The minute I lost hope in the future of the human species came when I heard a girl refer to "Sweet Home Alabama" by Lynyrd Skynyrd as "the KFC song."

After quelling my initial impulse to eliminate her from the gene pool for reducing an American classic to such a lowly form, I thought about how such an atrocity could occur.

All of a sudden I felt like Neo finding out about the Matrix for the first time. Every advertisement, every commercial, every single corporate blurb that I had become numb to once again penetrated the neurons of my subconscious and pierced into the realm of my cognizant mind.

Advertising has gone above and beyond what any ever thought it could be. It has become an integral part of our lives. Through the strategic use of timing, location and tongue tingling catch-phrases, companies have been able to brand us like cattle.

Our day-to-day lives are infected by a cancerous invasion of logos and taglines, each leaving its own tumorous mark.

And where we used to only be exposed to these promotional invasions through TVs, radios and the occasional inconvenient telemarketer, we now find ourselves engulfed in swarms of corporate plugs.

But, as technology has expanded our world, it has also left us more vulnerable to ad attacks.

With the development of the Internet came the infestation of Web ads, pop-ups and, of course, the ever-infamous MySpace game ads that promise free ring tones if you can beat the polar bear in a race down an ice shoot.

People have retaliated with their own technological devices like TiVo, which have allowed us to drown this corporate pestering out completely. My dear mother won't even watch a TV show unless it has been pre-recorded, so she can enjoy it without being continually interrupted.

But, like any parasitic organism needs to do in order to survive, it evolves with its host species. So they manage to cram ad space in during TV shows, eliminating the TiVo antibiotic.

Make something ad-proof and someone will make a better ad.

But in order to succeed on an individual level, ads must compete against each other. Only the most memorable and unique survive. This has introduced new means of advertisement that could only be devised by the most devious of minds.

This is most evident in what has become a hotbed of advertising infiltration — the world of sports.

They've had the soccer leagues for years. They were the weakest and easiest to take over, much like the French, so it's not a big surprise that soccer jerseys were among the first to display a large corporate logo.

But sadly, even such strong-willed sports as boxing and volleyball have succumbed to the advertising pressure. Aside from the blatant sponsorship in equipment and clothing, these athletes now sell ad space on their own bodies in the form of temporary tattoos and body paint.

My beloved football, which has always been susceptible to countless beer, truck and beer commercials, formed the largest single advertising event of the year. The Super Bowl has even begun to cave.

This slow deterioration has come in many forms: bowl game sponsorship, halftime shows, Peyton Manning, etc. But recently there have been more deeply imbedded ads that have violated the sanctity of the Sport of the Gods.

Not only are stadiums named after company sponsors (like Qwest Field), this year even field goal nets are being painted with the giant hands of Allstate car insurance. While watching the Husky game on TV, they even announced that the first down marker was "brought to us by Overstock.com."

There is one "sport" that has downright thrived with the addition of the advertising affliction — NASCAR. By making their logos completely synonymous with a car and driver, companies are able to simply divide up the NASCAR Nation into teams of walking billboards.

The reason that this has thrived comes from the fan base of this hobby. Race fans are among the most devout in the world. So not only are they wearing their Jimmy Johnson Lowe's race jacket everywhere they go, they are also willing to drive the extra 20 miles in order to buy their tools from a Lowe's hardware store, rather than go to The Home Depot, the sponsor of the hated Tony Stewart.

This actually makes the $10 million per year price tag of the primary sponsor almost worth it.

Advertising has simply become ridiculous. Even TV shows advertise for other shows while a program is running. Worse than that, the show Cavemen was even inspired by a Geico insurance commercial. Unbelievable.

What sponsors fail to realize, however, is that because there is such an overabundance of advertisements, we have become more insensitive to them. Their constant yell slowly becomes less noticeable as we learn to become deaf to their noise, which actually defeats the entire purpose of an advertisement in the first place.

But this just forces marketers to find more creative and annoying ways of getting their pithy message across.

Unfortunately, this is a plague that has no cure and no end in sight. I'm simply waiting for the day when I look down at the cover of my chemistry final and read, "The Red Bull Chem 152 Final Exam thanks you for the six cans of Red Bull you drank last night while cramming! Good luck, and remember. Red Bull gives you wings!"

[Reach columnist Jeff Dickson at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]