If an advertisement on TV is giving you conniptions, you have a few choices. You can change the channel, but it’s likely there’s another one almost as obnoxious (it’s a conspiracy!). You could close your eyes, plug your ears and try to hold your breath until it’s over. You could take another bathroom break and pretend you’re doing something other than looking in the mirror and saying to yourself “Calm down. Getting angry only makes you look older.” Or you could plot some kind of revenge.

In my quest to inflict harm on commercials, I’m humbly beseeching the gods of Karma for help. Not the kind of Karma that happens in the physical world, like when you lie so much your nose grows longer, or you get eaten by a wolf. Or like if you drink beer too fast while eating hot Mexican food you will get the hiccups from Hell. And I’m not out to put a life-long curse on the actors in these ads either – I mean, they are just doing a job. But they should try to choose better gigs. What I want is for them to suffer a few nasty dreams to serve as reminders of the lameness in which they engaged.

I’m starting with the young lady in the Home-a-glow commercial. She’s claiming that this company cleans your whole house for $19. She doesn’t say anything about the house size or number of rooms or the precondition of the house, like if it’s covered in black mold, or infested with cockroaches the size of basset hound puppies, or used as a stray cat sanctuary. Instead we see smart looking young people scrambling at breakneck speed all over the place – waxing floors, washing dishes, scrubbing toilets, doing laundry. Everything looks shiny and new.

Let’s calculate. Nineteen bucks. The company execs take at least half because they are the big shots who came up with the idea and are springing for the ad. This leaves the workers to split the nine dollars three ways. So, if they get the house cleaned in two hours, each makes, after taxes, a little more than a dollar. This leads me to believe the only real clients of Homeaglow live in those “little houses,” and that the Homeaglow workforce must consist exclusively of undocumented migrants.

So I’m imposing this dream upon the young actress: She has hired the Homeaglow team to clean her house while she goes out to a party near Beverly Hills. While she is mingling with other aspiring actresses and wannabe movie producers, the homeaglow team is emptying out her house of everything valuable. She will be forced to move back home to Idaho with her invalid mother and two unemployed brothers who are royal slobs.

Next on my list are Doug Flutie and Frank Thomas, famous retired athletes who are spreading the good news about Nugenix and testosterone. They had lost their spunkiness at age 40, but got it back because of this amazing product. In the ad, Doug is gallantly playing pretend football in his little front yard while Frank mingles with a neighborhood couple. The husband is wrestling awkwardly with a limp hose, and there is an odious wetness surrounding his armpits. His wife despairs. Enter Frank, who tells the guy about the miracle of Nugenix. The climax: Frank winks at the wife, saying, “and she’ll like it too!”

The dream goes rather easy on Doug. He sees his future: he’s in a wheelchair at a nursing home where he is forced to wear giant baking mittens to prevent him from trying to play patty cakes with the nurses.

Frank’s dream is more scary. That woman – the “She’ll like it too” wife – has gone off the deep end. She has murdered her husband, escaped from prison, and entered Frank’s house in the middle of the night wielding a garden hose that morphs into an anaconda.

Last on the list is Dr. Shannon Klingman, the scientist who, after years of research of sniffing thousands of people all over their bodies, invented the ultimate human sanitation treatment – Lume whole body deodorant. She speaks openly about her disgust for the human smell, and has invented a product which smothers all of it.

The nightmare planned for Dr. Klingman is quite disturbing: she is marching in a parade in which she and all others are wrapped up in transparent plastic body suits. She feels like she’s in a coma; she cannot hear, or taste, or feel, or smell anything because all skin pores and body orifices are sealed shut. And she is afraid that if she breaks free there will be a terribly embarrassing explosion of odiferousness.

I’m just hoping I don’t get bad Karma from wishing it on others.

Pete Howard, a musician, writer, teacher, and painter, lives in Dunkirk.