Why did I regurgitate, you wonder? Well, if you put two and two together, you may have gathered that it has to do with something I saw on the television. But since there's so much objectionable crap on TV these days, it won't be easy to guess what set me off. So I'll give you a few choices.

It was one of the following:

a) a reality show featuring a group of varyingly obnoxious Type-A personalities pitted against each other in a rigged battle of wits;

b) a cookie-cutter sitcom featuring a core group of gays with straight friends, straights with gay friends, yuppies with no black friends, black people with guest-starring rapper friends, high schoolers with no friends, high schoolers having sex with friends, or families with obnoxious in-laws;

c) hour-long dramas featuring professionals in high-pressure jobs who swear a lot, professionals in high-pressure jobs who speak in technical jargon, high schoolers in high-pressure social situations who speak like the host of Inside the Actor's Studio, high schoolers in high-pressure situations who have lots of sex, or women who act like hard-asses in male-dominated professions;

d) cooking shows and especially Emeril;

e) news magazines and tabloid shows;

f) local news exposes on dangerous shopping carts, dangerous mattresses, crooked plumbers, crooked mechanics, crooked window salesmen or insomnia;

g) wrestling and the XFL;

h) shows with judges scolding white trash...

Oh, never mind. The list is obviously quite extensive, so I'll just cut to the chase. The reason I threw up on myself today was because I witnessed something so repugnant I just had to stick a finger down my throat and force myself to vomit. I saw a commercial advertising Phillip Morris' social improvement efforts.

You know the ones, when they show a lonely old woman in her apartment, dying of starvation, waiting for the trusty, Godlike meals-on-wheels man from Marlboro Country to show up, singing some stereotypically Italian song and making her day. He provides her with the sustenance she'll need and can't leave the house to get, so she can weather the next few days of interminable boredom, which is broken up only by the incessant wailing of her countless feline companions.

Her savior, an overweight, presumably Italian man carrying food in his arms and quoting a Polly-o String Cheese commercial is like the son she had before he perished from lung cancer-- er, excuse me, I mean perished while fighting for his country in some war. This man, a virtuous employee of the world's most beneficial corporation, Phillip Morris, is really making a difference and brightening her dreary existence.

Why does he do it? Out of pure, kind-hearted selflessness? You might think so if one of the following applies to you:

a) you are easily manipulated by heavy-handed, simple-minded propaganda;

b) you are blindly addicted to cigarettes and are in severe denial;

c) you are a politician who's pockets are filled with bribes;

d) your head is so far up your ass that you also think Freddie Prinze, Jr. is talented.

The man in this commercial is not really a holy emissary sent from above to aid this desperate old senior citizen, he is in fact one of Hell's legion, an employee of the Phillip Morris Tobacco Company, doing little more than trying with all his might to change his company's image. In an attempt to counter the deluge of anti-tobacco advertising and legislation (along with a country-spanning backlash against cigarettes in general), the world's foremost seller of nicotine (among other things) laced tobacco cigarettes is trying to change its image from that of the youth-corrupting, death-dealing corporation it is to one of a socially responsible, friend to the everyman it can never be as long as it continues to sell death in soft-packs.

As cooked up by some of Hollywood's image-makers, this paper-thin facade is insulting, as much in its execution as in its spirit and intention. This attempt at brainwashing us all into seeing them as a beneficiary to the elderly and to society as a whole is so clumsily enacted that it clues us all in on how dumb and easily manipulated they think we are.

Phillip Morris expects us, in the wake of these hopelessly contrived commercials portraying their employees as Good Samaritans, to forget the years they've spent dealing drugs and committing homicide in the name of commerce. Of course, working for a tobacco company and being a good person aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but trying to shove this hyperbolic, Hallmark Card-esque image in our faces, while at the same time deliberately poisoning millions of people, is violently offensive.

Add to that the fact that Phillip Morris actually spends more on such advertising than on the very type of social work it presents is boldly apathetic and shows a startling lack of humility. Rather than put forth some actual effort, Phillip Morris chooses to create a false representation of itself through such a public relations campaign, hoping that we'll all believe it because, hey, it's on TV! And God help us all, some of us do.

So, after flipping channels and passing time harmlessly enough, looking for some hint of intelligence or integrity on the tube, I landed on that commercial. It shocked me to my very core and nearly caused a seizure. But, thankfully, I only vomited on myself. But don't feel too sorry for me, my roommate concentrated so hard on willing himself dead after seeing that commercial that he's unconscious on the floor, bleeding from his ears.

Michael S. Julianelle is a Boston-based freelance writer coping with his nearly debilitating zeal for entertainment and pop-culture.

Got a problem? Email Michael at onthebox@go.com