"4329789, that's 4329789...4329789 - once again, that's 4329789..."

I love sports radio as much as anyone. I like to listen to the talking heads wax eloquent about the big sports, the little sports, the stories of the day and the latest skinny on trades, arrests and saucy rumors. I also enjoy listening to a ballgame on the radio while I write or allow Spider Solitaire to ruin my evening. I don't even care what sport it is, except hockey or soccer - I hate listening to those sports nearly as much as I hate watching them on television.

Unfortunately, in spite of my love of the sports and the chit-chat, I've become obsessed with the commercials. The ads, which seem to be the same hour after hour, day after day, grow more obnoxious with each airing and it is beginning to put me off my sports radio.

I understand the need to get the name of the product being shilled out there in front of the consumer. And the website. And the phone number, I suppose. The big, successful national companies do not give out their phone numbers or website information. Simply not necessary - everyone knows where and how to find Burger King or Motel 6. And since this is so, all these companies do is create engaging, creative commercials - or at least commercials that are not obnoxious. And I have no truck with these advertisers - they don't want to annoy me and I will in turn sample their wares.

But the local businesses who advertise have not seen fit to follow this successful, innocuous paradigm - instead, they have somehow stumbled onto the single-most irritating template for advertising ever ejaculated onto the airwaves. For some reason, all of the local advertisers seem to think that the most effective way to rake in those consumer dollars is to blurt out their phone numbers as many times as they can during the course of their 30-second spot. Twenty seconds is spent hawking the product, the other ten firehosing the phone number as many times as humanly possible. Awesome. I would give you an example, but I cannot recall the name of a single company using this template, even though I hear their commercials daily, sometimes five or six times per hour when listening to the radio.

I can, however, recall that Dos Equis is the beer that the most interesting man in the world drinks, when he chooses to drink beer, which is rarely. That's effective advertising.

The Most Interesting Man In The World

"That number is 4239789, that's 4329789 - once again, that's 4329789. 4329789..." REALLY? My obsession with this incessant ad-tag borders on violent. I can handle one reading of the phone number, followed by a single repeat, if completely necessary and there is absolutely nothing more interesting about your company that can take its place. However, once I sense that the third and possibly even more repetitions of the number are forthcoming, the rest of the commercial is invariably drowned out by a loud and desperate guttural scream of "JEEEEESUS CHRIIIIIIST!" and the entire ad is immediately stricken from my memory banks.

What this means for advertisers is that the effect of the commercials not only do NOT bring me to their businesses, it actually drives me away, causing negative business rather than positive. Conversely, I have bought Dos XX more than once, even though I find the product inferior to my beloved Bud Light. Sometimes I just like to feel interesting.

In fact, it is lucky that I do not know how to procure explosives and am too lazy to do so even if did know how. Because I guarantee that I would be taping sticks of high-grade dynamite to my radio with a short fuse and would sit with a match in my hand just waiting for these bastards to start with the phone number machine gun fire. This would undoubtedly end poorly.

Artist's rendering of disastrous destruction of my radio via explosives

I sincerely hope that my obsession with this advertising drivel doesn't bring the eventual ruin of my enthusiasm for sports radio. That said, this sadistic form of air pollution has become the aural equivalent of driving red-hot gutter spikes through both my ears with twin ball-peen hammers. I don't know how much more I can take - I am teetering on the verge of a violent fit. The radio sits in close proximity to my golf clubs, any one of which could easily inflict fatal damage on the device with very little joyous effort. I may be radioless soon, which I suppose will solve the problem once and for all.

Understand, when I am King, these advertisements will be banned from all the land, with a suggestion to fellow rulers around the world to do the same. Advertisers who insist on attempting to sneak these commercials into the radio slipstream will be promptly and viciously punished to the fullest extent of the law. And as King, I will ensure that these punishments will be effective and extreme - most likely enlisting the use of an iron maiden or similar, equally painful torture device from the middle ages.

Golf clubs aside, there are many methods at hand with which I can destroy my radio, should these commercials push me over the precipice. But if anyone has any high-grade dynamite on hand, just in case, please contact me via email or secure phone line.