So as far as the ad goes, other metaphors might serve as well. The substance of NPR could be compared to the pus in a boil, the maggots in a cow carcass, or the coded language in a Pat Buchanan speech. But would any of these zesty tropes really induce more listeners to tune in? I wonder. 
Ill Humor, page 2
We seem to have lost the simple art of marketing. Not only that, maybe because our country is no longer as substance-jammed as your hypothetical june bug, we seem to have lost sight of what we're selling.
The April issue of Playboy, for example, promised a peek at "Women of the Internet."
But did Playboy include a modem? No. So where did that leave us? We were once briefly satisfied by the sight of an airbrushed airhead with a paper crease in her otherwise perfect little tummy, now we're supposed to get excited about a naked series of zeroes and ones we can't even access? I say forget it. Even if she does look like the algorithm next door.
What'll Playboy do next? Women of Public Radio? Would the issue include a CD of Linda Wertheimer describing what she looks like naked?
Well, it beats bug guts, I guess. And at least you can read the articles (still the main reason men buy Playboy, of course). But Playboy too is rapidly becoming a dinosaur. There's no room for readable magazines in our disposable society.
Take graphic artist David Carson, winner of many design awards. When he worked for the music magazine Ray Gun, he ran a cover upside down. He once continued a story from inside a magazine onto the front. When he put Liz Phair on a cover, he only showed her in the middle distance, from the waist down. (He also has his very own book called "The End of Print" -- now in its third printing. What a paradox.)
He may be the antithesis of the bug guts school of marketing. Instead of Pollocking substance all over the windshield, savvy artist Carson removed the windshield itself, and anything else that might remind you that you're sitting in a car. But what are you left with? A little greasy spot on the datapike.
I'm a text-based kind of bug myself. I don't get the logic behind making a magazine indecipherable. I don't see the thrill in downloading a naked woman, even if she's Cokie Roberts. I just can't make the connection between insect innards and information.
What's happening to us? Is this the end of history, the graying of post-modernism, the Pollocking of narrative, the slo-mo riot of deconstruction, the splintering of society, the downsizing of demographics? I don't know. But we're staring at the clothes drier long after we've run out of quarters. We're gaping at bug guts on the windshield long after we've rolled to a stop.
In our frantic desire for efficiency in a buggy world, we suddenly have sub-species that didn't exist ten years ago. We have "sexperts," "eco- tourists," "technopagans," "bio-medical ethicists," "tech support," "spin doctors," "cyberpunks," Arianna Huffington....
But are they june bugs, or helping hands?
Maybe we're all Gregor Samsas with rudimentary wings, flying senselessly into the void, smacking into the screen door of reality, and flopping around on our backs, hoping that some amused substance abuser will pick us up, and set us on our bumbling flight once more.
Or at least buy us a disposable car.
