of this it's that we're not the only country in the world that sometimes gets perceived as being a bunch of smug assholes once in a while. It's funny how the actions of a few can dictate the image of the whole.

And of course it just occurred to me that most of you in the world outside of Canada probably aren't aware of who the Canadian Tire couple is. If this is the case please let me know so that I can create an army to wipe out the scourge of these pissflaps before they become an international epidemic of mediocrity. There may yet be hope.