Wheat Thins Stix Helicopter Rescue Ad

So here we have a nerdy hiker who’s been crushed by a boulder, and he’s waiting with his cute, funny-looking dog to be rescued. And this guy may look like a wimpy loser, but he’s actually very brave and tough, as he’s not whining or crying, even though he’s been smushed by a huge rock; and he’s even comforting his dog, who is uninjured. What a hero! And he’s got faith in his fellow man, certain that help will arrive to save him!

Oh, but when it does arrive, some jerk lowered on a cable from a helicopter just steals his Wheat Thins Stix and leaves him to die alone! Well, it’s a good thing the dog was filming this to show what selfish thieves these particular rescue workers are, always just stealing Wheat Thins Stix, and then letting people die so they won’t be able to testify against them! Why don’t they just buy their own?! Maybe they don’t know about them, since they’re always saving lives, but when they see them for the first time, the Wheat Thins Stix are so tempting and delicious, they simply can’t help themselves, and it makes them become uncharacteristically recklessly indifferent, depraved gluten gluttons! And they can’t help it! So then it’s Wheat Thins's fault that they’re knowingly making a product that’s so delicious, people will actually steal it and leave you to die, or even kill for it!

So perhaps it’s a warning! The advertising department knew how dangerous and potentially lethal these Wheat Thins Stix were, but the executives refused to stop distributing and selling them anyway (those murderers!), so they felt they had to warn us about how they would make even the most altruistic and trustworthy among us (i.e.: rescue workers) into venal, slobbering addicts! So stay away from these, whatever you do! And most importantly: Don’t take them hiking or camping with you, or you’ll be left to die!

Oh, and Wheat Thins obviously hates nerds, too, so the company must be run by bullies. Why else would they publicly humiliate and victimize such a person in such a situation and then broadcast it so we all could see it? And the way they present it, it’s apparently supposed to be funny! The maniacs! So they think a slow, agonizing death is hilarious, so long as it happens to a nerd! Maybe we need a new law just for protecting nerds from Wheat Thins Stix! Maybe the tagline to this ad should have been: “Wheat Thins Stix: We let losers die alone!” And then it should say: “And then their dogs are forced to eat them to survive!”

Here’s the ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlgKPXU6E14

Unintended Consequences of Anti-Bullying Legislation

Look: Look at this!:

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/food/quot-worlds-best-restaurant-quot-el-bulli-set-to-close-2517443/

That’s right! This mad dash to stamp out bullying has destroyed the world’s best restaurant: El Bulli! Just because it was called “El Bulli”, the anti-bullying bullies have bullied El Bulli out of business! It’s disgraceful!

See what happens when you try to stop bullies? We lose all the best things in life! Like picking on weak people. Oh, and that restaurant, I guess. And now what’s left? Just McDonalds! And aren’t they trying to make us fat? All the food bullies say so!

Oh, but pretty soon, the food bullies won’t be allowed to bully McDonald’s anymore, due to the new anti-bullying laws, and then all the fast-food restaurants can make us all obese all they want to! And all because of the new anti-bullying laws! So we’ll all die fat & bloated because of this legislation! So what’s the real threat here?

With these new laws, wimps are just trying to get revenge on us all for how they were picked on as kids! It’s not fair! We’re being denied good food, and just because of their thirsting for revenge, we’ll all go hungry, or die from obesity!

Gold-Plated Credit Rating

In flipping channels yesterday evening, I saw some guy named Paul Gigot talking about the potential downgrade in our credit rating, saying that it will be different from the “gold-plated credit rating” we’ve been used to for so long. Now, I only heard him for a few seconds, and I knew our national credit rating was in trouble, but “gold-plated”? It’s only gold-plated? I thought it was supposed to be a solid gold credit rating! But if it turns out that it’s just been gold-plated the whole time, aren’t the credit ratings agencies going to think we’re scamming them about lots of other stuff too? I mean, if we’ve been trying to fool them with electroplated crap credit, then what aren’t we cheating on? And if it's only gold-plated, then is Fort Knox really full of gold? Maybe Goldfinger really stole it all and they covered it up!

And wait a minute: Did Paul Gigot just let the cat out of the bag there? I’ll bet Moody’s wasn’t supposed to know about that! When they find out it’s just gold-plated, aren’t they going to downgrade us to DDD just out of feeling angry and insulted over being fooled like this publicly? So this is all Gigot’s fault! Everybody’s been pointing fingers at President Obama, or Speaker Boehner, or the Tea Party, when it’s been Paul Gigot all along who’s been getting us in trouble! Shame on that guy!

Charmin Ultra Soft Video-Game-Playing Bear Ad

Hey! I thought bears pooped in the woods, only poop was a ruder word! In fact, when is Geico going to use that one for their current campaign? Then that annoying guy with the hypothetical questions could go into the woods to prove it and get mauled by a grizzly bear. And all the world would cheer! (But it would be just special effects, of course! We don’t want him actually to be killed; just to go away: Please.)

Oh, but this bear poops in a suburban house! No wonder there are always news clips of bears being tranquilized in suburban neighborhoods: They’re not trespassing; they live there! Aaaaa! Run away! They’re moving in so they can eat us all! (I’ll bet the video game that little bear is playing is about catching and eating humans! Oh, but most of them are like that for human video games, aren’t they? Oh, never mind.) And Charmin is trying to make them look all cute and fluffy so we’ll walk right into their jaws of death!

I can’t believe Charmin has sided with the hungry man-eating bears over us humans! Maybe they made friends with them in the forest while they were out choosing which trees to kill and cut down to make their toilet paper out of. So they were obviously captured by grizzly bears who let them live only if they promised to help the bears eat more people by brainwashing us all with propaganda about how cute, warm & cuddly bears are, so we’d all accept them in our neighborhood associations! Then, when the neighborhood association tries to fine or censure them for climbing trees or eating their neighbors or flying an American flag on their garage or whatever, the bears use that as an excuse to eat them!

Actually, maybe if they rid us of these tyrannical neighborhood associations, they’re actually helping us! So perhaps Charmin is providing a service to humanity, helping bears who are in turn allowing us to live freely once again! And why would they do that? Well, I guess only because the Founding Fathers were reincarnated as bears and became disgusted with how little freedom we have left in our own neighborhoods, so they’re trying to free us from tyranny once again! What else could it mean? And Charmin only wants to help us regain our liberty! So they’re patriots! Well, then if you love America and freedom, you must buy Charmin toilet paper! (Oh, sorry: “Bathroom Tissue”.)

But maybe I’m wrong, and they’re just in cahoots with the bears to eat us all! That’s probably the safer bet, since the bears all use Charmin. In fact, since the bears all use Charmin, even though it clearly gives them all dingleberries, that must mean that Charmin is owned and operated by hungry, man-murdering bears! And they’re trying to make them look like fun, fuzzy, fur-bearing friends to trick us and make us easier to catch and eat! I knew it! They’re trying to kill us with toilet paper! Help ! Help! And then they made that new Planet of the Apes movie so we’d forget about the real threat: the bears!

So Stephen Colbert was right all along: Bears are the real threat! And it’s surprising he would warn us, since what’s his last name? That’s right, it’s pronounced: “Cole-Bear”!

Now, the ad I’m talking about here is not on YouTube that I could find, but I’m going to attach a few ads from this campaign, showing how they’re trying to acclimate us to the idea of bears living amongst us in houses and stuff.

Here’s what their ads used to look like, with bears going to the bathroom in the woods, like they ought to do:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAzqGuZfo00&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MVjPlyAKLk&feature=related

Here’s one where they’re easing us into the idea of bears being like people, showing them driving a car, although they're still going to the bathroom in the woods here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCRyM-Tx9LQ&feature=related

And here’s the ones where they’re trying to get us used to the idea of bears living in our neighborhood (so they can eat us):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBmXrK4eWyU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYLz2hJ1MfM

Gog, Magog, & Demagog

We all know that if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, it’ll be the end of the world, the apocalypse, the end times, right? We know this because President Obama loves to demagogue this issue, and most every issue, actually. (I think it should be spelled “Demagog”, however, because it would be perfect for Mr. Obama, since it would be a compound word fusing both “Dem”, for Democrat, and “Agog”, for how he must think we all feel about listening to him demagogue things, because he keeps doing it all the time!) Then we've got an army of pundits out on the news to beat us over the head with all of his propaganda. And then there's another army of pundits spinning furiously in the other direction.

But it just struck me how true this panicked prediction must be, since the word “Demagog” goes so well with Gog & Magog, the biblical baddies of the apocalyptic “end times”! And since all the pundits are running around screaming with their hair on fire (metaphorically for now; but soon, perhaps…) about how it’s the end of the world if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, perhaps what we’ve got here is a Gog, Magog, Demagog scenario, where Gog is the House of Representatives, Magog is the Senate, and Demagog (of course) is President Obama. (Or maybe Gog & Magog are the Democrats and the Republicans, and Demagog is what they do. Because they all do it, really. The President just gets a lot more news coverage when he does it, so it seems like he does it more. But a cursory glance at CSPAN or CSPAN2 will show you he's hardly the only one.)

Hey, it rhymes, so what other proof do you need? Between the three of them, they really are putting the country through the ringer, and possibly to ruin, so I think it’s an apt metaphor. Don’t you? Because, you know, in the “final battle”, Gog & Magog (and Demagog) are defeated, so that must be referring to the next election, where they’re all defeated for putting us all through this fiasco (hopefully).

New ThunderCats

Yep, they’re re-launching the ThunderCats franchise, but with a newly redesigned group of ThunderCats. They’re still the same old characters, but with new looks and stuff. And hopefully without Snarf. But they’ve got a problem: There’s only one girl, kind of like in the Smurfs.

This girl kitty is Cheetara, and as such, I’d guess she’s not a good one to be in a relationship with. With a name like that, she might just cheat on you! But then I suppose they could call her the “ThunderCats’ Ho”. (“ThunderCats, Ho!” is what Liono always used to shout to get them all ready for battle. But I think it’s also what they yell when they find out Cheetara is cheating on them.) But shouldn’t there be at least one other girl cat character, like Housecata or something? Maybe even Domesticshorthaira? Or perhaps there’s a frisky older female character, called: “Cougara”? (That would be really zeitgeisty!)

And shouldn’t Tigra either be a girl, or be named Tigro? (All the other characters follow the "O for boys, A for girls" name-ending-letter trend, so it's a bit odd to break from that tradition with the one character only.) I’ll bet they all make fun of his effeminate-sounding name when we’re not looking. They must do something to get in cat-fights and stuff, like other cats always do. I’m surprised they’re not all scratched up every episode, since they all live together, and real cats do that stuff all the time. Oh, but I guess they’re not real cats, now are they?

I guess they'll be fighting their arch-nemesis Mum-Ra again. (That's kinda like the Smurfs again, with a single bad guy always trying to destroy a group with only one girl in it.)  I’d think Mum-Ra could distract them with wind-up mice and catch them one-by-one. Or else he could set up a flat-screen TV-set outside their windows, and put on bird footage; then, when they come outside to catch the bird, he’s got a trap waiting. At least when he’s fighting them, he could use a cat-toy to distract them and catch them off-guard. But since he’s not a cat-owner, he’s probably never thought of it. (Actually, maybe that's what his secret motivation is: He wants them as pets because he thinks they're cute.)

Anyway, this new cartoon of ThunderCats has that famous but stereotypical “Japanimation” look. Isn’t that taking away the originality of the characters? And speaking of stereotypes, I always did think it was mean to make that term from the old WWII pejorative for a Japansese person: “Jap”, and fuse it with the word “Animation” to create the term “Jap-animation”. Don’t they get mad about that? Maybe that’s why they make all of the characters and cartoons look the same: to get revenge for that insulting term!

Here’s the cat tale:

http://tv.yahoo.com/blogs/yahoo-tv/thundercats-roar-back-life-cartoon-network-200914556.html

And here’s a website devoted to Japanimation stuff:

http://www.japanimation.com/

Tarzan and the She-Devil

On TCM this morning, there’s a 1950s Tarzan movie on called Tarzan and the She-Devil, and near the beginning, Tarzan and Jane wake up, and Tarzan tells Jane to make him breakfast. Oh, so the woman’s place is the kitchen, eh, Tarzan? What a sexist pig! But, oh, they’re out of eggs, so they both nag Cheeta, their chimpanzee servant, to “go and get some eggs”. So off Cheeta goes, to get some eggs. (I’m surprised Cheeta didn’t squawk and have Tarzan translate that “Cheeta say shopping 'Woman’s work'!”)

Oh, but since he’s always being forced to perform menial tasks for them, and since they didn’t specify what kind of eggs (what kind of eggs would be available in the jungle of “Darkest Africa” anyway?), I think he should bring back a bunch of crocodile and poisonous-snake eggs. That’s what I’d do.

Oh, but did I mention that all this was after Raymond Burr was sidling through the jungle with a bunch of “native” bearers struggling to carry all of his stolen ivory from murdered elephants (!)? (White people: They’re all so evil! Well, except for Tarzan. Oh, and the “native” bearers. Did I mention they were the indigenous white tribe of Africa? Well, okay, only one of many white African tribes, apparently, as we’ll see later on…) Well, it was! And what do you suppose happened to them? Why, they were attacked by a ferocious jungle cat, they were! And it looked just like a piece of stock footage stalking them mercilessly! Oh, but when the fierce beast struck, it did so in a most agreeable way, for rather than attacking with teeth and claws bared, it looked rather like a stuffed animal being thrown at a guy who fell over when it hit him. And the arms and legs were all completely outstretched, and they all curled backwards as it sailed through the air, sort of like a droopy, animal-print, letter-“X”-shaped pillow being shot out of a giant slingshot. (That’s probably how they did it!)

But never fear, for Raymond Burr callously kills the hapless endangered animal, and all is well with the world of poachers and white-slavers again! Oh, did I mention that there’s a bunch of white-slavers? Well, guys trying to enslave white people, anyway. That’s probably what it used to mean, back when evil Raymond Burr-types were always trying to capture all the white tribesmen of Darkest Africa. Or was that Lightest Africa? Oh, I don’t know.

So anyway, like I was saying, a bunch of white dudes dressed-up like Tarzan (in animal-skin loincloths) get abducted by these slaver jerks, and then all their wives, dressed like Jane, come nagging Tarzan to go and save them. So he agrees, and off he goes. So the next thing you know, we’re in the camp of the nefarious malefactors, and Tarzan has to fight some big dude to free these helpless Tarzan look-alikes/wannabes. It’s scary, since the big dude is cheating by using a knife, but never fear (again), as no man can defeat Tarzan (not even a big carnival-strongman guy with a bad, fake-looking bald cap)! So Tarzan kicks his butt, and the boss (the She-Devil of the title) decides she simply must have Tarzan as her own personal pet slave guy or something (as usual).

And this was all in the first 20 minutes of the movie! And it only gets more action-packed and ridiculous from there! Wow! The guy who introduced the movie said the series had “jumped the shark” by this time, but I don’t know about that. It’s not as good as the early ones: that’s true. But it’s certainly got a lot going on, and tons of camp value! And it’s not boring, whatever you think of it! And with all this silly stuff going on, all kinds of questions emerge, like does Tarzan use an Epilady to stay so hairless, or does he do a Brazilian wax on his whole body? Oh, who can say? Perhaps this is one of the impenetrable mysteries of the jungle! (Like why they would call a chimp: “Cheeta”.)

Here’s the IMDB page for Tarzan and the She-Devil:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046404/

Compromise Is A Dirty Word

With Tea Party Congressmen unwilling to budge on tax, revenue and spending issues in the debt ceiling bills, people on the news are saying over and over again how “compromise is a dirty word” now. Well, that’s a relief! I was beginning to think I was some kind of weirdo pervert, since the idea of compromise always makes me hot & bothered. But if it’s a dirty word, then, hey: it all makes sense! And so people can get each other turned on talking about compromise from now on! In fact, that’s probably why they’re not willing to talk compromise in the House of Representatives: it’s controlled by the conservative Republicans, and they’re always super-prudish about sex stuff.

So obviously, this has nothing to do with the debt ceiling or spending cuts: They just don’t want everyone to see them get a boner in Congress! But I don’t see why not. After all, in addition to the fact that there are so many sex-scandals coming out of there all the time, the very word “Congress” actually means sexual intercourse! (<Its fourth definition, according to the dictionary in my computer.) So of course they should have erections! That's why they're called: "Members of Congress"!

Oh, but perhaps this is actually the real problem! For you see, when they talk about compromise, they probably realize that everyone will be expecting them to have raging hard-ons, but they must not be able to get any because they’re impotent! So that’s why they need to get and take lots of free Viagra and Cialis from their health plan! Then, once they’ve taken it, they’ll be able to “get it up”, and then they can get on with it, raising the debt ceiling.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been thinking this whole time that they’re going to be expected to raise the debt ceiling with their erections, and that’s why they don’t want to do it! But if they take those pills, they won’t be able to help it! So that’s why we should all send Viagra to our Congressmen today! After all, the financial future of our country depends upon it! They must get it up to get it on!

O.B. Tampons Star Wars Ad

(Okay, this is a joke ad, so please don’t think I’m being completely serious here! But it would probably work to sell tampons to Sci-Fi nerdettes, I’ll bet! But they'd have to be brave enough to try it.)

I had forgotten all about o.b. Tampons (I think they are lower-case in their logo, right?), but I just recently (inadvertently) saw one in someone’s purse, and it reminded me about them. So, has anyone noticed that o.b. sounds like "Obi", as in Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars? And what with the huge Star Wars mania that’s been gripping our nation, it’s hard to believe nobody has tried to do a tampon tie-in! It would be so easy, too! And then all the tween Sci-Fi fans and Comicon attendees will become brainwashed into being lifelong o.b. customers! (Until Tampax co-brands with Star Trek to ask: “Are you a Tampax Trekkie?” er, sorry: “Trekker”!)

So here’s how this Star Wars o.b. Tampon commercial would work: After rescuing Princess Leia from the Death Star, they’re flying through space in the Millenium Falcon, and she realizes that she’s beginning her period. Well, since she didn’t have time to pack, and since she didn’t know they were coming to rescue her, and because she was waiting to be executed, she didn’t have any tampons with her! (The Empire didn’t want to waste any money on them, since she wasn’t going to live long enough to use them anyway. Oh, plus: the whole space station is occupied exclusively by men, so they didn’t have any anyway. And since they would have had to fly light-years to get some, it was easier just to move up the execution, I think.) So she’s wearing all white, and she’s worried about what a mess it would make, and how embarrassing it would be if her period started right there! Plus, since the Millenium Falcon is owned and piloted by Han Solo, he doesn’t even have any toilet paper on board (cheap-ass bastard slob!), so there’s nothing she can do!

Oh, but never fear, for Obi-Wan Kenobi has felt a disturbance in the force, and he knows all about it! So he speaks with her privately, and she admits she needs some tampons. And Obi-Wan informs her that it’s her lucky day, since not only is he Obi-Wan Kenobi, but he’s also o.b.-Wand Kenobi (since his light-saber doubles as an o.b. Tampon dispenser: the “o.b. Wand”!); and he pulls out his light-saber, and when he turns it on, it dispenses o.b. Tampons! So they all live happily ever after, at least as far as that’s concerned! Oh, but he didn’t survive the Death Star, did he? Well, they’re just going to have to change the movie! Hey: They did it before to add other stupid crap that’s worse than this, so I’m sure they’d be willing to do it. (Otherwise, they’re misogynists!)

Okay, so maybe that one didn’t work out perfectly, but that’s just because George Lucas murdered Obi-Wan Kenobi, and just so that Princess Leia would have that embarrassing problem on board the space ship! What a jerk! But you know what would work? That’s right: Star Wars: The Clone Wars!

So what happens in this one is that Ahsoka Tano is off on some mission with Obi-Wan Kenobi, but because of her being distracted by a disturbance in the force or whatever, she forgot to bring her tampons. Or maybe the mission is much longer than they thought, chasing someone all over the galaxy or something, so she didn’t think she’d need to bring any. Or perhaps Count Dooku used the force to make her period start early in order that he might gain a tactical advantage or whatever: who knows. In any case, she’s off fighting some battle far from home when her period starts, and she doesn’t have any tampons with her for whatever reason. So she tells Obi-Wan Kenobi about her dilemma, and he whips out his light saber and turns on the tampon-dispenser feature on it, and she takes the o.b. Tampons she needs, and they go on to win the battle and restore peace and order to the universe once again! And all because of o.b. Tampons! Yay! o.b. Tampons saves the day again! (And then they say that o.b. Tampons will save the day for you, too!)

See? Wouldn’t that work well as an ad campaign?

(And I know that o.b. Tampons have no applicator, but if they made a special edition tampon with an applicator that looked like a light saber handle, and the tampon came out of it like a light saber, I'll bet it would become a collector's item!)

Here is info on who Aksoka Tano is, in case you were wondering:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahsoka_Tano

AT&T “Network of Possibilities” Translation Ad

Here we have a spot featuring some guy allegedly in a foreign country using his smartphone to translate for him. He speaks into the phone, touches something, and it says what he said in the language of the purported faraway land. So now, with this new “network of possibilities”, we can communicate with everyone! Yay! (But isn’t that actually an app that would run on the phone no matter what network you had? Oh, never mind…)

But there are some problems with this stuff, you know. What if some irritating foreigner wants something from you, and you want to get rid of him? With this new “miracle” feature, you can no longer escape by feigning a lack of comprehension! That’s going to make it very difficult to get rid of annoying tourists! I guess you could always feign deafness, or simple stupidity, or perhaps display the general disinterest common to our young people, and after a while, they’d probably go away and bother someone else. But you never know! And now, thanks to AT&T, we can no longer avoid meeting other people! Well, unless you just stay home and watch TV or play video games, which is what most of us are doing all the time anyway, so maybe it’s not such a big deal after all.

But there’s still one issue I’m curious about: If this smartphone will translate stuff for us, does that mean that French people will have to actually answer our questions, or will they simply proceed to complain about the computer voice on the phone, and attempt to chide it and correct its grammar and pronunciation? Or since the phone has no feelings, will it ruin the fun of being rude for them? Maybe they’ll just give us the information we want, and visiting France will lose that wonderful affectation of snobby superiority we’ve all come to love and expect! And then we’ll all lose interest in France, and we’ll no longer be going there.

Or is this what the French are planning all along with this newfound delightful friendliness and approachability? So perhaps they’re just trying to be rude in a new, passive-aggressive way! So that’s how they’re hoping to get rid of us! Those jerks! I say we go there en masse (Oh, did I write that correctly, France?) and all mangle their language simultaneously in a gauche parade of “ugly Americana”! Take that, France! (I’m kidding: I love France. But they are rude to tourists.)

Here’s the ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqVxlrJT164

Joe’s Crab Shack Giant Crab Attack Ad

A woman is attacked by a giant crab claw in this horrifying commercial for Joe’s Crab Shack. Well, okay, it just knocks her down, really. But it knocks her groceries down and they all spill out of the bags and all over the parking lot! Man, if that happened to me, I’d want to get revenge by eating some crabs! And, oh, you know what? There’s this place called Joe’s Crab Shack where we could go and murder and eat some crabs to get revenge! Awesome! (Up yours, PeTA: If you don’t want us killing and eating giant crabs, then you should teach them some #@&$ing manners, you lazy whiners! Why do you always “blame humans first”? {That’s a joke on the “blame America first” label thingy conservatives like to say about people who criticize America.})

Actually, this ad is a lobster snuff film, so I can understand why PeTA would be mad. {If they're mad.} (They’re just dropping one into a pot of boiling water on camera! Those maniacs! Or did the lobster agree to do that scene just to be on TV? It’s hard to tell, since a lot of humans would probably agree to that in an attempt to become a reality-TV star!) So why don’t you make some more “naked celebrity” posters browbeating us into eating only grass or whatever? Or do you guys even care about crustaceans? They’re not cute and fuzzy, so you guys might just torture them to get your aggressions out (after taping a human face onto them, of course), or at least hate them for being ugly, for all I know. I mean, when you’re not lording it over carnivores, that is.

Here’s the ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be5GFBORI4Q&feature=related

And here’s another one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrKgITiHEys

Lipitor “Close to the Edge” Ad

In this ad for Lipitor, some guy tells of how he and his childhood friends used to bet who could come the closest to the edge, and the camera shoots him from just over the edge of a rock, so it looks like it’s just the side of a big boulder. Then, there is a reverse shot, and we see that this is a cliff! So, he and his friends must not have liked each other very much (!); or else they were all cowards, because apparently none of them ever went over the edge! Then he says something about taking needless risks as a kid, but that he was still “over the edge” with his cholesterol. And just when I thought this was going to be a public service announcement to try to encourage bully-type kids to fall off of cliffs, too! (Hey, it’s one way to stop bullying!)

So then they say stuff like how 80% of people who have heart attacks have high cholesterol, but they don’t talk about what percentage of people have negative side effects with Lipitor. Oh, that’s right: It hasn’t been around long enough yet for us to really know if it’s even more dangerous long-term than high cholesterol! Oh, well: I’m sure it’s probably safe if it’s on TV! Like Vioxx. Remember that stuff?

But what they ought to do is say stuff like: “100% of people who don’t take Lipitor die!” And then they could have it written in teensy tiny fine print that everybody dies, eventually, and that’s all they really meant. That’s what I’d do!

Dove Ice Cream Bar Ad Tagline

Okay, maybe it’s not the actual tagline, but I think it actually is. You see, it’s written on the stick. But there’s no rule that says you’re not allowed to write your tagline on a stick, is there? I didn’t think so…

So this is what I would call the “war crimes” ad. They have a sexy woman eating a Dove bar (the ice cream bar, not the bar of soap), and then on the stick, which she holds between her teeth like a pirate would hold a knife, it says: “Take No Prisoners”. Isn’t that against the Geneva Convention? They’re like terrorists! Oh, and they’re obviously the ones who are killing us all with the obesity epidemic! (Maybe that’s what they mean by “Take No Prisoners”: they’re trying to do us all in with obesity! Aaaa! Run! Oh, but we can’t run, can we, since we’re so fat from eating Dove bars!) Those bastards!

Or maybe could it possibly mean something else perhaps??? Maybe all they mean is that you’re not supposed to imprison people in ice cream, pour chocolate over them, and shove a stick through them. (Kind-of like what happened to Han Solo in carbonite in The Empire Strikes Back! In fact, maybe Dove bars are made by Darth Vader!!) Talk about death by chocolate! Now that really would be a war crime! A rich, delicious one, perhaps: but still a war crime.

Here’s the abominable ad (Abominable due to the suggested torture/murder, or because as a frozen treat, maybe it’s friends with the abominable snowman. In fact, maybe that’s how it kills you: It distracts you with creamy, chocolaty goodness, and then it feeds you to the Yeti! In fact, maybe that's what really happened to Luke Skywalker in that cave! You know it's true!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hv0iU39S50

Rosland Capital G. Gordon Liddy Ad

There’s one specific Rosland Capital commercial “starring” G. Gordon Liddy that’s really gotten under my skin. There are a few of these ads with Liddy, and they’re all kinda bombastic and annoying, but this one takes the cake for me! (It’s not on YouTube, though, so I’ll just have to tell you about it. Unless you ever watch Fox News, and then you’re sure to be sick to death of it by now!) This is the spot where the former Watergate burglary-conspiracist guy says the dollar is a lot of "hot air", and then he proceeds to deflate all of these finance-related balloons, like piggy-banks and stuff. He makes an important point at the beginning of the ad, but he’s only telling a small part of the story, so it’s especially propaganda-y and dishonest, in my opinion. And if he’s being so misleading about such a simple point, then can we really believe him about the gold stuff? I’d have to say: “No!” (Gold may be a good investment if the dollar tanks, but otherwise, it’s a little late to get in now, I think, as the price is so high at this point. But it is a good hedge against the dollar: that's true.)

So, what does he say that’s so controversial (to me)? He says this: “The economic crisis was the result of risky lending and easy money!” Um, a part of it was, that’s true. But if that had been all it was, it wouldn’t have been a worldwide financial crash and continuing recession. No, it was all of the unregulated, dishonest stuff going on at Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds, not to mention insurance companies (one, in particular), concurrent with an almost complete lack of meaningful oversight by the SEC, that made this such a devastating occurrence, and not mentioning that seems like someone’s trying to obfuscate and conceal some stuff here, don’t you think? So don’t blame the rich banker/investor guys; just get mad at them poor people! That’s disingenuous, I think, since it basically whitewashes the crooks who really did “cause” the economic crisis, in addition to all the government spend-thrifts (Funny that “thrift” could be in that term, but whatever.) who have spent us into bankruptcy. (I’m looking at you, George and Barack!)

So it wasn’t just home-mortgage-holders trying to scam their way into a bigger house than they could afford that’s to blame here. There may have been a few of them, but I doubt there were many. In fact, it looks more and more like most people were tricked into taking predatory mortgages because they didn’t know any better, and the banks targeted them. These banks should go out of business, or at least fire everybody involved in this stuff! A major bank (the one with the wagon) was just implicated (allegedly) in a scandal that suggests they (allegedly) targeted minority homebuyers with good credit, and intentionally steered them into predatory loans to gouge them as much as possible with fees and stuff. I allegedly think they’re criminals if they really did that stuff. That would allegedly be against the law, in addition to allegedly being against the civil rights laws. But that’s just allegedly. I’m allegedly sure they’re allegedly nice, trustworthy people. And so is Gordon Liddy, the ex-con Watergate criminal. Allegedly, that is…

Oh, but I’m actually getting a bit off-message here, for I wanted to make an important point that has nothing to do with gold or crooked mortgage-lending. It’s simply this: the credit-default swaps that crashed the world economy and really led to the massive bailouts were completely undercapitalized, and knowingly so! So then, that’s FRAUD! Whether they were regulated or not, fraud is fraud, and the guys who did that stuff should be in prison now! What the president should have done is this, in my opinion: He should have said that the credit-default swaps were unethical and illegal, and that as a result, they would not be honored. The people who paid for that “insurance” (the credit-default swap was a hedge in the form of insurance) should have lost their premium payments, and the issuers of the swaps should have been prosecuted and drummed out of the financial sector. Then, nobody would have been on the hook for those massive payouts, and the bank bailouts (as well as AIG) wouldn’t have been necessary. Then there would have been plenty of money for stimulus if that’s what we wanted to do, and we wouldn’t be at this debt ceiling impasse now.

Oh, but then gold wouldn’t be worth so much, would it? So maybe it’s a good thing our economy crashed; right, Rosland Capital? Oh, and if they can convince you that Wall Street had nothing to do with the financial crisis, and that it was just poor people’s home-loans, then maybe we won’t re-regulate Wall Street, and we’ll have another economic collapse that will send gold prices soaring even further! And then think of all the money Rosland Capital would stand to make!

(And by the way, re-regulation of Wall Street does not need to be that complicated, and should be as simple as possible, just so everyone easily understands what the regulations are! So reinstate Glass Steagall, prosecute things that are dangerously over-leveraged as insufficiently-capitalized fraud, and break up companies that are “too big to fail”, and we should be in good shape! Too much over-regulation {and simply too many regulations} is counter-productive, because it gets in the way of legitimate business, because it's very difficult for everyone to even know what the regulations are! It's not easy to do business legally when there are hundreds of new regulations written in legalese gobbledygook, because everyone would need a lawyer just to make sure everything was legal before they did it, and that gets in the way of getting anything done, so most people would probably ignore the new regulations and hope they didn't get in trouble {or else use their connections in government to keep from having the regulations apply to them}: you know, like with MF Global {allegedly}. So simple, easy to understand regulations, and as few as possible to keep things from being dangerous or abused, would work the best for all sides.) 

Here is one of the ads he does for Rosland Capital (but not the one I’m referring to here):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ_ylZURpZc

Largesse (A New Superhero for Our Time!)

Wall Street has kind of a bad reputation lately, what with crashing the world economy, putting so many people out of work, gypping everyone available with fraudulent mortgages and investments, and ponziing everyone to bilk as much money as possible so that they can light expensive cigars with thousand-dollar bills all day long. (They might actually be doing it so they can throw handfuls of large-denomination bills up into the air and let it rain down upon them, or so they can spread tons of cash onto a king-size bed and roll around all over it with no clothes on. I’m not sure why they wanted so much money, or loot, as it’s called, since I’m not an investment banker. So I hope I didn’t inadvertently mischaracterize their motives. Maybe they just wanted to steal a lot of money and not get in trouble for it.) But in light of the rather dim view we all have of these Richie Rich-types, I think they need a new face for their industry: a hero to save the day for their public-relations nightmare!

Yes, it’s time for a hedge-fund hero of Wall Street: a benevolent business superhero for the 21st Century! So I give you Largesse: the hero with the “Large $” (Get it: Large S = Largesse, but with the S being a $!) on his chest, flying around the country and dropping wads of cash on the needy and destitute among us! That would give them a good name again, right?

Oh, but then he’d need some super-villains to fight, a bunch of greedy no-good-doers (do-badders?) who suck the cash out of everyone with fees and penalties and fraudulent schemes! So he must fight the triple threat of The Bilker, The Scammer and Pawn Z! These corrupt money-grubbers constantly try to cheat, scam and bilk their way into piles of stolen cash, leaving all in their wake broke and creditless! And they work for one great criminal mastermind, the most evil man in all of the financial-services world!

This evil mastermind is Hugh Briss, the kingpin of conniving, the bilker of benevolence, the slurper of liquidities worldwide! (Not to mention the haver of hubris!) His last name alone is enough to breed terror in the hearts of all men everywhere! (Or, at least in another part of them!) But he’s no match for Largesse! Yes, Largesse is onto Hugh Briss’s evil schemes. And he’ll collect the cur's capital and dispense and disburse the fraudster’s funds Robin Hood-style, filling our pockets with wealth and our lives with warmth!

He'll turn the red arrows to green, lifting investments and markets in a single bound! He'll deflate inflation! He's bending the cost curve and correcting it! He'll crush the credit crunch crisis! He'll fill the coffers with coins! He'll drown the destitute in dollars! It's all in a day's work for Largesse!

Yes, folks, it’s a homegrown hero with a heart of gold (as well as lots of investments in gold as well), and you can take that to the bank! It’s Largesse, come to save the day!

Battleship Movie

Yes, apparently there is a movie coming out based upon the thrilling board (bored?) game: Battleship! I know this probably wouldn’t make a lot of money, but I really hope the movie is just two commanders on enemy ships saying stuff like: “E-7!”, and: “B-5!” to each other for 2 hours. Then, at the end, one could say: “You sank my battleship!” (Whatever the movie is about, right at the climax of the film, it must have the villain say: “You sunk my battleship!” or it’s cheating!) And if this movie does well, they should follow it up with Sub Search in 3-D! (For those of you who don’t know, Sub Search was the even-more-boring 3-dimensional version of Battleship, where players guessed the same crappy letter/number combinations, but with the added excitement of there being multiple layers too! So it was all the excitement of playing Battleship, but for three times as long! Awesome!)

I hope the plot of the movie is that some Bond-villain-type guy has stolen a US Navy destroyer equipped with a cloaking device so nobody can see or detect it, and some super-macho American Navy commander has to destroy the ship before it can carry out its terrorist goals by guessing where it is, and hitting it with like 5 missiles or whatever is required to destroy it. Now that would be exciting, right? No? Well then you come up with a better idea for the movie that still stays true to the theme and game-play of the board game! And seriously, if they don’t stay true to the game, what’s the point of making a movie based on it? (And when you think about it, isn’t this movie/game tie-in a few decades past its sell-by date? Do people actually play Battleship anymore?)

Here’s the story, so you won’t think I’m inventing all of this:

http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-talk/battleship-changes-game-first-trailer-premiere-162012802.html

BTW: I hadn’t read the article before I wrote this piece, but apparently, they try to explain what the movie’s about. Plus, they reveal that Battleship has had video game versions and smartphone apps too! I didn’t know that. I’ll bet it’s still really boring, especially when playing against the computer, since it wouldn't say stuff like: “In your face, loser!” when it beats you, which was the only fun part of battleship anyway (whether you won or lost). So then, where’s the movie of Angry Birds? Now that one I might actually go see, since it might explain some of what the hell is actually the motivation behind the pigs and birds characters. But Hollywood would probably screw it all up and change it, and it would end up being some environmental propaganda movie in the end, like where the pigs run a factory farm or something, and the birds are saving the planet from global warming or whatever. (Oh, by the way, the pigs are green in Angry Birds. So is this where the green ham from Green Eggs and Ham comes from? If so, then perhaps the birds’ eggs are the green eggs, and the pigs own a company where they steal and sell the green eggs, along with the flesh of their murdered green pig friends who have been killed by the birds. That way, it might kinda make sense, right?)

Oh, and here’s a couple of old ads for the board game Battleship:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrHs8CWDzmc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXkVZ0rloio

Sprint Green Arrogance Print Ad

Okay, it’s not really called the “Green Arrogance” ad, but it might as well be. This is a print ad that’s in the August 1, 2011 issue of The New Yorker magazine, and it just shows a cell-phone that looks like a little Blackberry with solar panels on the back of it. Oh, and there’s that 3-D cartoon rendering of the “Droid”, representing (I guess) the android operating system that the phone runs on. But that “Droid” has always looked to me more like an Iron Man-type suit for a little green Martian, rather than a droid anyway. I say it’s here to take over Earth, not to help save it!

Oh, about that “not to help save it” part: I forgot to mention that the headline for this ad reads: “Let’s save some money. Oh, and the planet.” That’s why I call it the “Green Arrogance” ad. As if using a solar-rechargeable cell-phone would “save the planet” any more than not having a cell-phone to begin with. These guys are just shameless liars! Buying a product that’s slightly less poisonous than their other ones will hardly “save the planet”, unless what they mean is that it will save the planet from the pollution from their own products! And it won’t even do that; it will simply poison Earth a little bit less. The nerve of some people/companies!

I can’t find this ad online either, but you can see it in the new issue of The New Yorker magazine on page 7.

Mercedes Google Guy Ad

Yep, now Mercedes is getting rich geeks to reveal what criminally negligent and recklessly dangerous drivers they are to try to get us to buy their cars. This Google guy (some rich executive) says he was tailgating so badly, when traffic stopped, it was too late. But never fear: if you’re rich enough, there’s never any punishment for bad behavior! That’s the whole idea behind the new Mercedes safe stuff. Rich people can bribe their way into getting a car that takes responsibility for their recklessness and arrogance, and fixes it for them. You just have to have enough money to get one, and you’re clear, man, regardless of how dangerous and depraved your actions are behind the wheel. (You know, kind of like in the “justice” system.)

Plus, where I live, the police don’t even ever pull over people in Mercedes cars, so they truly drive like they own the road, and as though there are never any consequences for their criminal driving. And for them, there probably aren’t. That’s probably why Mercedes had to develop this new sensor system: not because they care about safety, but so Mercedes wouldn’t only have the reputation for being driven exclusively by assholes. But they are; at least in California, anyway. (BTW: If you're a Mercedes driver here in California, and you're saying: "I'm not an asshole", then I'm very sorry about the fact that you're unable to be honest even with yourself. I'm joking; maybe they're not all assholes, but it sure seems like it!)

But there is definitely a serious downside to this technology they’re not telling us about in their advertising! As anybody who owns a modern car can tell you, the computer stuff in cars can go haywire on you at the drop of a hat, and once it does, there’s not much you can do about it. So this system will most likely begin at some point to just stop the car without any reason and without any notice whenever it goes sour, or else it will swerve all over the place when it incorrectly thinks you’re drifting. Mark my words: this will happen to some people.

Oh, and there’s another problem, too. The people who own these cars will get used to the car doing everything for them, so their driving will become completely slipshod and reckless. Then someday, they’ll have to drive a rental car without these auto-piloting control features, and they’ll probably swerve all over the road, and without the Mercedes safety sensor system to fix their hazardous driving, they’ll sail right into the tail of car after car until they kill everyone on the road! And then it will be Mercedes’s fault for not warning us about how it will affect drivers’ habits! (In addition to the fact that Mercedes drivers tend to drive like jerks anyway. But I’m not sure if that’s Mercedes’s fault, or if they can’t help that jerks like to buy their cars. But let’s blame them anyway, okay?)

I can’t find this ad on YouTube, but it’s running endlessly on Amercian television, so you’re bound to see it if you watch TV here.

No, wait: Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moyJ6o8MPX4

Travelers “Cat Burglar” Ad

This is one of the spots in that ad campaign about the dog who is paranoid of losing its bone. These ads always seemed pretty dumb to me, since it’s just patently silly, this idea of an insurance company insuring a dog’s bone. How does the dog pay them, with leg-humpings? That’s prostitution! But anyway, it’s a cute idea, but there was always something missing for me in the whole concept. (Not that it wasn’t clever and cute, though!) There is something missing no longer, however, with the release of this spot about the “Cat Burglar”!

This is just wonderful and charming, having the dog worried about losing its bone because of a “cat burglar”, which is a cat with a burglar mask on, sneaking around the neighborhood. It’s just so cute, using that classic cat vs. dog motif, for something like insurance, with the dog worrying about being robbed until it gets its bone insured. How can anybody resist an ad like this? Until they overplay it to the point that we feel we’re being bashed over the head with it, this spot is seriously fun! I don’t know if it will sell much insurance for them (maybe some new dog accounts?), but at least it’s cute.

But they don’t show us what would happen if the dog actually lost its bone, which is the only reason why it might get an insurance policy to being with, right? So I could see this dog barking at a Travelers agent, and having them not understand it, or say that it probably buried the bone and forgot about it, or even worse, that the bone was lost under circumstances not covered by the insurance policy’s fine print, which the dog didn’t understand to begin with, because it’s a dog, and it can’t read. So again, we’ve got someone victimized by a brutal, uncaring insurance industry! But in this case, denying the claim may get them bitten in the ass: literally!

Here’s the canine-comforting commercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Siz4Q-valXk

IBM Trains Print Ad

Here is the print ad I’m talking about:

http://graphicdesign.about.com/od/inspiration/ig/IBM-Print-Ad-Campaign/Trains-now-queue-for-passengers-.htm

So this is a nice-looking graphic image that reminded me of a strip of movie film at first; but then it became clear to me what it was: a train car with briefcases as windows, and arms holding them down over the side of the train car. So while this picture is a neato-looking graphic image, it has a few problems. You see, when you think about it, it looks like there are a bunch of businessmen on the roof of the train, basically stowing away on the roof drifter-style. And then they’re lying down on the roof (I suppose to avoid having their heads taken off by tunnels and such), and they’re dangling their briefcases over the sides and blocking the view of the legitimate, paying passengers! What jerks! They’re obviously rich businessmen, and they’re still chiseling the train company and spoiling the viewing pleasure of those who actually paid for a ticket! And the train company is just letting them do it! No wonder Amtrak is going broke! And no wonder there are rising fears about terrorist plots on trains! When it’s clear the trains just let whoever ride on the roof for free without anyone saying or doing anything about it, of course it will invite exploitation by nefarious do-badders! And if these train-trespasser business commuters aren’t even nice enough to let people look out their windows while riding the trains, how can we trust them to protect us from terrorists?

And I was going to say that IBM was helping to propagate this commuter riding scam, but actually, they’re exposing this problem in their print ads! So we should thank them! But do it quietly, because we don’t want to get them in trouble with the train companies who are allowing this stuff, the thieving roof-riders who are chiseling the trains, the terror plotters who are planning to exploit this system, and the police agencies who ought to be detecting and solving these problems! So thanks IBM! I know your ad says it’s about making the trains run on time (like Mussolini did; oh, could IBM stand for: “I Be Mussolini?”), but we all know you’re exposing a dangerous security risk and corrupt commuter carpool practice!

But wait a minute: The headline of this ad says this: “New Trains Keep Passengers on Track”. But didn’t old trains keep passengers on track too? After all, even the old trains rode on tracks, even years before IBM even existed, and so they would also have kept passengers on track, right? So is IBM dishonestly attempting to claim credit for something all trains already do anyway? That seems pretty slippery to me! Unless they’re doing what I mentioned above. Or unless they mean that they’re keeping the passengers on the tracks against their will, tying them down to the tracks like an old silent serial villain, waiting for them to be run over by the train when it comes by! So then they’re murderers! I knew it! Help! Help! They’re tying me to the tracks! Aaaaa!

Rabbit Buzz Print Ad

This is a print ad for an electric wine bottle de-corker that says: “Hear the Buzz?” Then it has a picture of the Rabbit wine de-corker, which is a 5-inch-tall thin cylindrical shaped thing. So when I see the headline about hearing the buzz, and then I see that shape of the object, I can’t help but think this thing is a vibrator. In fact, that’s the only reason I even read the ad, since I was kinda taken aback with the idea that there might be a vibrator ad in the front of The New Yorker magazine. (I usually ignore print ads.) So, was this an intentional ruse to get my attention and to get me to actually read an ad I might otherwise have intentionally skipped? Well, if so, then great job! (But if not, then: Oops! Because from now on, I’ll always associate their product with sex and fake penises, especially with the reputation rabbits have for reproduction, and the fact that it’s called “The Rabbit”, and is a “de-corker”.)

Here is what the thingy looks like (I can’t find the ad online):

http://www.cnet.com/8301-13553_1-10472774-32.html

New Egg Ad Tagline

Okay, so there’s a new service called New Egg (.com), where you can get reviews of stuff you’re buying written by people who own the stuff (Isn’t that what they do on Amazon?). But their tagline is: “New Egg: Take it from a geek!” Um, I don’t know if this is what they mean, but “Take it from a geek” was the jock’s policy about lunch money where I went to middle school. I hope they don’t send the message that bullies can just start taking stuff from geeks out in the real world too. That would be totally mean.

So this isn’t the particular ad I saw, but it’s got the same tagline at the end:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYk0dQrz3uc

Victorious “Locked Up” Promo

Last night on The Colbert Report, I saw a promo for a TV movie starring Victoria Justice called: Victorious: Locked Up. Finally, Victoria justice! Or, Justice is finally victorious!

Yes, this tween terror will finally be punished for her crimes against humanity! But surely they can’t just put her in jail for annoying singing, right? Or did the Hague discover that she was the one singing whenever they “tortured” terrorist detainees by playing music at them for hours and hours in Gitmo? So now I finally understand why it was considered torture! And I thought it was the Barney theme all along! What a pack of lies, needlessly blaming a dinosaur for things, when we all know they’ve been extinct for millions of years! Way to pass the buck, NSA!

But never fear, it’s a co-ed prison, so we can have all the stupid banter stuff as usual, even in prison! But I think she should have to join a prison gang to survive! Oh, and get tattoos and stuff, as well as stab someone with a shank. That’s what Hannah Montana would have done!

Here’s the promo (it’s not the one from last night, which was way shorter and vaguer, but it’ll do):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL2q7R7VRI8

Doritos Mouse Assault Ad

Yes, here again we have a spot for a product that promises bad things will happen to you if you buy and use the product they’re advertising. So, sure, he did put out a mouse trap, but it seems more like it’s the fact that he’s eating Nacho Cheese Doritos that’s attracting the giant mice. Or guys in mouse suits. I’m actually not even sure what would be worse. But I am sure I don’t want that to happen to me, so I’m going with the Cool Ranch from now on!

So unless you enjoy being beaten up by a large mouse or a plushie enthusiast and having it filmed (Who knows: maybe you’re into that kind of thing!), you may want to avoid the Nacho Cheese Doritos from now on. It may be “only an ad”, but perhaps it’s also a warning! Maybe they had to make this ad as a disclaimer because it’s been happening more and more to people who eat their product! Aaaaa! In fact, maybe it would be safer to avoid Doritos altogether from now on. When you think about it, we do have an obesity epidemic, so that plus embarrassing mouse assaults is definitely a couple of reasons to stay away.

But is it possible that these guys dressed up as mice beating people up are a tactic that’s being used by Tostitos to scare people away from our beloved Doritos? Those bastards! Well, just for that, I’m binging on Doritos out of spite! I don’t care how many college football bowl games they sponsor (or how many mice attack me): I’m never eating Tostitos again!

Here’s the cheesy ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G90wuyDKpU

Keystone Light Grilling Ad

I love some of these silly ads with Keith Stone. I can’t help but think this guy would never really get the ladies, but there are a lot of red-necks out there, so maybe it’s not so unbelievable after all. But in this ad, he has some bird-of-prey bring a fish over for a non-cowniverous lady, and then the birdie sits on his arm. But when she asks him what his name is, we get that loud bobcat growl as he tells her: “My name, (Rowerrr!) is: Keith Stone! (Guitar solo)” But wouldn’t that spook the bird and cause it to claw his face off? Maybe it’s just me, but I’d think the loud predator roars would be a bad thing to blare in the ears of other dangerous animals while they’re sitting on your flesh. But like I said: Maybe that’s just me.

I used to try the old bobcat growl routine too to impress the ladies, but it never worked quite right for me. His occurs just before he says his name, but when I tried it, it always happened at the same time as I was saying my name, so the women never could hear me; and they’d ask again, only for me to be drowned out by the roar again. Then when I tried to write it down, a leopard arm would come out of nowhere and maul the paper I was trying to write on. I guess you have to be really smooth for this stuff to work for you. It never did for me! But then again, maybe I shouldn’t have tried carrying a jungle cat around in a duffel bag with me everywhere. I think that Keith Stone guy just uses sound effects: Cheater!

Here’s the sizzling spot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehjo28X5JY8&feature=related

Procter & Gamble

The name of the company Procter & Gamble seems a bit odd to me. When I was in school a proctor was someone who watched over us while we took a test so we wouldn’t cheat or whatever, and then of course to gamble is gambling, as in Las Vegas, etc. So the company name kinda sounds like some guy who’s playing online poker or feeding a slot machine while there’s a room full of people taking some kind of a test. So, maybe it’s a test to see if we can focus on the exam while someone’s gambling in the same room. The only problem is that they spelled “proctor” wrong just to be difficult.

MasterCard Priceless New York Yankees Print Ad

I can’t find this thing online, so I’m just going to have to describe it to you. This is a 2-page spread in the new New Yorker magazine (July 25, 2011, with the “two brides” cover) for Mastercard’s “Priceless New York” campaign. The picture is of a jubilant kid with a baseball glove holding a baseball and celebrating over supposedly catching it, and the headline reads: “YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD BE PRICELESS®?” (Notice the ®, which seems to indicate that MasterCard thinks they own the word “Priceless”. Now that’s priceless! It’s also bullsh!t. But they’re probably rich enough to sue anyone else who uses that word from now on and buy the verdict.) And then on the next page, it answers the question with the following response: “: catching a game-winner where no one else has.”

Okay, the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this ad was this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012569/Fan-dies-falling-stands-Rangers-game-Shannon-Stones-final-words.html

Yes, a father fell to his death trying to catch a ball for his son at a Texas Rangers game. I know it wasn’t at a Yankees game, but still. This was less than two weeks ago, probably more like one week ago, when they decided to put this particular ad into the magazine. And they didn’t think it would remind people about this? To use a baseball metaphor here, I think somebody in the advertising department seriously dropped the ball there! So now, when I see the MasterCard logo, all I can think of is how insensitive they’re being about that incident that cost a man his life trying to catch a baseball for his young son at a game! I mean, I realize they came up with this idea and shot this ad and everything before that event happened, but once it did, they should have put the brakes on it for a few months. I mean, really!

(And look, I'm not all that politically correct, but this is an ad we're talking about here! They're supposed to be endearing us to their company, and this is having the opposite effect for anyone who knows about that tragic accident. I know I'm guilty of the "too soon" thing sometimes, but if I were writing an ad, I'd be sure not to do it then.)

The Pasta Apostate

I was cooking and eating pasta last night with my family, and while we were making sure the pasta was perfectly al dente, it occurred to me that there should be a super-villain called: “The Pasta Apostate”, who goes around making everyone’s pasta all mushy after they’ve gone to the trouble to time it just right so it’s all yummy and al dente. Then Pastaman (his secret identity is a regular guy named, naturally: “Al Dentay”) could save us all from the mushy-mouthed horror by reverting it to its perfectly al dente state!

Hey, as a fun thing for kids to read on the sides of pasta boxes, perhaps they could include the adventures of Pastaman and The Pasta Apostate. In fact, I think it would make great pasta ads for Cartoon Network and Boomerang. Then the kids would get heavily into pasta at a young age! (I say “heavily into”, because pasta is high in carbs, and makes you gain weight, allegedly.)

Snow White

The fairy tale Snow White has always struck me as kind-of an odd story to be so often told and re-told in our culture, since there seems to be such a racist undercurrent in it. The wicked Queen is obsessed with being “the fairest of them all”, and when she says that, she’s talking about skin color!* So she thinks that if she’s the whitest person, she’s better than everyone else. Isn’t that like that old caste system? I don’t know if it was intended, but the whole thing seems pretty racist to me!

Maybe it’s not so much racist though, as anti-racism, since the wicked Queen is the one who is such a white-supremacist; but isn’t the story also equating Snow White’s skin-color to her goodness and innocence? Maybe it’s intended to be just a metaphor, but it’s also being treated as literal, what with her name being associated with her skin tone and all. So no matter how you slice it, this story seems inordinately concerned with skin-color-oriented prestige, and as such is suffused with racist undertones.

But what I can’t understand is the Queen’s lack of resourcefulness in dealing with this problem! What’s really at issue here? It’s just the fact that some other girl has whiter skin than the Queen, right? So why doesn’t the Queen get someone to take Snow White to the beach once in a while so she'd get a tan? Then the Queen would be "the fairest of them all" again! Or maybe she ought to get Ms. White a tanning bed for her birthday. Then the Queen could run ads on TV making it seem like being tan is all the rage, and Snow White, being a young impressionable girl, would be peer-pressured into wanting to be tan all the time, right? And then there would be this tanning bed right there for her to use! At the very worst, the Queen could get some guy to hold Snow White down while somebody else sprays a spray-tan on her. All of these measures would have dealt effectively with this skin-color issue without calling for violence or murder plots, and the Queen would have still been alive and happy by the end of the story. It might not cure her of her white-supremacy, but heck, at least everybody would be able to tolerate one another and live together in peace, right?

But hey: Maybe the moral of the story is that racism (as exemplified in the wicked Queen) makes you crazy and is destructive to everyone, especially yourself. And if that’s the case, perhaps it’s justifiably a timeless classic for the ages.

* When I was a child, I thought “fair” meant pretty (actually, I think it did in the olden days, as in: “I must save the fair maiden!”), but it’s actually a reference to skin-tone in this case, I think: otherwise, why call the heroine “Snow White”? Either that, or they’re equating light skin-tone to beauty or value, and that’s perhaps even more racist!

Jaws Shark Attack Scene

I recently saw a movie called Terror in the Aisles, which is a compilation of horror movie scenes, and in it, I saw again the first shark attack from the movie Jaws. This is the scene where that girl takes a dawn skinny-dipping swim, and she gets eaten by that mean old shark. It’s an extremely horrifying scene for us people, but it has occurred to me that from the shark’s point of view, it’s just having a snack. So if a shark were to watch that scene, it would look to it like a guy walking to his refrigerator, opening the door, taking something out, and eating it. So the fear is all about being the food in that situation, I suppose; otherwise, it’s just a dining-room scene. Had there been, say, four sharks, it would play to them like a dinner-table movie scene would play to us, don’t you think?

Why “Keep Your Nose Clean” Is an Outmoded Expression

Today on CNN, they mentioned a new technology which can detect drugs and alcohol and stuff in your very fingerprints! So the anchor lady said: “Watch out what you touch!” But it occurred to me that “Keep you fingers clean!” might be more to the point, replacing the now antiquated “Keep your nose clean!”, which always seemed to me like it referred to drug use (since people snort a lot of different types of illicit drugs into their noses). But maybe there’s some freaky new way to do drugs simply by touching them with your fingers! Those freaky, naughty kids! They’ll think of anything to get high, the rascals!

Thank God (For My Smokin’ Hot Wife)!

Rev. Joe Nelms thanked God for his “smokin’ hot wife” in a prayer for a NASCAR race this weekend, CNN reports today. Unfortunately, he has not realized that smoke and heat are things that can come from fire and brimstone from hell, and are as such tools of Satan. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that if he gets divorced, he’ll have a “eureka moment” about just this very issue and claim fleshly love to be a trick of the devil in a sermon shortly thereafter. But I suppose he likes playing with fire. Maybe he likes to see how much temptation he can take? I know I do!

Crest Whitestrips Snow White Ad

(Actually, this first paragraph is about a new ad I just saw on TV for Crest White Strips. It’s not on the internet that I can find, so I can’t put a link in, and I don’t know what it’s called: sorry. The Snow White ad idea is mine, and is further down the page.)

A gorgeous woman uses Crest Whitestrips and some guy notices her and smiles at her in this new commercial for Crest Whitestrips. The thing about this ad that’s so refreshing is its honesty. Pretty women tend to make guys look at them when they’re pretty and stuff. Hell, they could have yellow teeth and it probably wouldn’t even make any difference! Um, I mean, it’s the whiteness of a woman’s smile that is the only reason men ever find women attractive! Sorry about that: I don’t know what came over me!

Yes, I’m afraid that if you’re beautiful and fit and have great style and lovely, shimmering hair, and dewy eyes, and ruby red lips, and seductive womanly curves, and all that other good stuff, well that’s nice and all, but it’s not going to cut it with most men unless you have snow-white teeth! Did you know that the fairy tale Snow White was actually about her tooth-color? Yes, it seems her wicked step-mother Queen lady was jealous of the glimmering whiteness of her smile, which is what Snow White was actually named for, and she tried to kill her over it! But little did she know that Snow White’s smile wasn’t naturally like that, for she used a magical potion spread upon strips of plastic that transformed her smile into the absolute pinnacle of whiteness! (Too bad it almost got her killed!) And the wicked Queen step-mother could use Crest Whitestrips herself and become the fairest one of all when she asked her dentist the next time! Or was that a mirror? Oh, never mind: perhaps what they meant was that she was looking at that little hand-held mirror the dentist sticks in your mouth when she was asking that question about her smile being the fairest and all, but she was actually speaking to her dentist interrogatively! Or whatever. Hey, it could be true; maybe the Brothers Grimm screwed it up, or did it wrong on purpose because they were mad at their dentist! You know that’s what happened!

Come to think of it, this Snow White idea would make a great, fun ad for Crest Whitestrips, wouldn’t it? It would certainly be better than acting like a gorgeous woman needs to bleach her otherwise perfectly good smile to get noticed! Even I know that’s silly!

So, okay, here’s my proposed Snow White Crest Whitestrips ad:

The announcer tells us that the wicked Queen has a beautifully white smile which she is very jealous of, and she’s known throughout the land for her ultra-white teeth, which are the whitest in all the land. The Queen asks her magic mirror: “Who has the whitest smile of all?”, and it answers that she does. Then one day, the Queen asks the mirror: “Who has the whitest smile of all?”, and it answers that a girl named Snow White does, and she’s called “Snow White” because of the radiant whiteness of her snow-white smile, and that the Queen’s smile is white and all, but it’s just not quite white enough anymore now that Snow White has horned-in on the tooth-whiteness crown. So the wicked Queen finds and confronts Snow White about this, angrily declaring that her teeth used to be the whitest, and Snow White tells her: “Well, my teeth aren’t naturally this way! My teeth used to be awful and yellowish, but I discovered Crest Whitestrips, and they magically transformed my teeth to snow-white!” And so the Queen, delighted by this revelation and wicked no longer, uses Crest Whitestrips, and gets a smile even whiter than Snow White’s, and they all live happily ever after! The End!

So this Snow White ad idea would inform the TV viewer about what the Crest Whitestrips do, and show a funny and memorable little vignette about how they work, and if people decide they want to try them, they’d definitely remember the ad and the product. And that’s why I think it would work really well as an ad for that product. Oh, plus, Snow White is in the public domain, despite what Disney might like to think! So as long as you don’t design the characters to look like Disney’s, the story part is free to use. (Except that I came up with it, so they should ask me first if they want to use it, and we’ll make a deal.)