The Bard Sell

    Let's face it: these days, you can't do even the simplest of tasks without finding someone trying to sell you something.  Alas, even this blog has ads, even if Google in its infinite insipidity seems to decide that those ads should always be related to establishing your own blog.  (Do I care enough to look into changing this?  Not a wealthy tinker's damn.)   In, however, one of those absurd flashes that for some pass as thought, it occurred to the Not-So-Good Doctor that the improverished designers of those myriad advertisements seem to be ignoring one of their potentially greatest resources, a little-known and out-of-copyright author named William Shakespeare.  Why, one has to ask, oh why?  (Did I mention that he's out of copyright?  This alone should have advertisers moist at their choice of possible foists.)  Why use cheap slogans when you can use ones not merely literate, but catchy enough to survive centuries?  And why corrupt Bob Dylan at cost when you can have Shakespeare for free?  So, let this blog offer some suggestions for incorporating Shakespeare into the world of the thick-and-hard sell, a world the great showman would, at least at some level, have surely appreciated:

• for Ex-Lax, feature a beaming middle-aged man staring directly into the camera and averring, "Finally, I'm as constant as the northern star!"
• for NASCAR, a charismatic Jeff Gordon insisting how he must be bound to wheels of fire (NB: substituting Dale Earnhardt here is NOT a good idea) 
• for 3M, an ad starring John Wayne Bobbitt, confidently asserting that once you've Scotched the snake, you haven't killed it
• for Nair, feature an elderly Mediterranean man pointing toward his wife and shouting, "Look on her: look, her lips, / Look there, look there!"  (Er, choose your own definition of lips.)
• for McDonald's, a canine and apple-pie bearing Anthony Hopkins begging, with mischievious eyes, "Will't please you, eat?" 
• for the ACLU, offer Johnnie Cochrane, glove on hand, asserting that now, indeed, is the time for Gods to stand up for bastards (or, alternately, Pat Robertson)
• for Republican congressional candidates, the probably overly-erudite slogan, "A natural perspective that is and is not."  Note:  Must feature a middle-aged white man staring angrily at his local opponent.  Alternately, offer same middle-aged white-man snarling about how long the quality of his mercy has been severely strained
• for ING Direct, have that snotty Pete Postlethwaite imitator remind us how neither a borrower nor a lender must be
• for Kleenex, star an advising Bill Clinton extending the product in question and insisting to a faceless brunette, shaking her head, "The handkerchief!  The handkerchief!"
• for Jack Daniels, a toothless redneck in bar, watching a couple leave, affirming that it may take away fromt he performance, but at least it gives the inspiration
• for MADD, a middle-aged soccer mom reminding everyone how she must, fervently, be set against their merriment
• for Palmolive:  "When all the perfumes of Arabia just won't do...."
• and for DeBeers: "Or else the rest will be silence." 

Feel free to offer your own suggestions in the comments.  The spirit (?) of Ken Lay will thank you.  Try not, however, to do anything about poop being burnished gold.