Aw come on, not the slot machines! I mean, it was all right when they started running advertisements at the gas pumps and the movie theaters. And in the classrooms, sure, don't be stupid. But slot machines?! Kids play on those!

Still, that's the plan. Slot Marketing Advertising Revenue Retention Techniques, a company in Deer Park, N.Y, now has a patent for selling advertising on traditional slot games. (Is that possible? Could I have gotten a patent for selling ads on a given medium — say, T-shirts for fat, middle-aged guys who hang around frozen yogurt places?) When you pull the lever on a slot machine and the wheels stopped rolling, instead of seeing a lemon, a cherry and a bell, you'd get pictures of Quaker State Motor Oil, Captain Crunch and Stridex Pimple Pads.

Of course, either way, you've won nothing. But with the ads, the casino makes even more money by telling you that you've won nothing.

And it looks like these ads are on their way to a technically legitimate casino near you. The only restriction the state's Casino Control Commission has suggested is not to allow alcohol or tobacco ads, though they did not rule out promotions for a savings and loan company known as The Amalgamated Bank of Big Tony.

To summarize: This is the end of civilization.

Oh go ahead and scoff. Go ahead. Scoff. I'll wait. You done? Then let me put you wise to something: All the jokes we used to make that ads would take over our lives — they're true now. Products are placed strategically in movies. Mad magazine has started carrying ads. Even newscasts are weaving what are essentially commercials among the headlines:

“In Vermont today, 126 sheep were confiscated. Officials said 125 of the sheep were suspected of having mad cow-like disease, while the remaining one was brought in because it had written a list of other sheep it didn't like. But now we turn to the really serious news: America is swooning over Jennifer Lopez in `The Wedding Planner,' a blockbuster movie that … wow! … just so happens to have been produced by this network's parent company!”

And listen closely to your personal conversations:

“How come you never tell me how you feel?”

“I do tell you how I feel.”

“We don't communicate.”

“We're communicating now.”

“We're not communicating. This isn't communicating.”

“Marie Callender's restaurants! Come for the food, stay for the pie!”

“Just tell me how you feel.”

“I feel fine. I don't understand the question.”

All right, maybe that conversation happens only with me. But overall, I think the ads have converted us to a doctrine of consumer gadgets. If you don't believe me, consider that the following items are not actually necessary to our survival:

•  SUVs
•  Computer games
•  Premium cable television
•  Cable television
•  Television
•  Answering machines
•  Microwave ovens
•  Individually wrapped plastic sporks

If any of these sound essential to you, that only proves how far gone we are. (I myself take exception to the answering machine and the sporks — and I demand to know what idiot included them on the list!) But if that's the case, why should we deny ourselves a few more ads in a really obvious place for them?

Because if you combine advertising and slot machines — if you mate two such extreme forms of materialism — the resulting hybrid will have super powers! The dense atomic weight of pure commercialism will suck in the rest of the casino, forming a light-bending, black-hole-type swirl of all-you-can-eat hotel buffets, genetically modified show girls and Caesar's Palace Vomitoriums, as well as game rooms for the kids.

This is what happens when man attempts to play God, when we ignore the commercial potential of fat middle-aged guys buying frozen yogurt, and when we compromise the integrity of slot games — machines that were once meant to teach, and to heal.