"Kreep" Begins With K, If You Spell It Wrong.

With the fabled "holiday season" *cough* Christmas *cough* just recently behind us, we're sure all those warm memories are still fresh in your heads. Visions of sugarplums. Family dinners. A roaring fire. Mostly though, the constant deluge of jewelry and fragrance commercials.

Now, without exception all of these commercials are painfully shmaltzy, but the gilded crown of corniness goes to none other than Kay Jewelers. Its difficult for us to know where to begin tearing this marketing campaign to pretty little confetti-like shreds, but the bald emotional manipulation seems as good a place as any to start.

All of the ads for Kay's "love's embrace" collection depict a man showing his love for a woman by giving her some gaudy (and more often than not ridiculous-looking) rock. While on the surface, just about anyone will tell you they don't feel compelled to go out and buy a diamond just because of a stupid commercial, the subconscious cues used here set these ridiculous circumstances as cultural norms.

Women feel like their man doesn't love them if he doesn't spend three months' salary on a hunk of rock to adorn their digit. Men feel like they aren't macho enough if they don't have the green to drop on one. It all becomes another instance of materialism masquerading as affection. Besides, all of that, some poor children in Africa probably died digging that diamond out of some rat-hole mineshaft. You just bought your boo a blood diamond. You feel good about that, crew-neck creeper guy? Diamonds aren't a girl's best friend. Diamonds are murder.

Add to that weird settings and atrocious acting, and you've got a recipe for victory. If you define victory as an advertisement abomination. One of the commercials, which we'll post below because we know you've all seen it, is set in a log cabin during a raging storm. We'll skip past asking why they decided to get all rustic during hurricane Ike and point out that this is how EVERY single slasher movie starts. Jason broke out and slew everyone in that commercial as soon as the cameras were done rolling.

Come to think of it, it may actually have been the woman's husband that did the killing, because the creepiness of the men in these commercials is surpassed by none, and we say that with love. We recommend taking a look at another commercial in the series just to drive the point home. In it, the man proposing responds to his lady saying she, "doesn't remember this place," by saying "you will," in a tone that would have us busting out the glass and grabbing for the emergency fire hatchet. Just watch it.

We may be overreacting. There are women everywhere who will dispute the claims of materialism and insist large hunks of minerals on their fingers or necks have emotional value. The belief seems deeply ingrained in us. You, reader, may think we're insane. For the record, we ARE broke and bitter. As always, the final word is really up to you. Creepy cabin ad, comin' atcha.