“Free, with minimal annual purchase......”

Yesterday (Monday, October 12, 2009) I’m quietly cranking away on the arm-bicycle in the Exercise Gym at the vaunted Canandaigua YMCA.
An ad appears on one of the three silent wall-mounted plasma-babies I face.
An ad from Time Warner about its RoadRunner cable Internet service.
Something about $29.95 per month with Powerboost®, with free self-install.
“What?” I asked. I almost stopped cranking.
Sorry I’m an old geezer, but I just can’t make sense of logic like that.
Do they normally charge for a self-install?
Is this Dubya-speak resurfacing? Use the word “free” in front of anything, and whatever follows is thereby free?
I can hear it now: “Free; only $9.95. Have your Visa or MasterCard ready.”
A few weeks ago I was looking for a place in cyberspace to store my image files.
“Free, with minimal annual purchase,” it said.
Lost. I can’t make sense of that.
Is this what language and communication are coming to?
Content is not as important as the buzz-words?
And there’s old Limberger, the Oxycontin® king, railing loudly about el-cheapo fabrication and slander, and his comments being taken out of context.

• An “arm-bicycle” is an exercise machine whereby you hand-crank a loaded crank-wheel to burn calories.
• “Plasma-babies” are what my loudmouthed macho brother-from-Boston, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, calls all high-definition wide/flat-screen TVs. Other technologies beside plasma are available, but he calls them all “plasma-babies.”
• “Dubya” is George W. Bush, our previous president; proclaimed by my siblings as “the greatest president of all time.”
• “Limberger” is Rush Limbaugh. I call him that because I think he stinks.