This week, man. My football team continued on its season-long quest to boost opponents' self-esteem, the deli guy misheard a request for tuna as "tofu," a bungled Java update temporarily robbed me of access to my favorite time-waster and the postal service couldn't handle the task of ferrying my sister's birthday card to a destination 35 miles away in fewer than four days. Collectively, these misfortunes left me feeling sad and small. To the multitudes reading this dispatch from mud huts in sub-Saharan villages ravaged by malaria, I thank you for keeping me in your thoughts.

I've reached the point in my "career" as an "athlete" where the ultimate goal of my daily runs is not to incur bodily harm during them. Earlier this week, when a pair of leafy twigs materialized in my path, I did the only sensible thing: turned around, dashed home and called 911. During this morning's excursion around the neighborhood - lo, but three hours ago! - I found myself confronted by a street gang of feral geese that had breakfast-y designs on my thighs. It took all the courage I have left (if rendered tangible, this would fit comfortably inside …

Which brings me to the most recent of what I expect will be numerous heat-seeking brand volleys that lean on actors who brought Breaking Bad to such vivid life, Bushmills' "Breaking Boise." The great Aaron Paul, sure winner of the 2013-2014 Emmy for Achievement in Anguished Wailing, became the most recent "Since Way Back" campaign spokesfella a month or so ago (curiously, not long after appearing in an extended Ciroc vodka spot with Omar and Billy Batts). Unfortunately - for Bushmills, not for the ascendant Paul - "Breaking Boise" arrives at almost the precise moment that Breaking Bad fatigue is …

Kids - they do the darndest things! Like call you by your first name, stuff uneaten sandwich crusts into the sound hole of your beautiful beautiful guitar and execute technically proficient Five-Star Frog Splashes onto the back of your neck when you're enjoying a hard-won nap. That guy over there, the one rocking back and forth while muttering "make the boy go away, make the boy go away" like a mantra - he knows what I'm talking about.

I understand that there is pressure on brands, and the agencies that serve them, to create Cool Internet and Mobile Things. Just look over there - the immediate competition has one. So does that company who's sort of in the competitive line of fire, like the way that movies vie for mindspace with video games and meditative strolls in the park. And did you see that thing what's-his-face did with the kitten and the Lego Oprah? Just awesome. Why doesn't everyone have something like that? Really, Wilson, you better start taking your job more seriously.

Here's my problem with film festivals: the cinematic works they feature don't show enough stuff done getting blowed up. Where are the laser-guided air-to-surface missiles? Where is the detonator that goes kablammo if the bus drops below 50 MPH or the beer bucket rises above 50 degrees? Enough already. No more talky indies in which depressed screenwriters find solace and redemption in the arms of cute, quirky phlebotomists who have a Samsonite warehouse worth of baggage of their own, please. Really. Judging by this summer's offerings from Hollywoodland, you'd think we were all smoking clove cigarettes and wearing berets.

I consider myself one of the fortunate few. I survived four family cruises without contracting tetanus or scurvy. But owing to a few high-profile recent cruise disasters, the general perception is that to take a cruise is to entrust your well-being to a gang of indifferent sea peons whose sole aim is to separate passengers from their fanny packs. That's why I'm surprised by the jokey, no-worries-mon approach of Celebrity Cruises' most recent clip.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the day we packed up our sense of urban superiority and decamped for the suburbs. And while we love the space and the crickets that chirp us to bed every night, it hasn't been all barbecues and mall-walking, friend.

Short of donning sequined tuxedos, barging into my house at 3 a.m., rousing me to the sights and sounds of a Chumbawumba lip dub and leaving an array of Ukranian nesting dolls in their wake, there is very little anyone in the cell-phone food chain can do to capture my attention. For me, every major manufacturer and carrier passed the marketing saturation point three years ago (related: I am a sports-watching-type person). Brand attributes and handset features alike have long since been laser-etched onto the surface of my brain, and I have long since availed myself of the ones that …

Fashion brands have too much money. It should be taken away from them and redistributed to companies that might spend it on something useful or entertaining. Sorry for going all Bolshevik on you, but that's the only takeaway I have after trying to find wit, meaning, personality or depth in "Where Beauty Begins," Chanel's latest video opus.