Home Theater Surround Sound

The guy who invented (and the guy who decided to market) the “Home Theater Surround Sound” systems should be forced to wear one around his neck at all times, playing someone else’s movies that he can’t see the picture of! This is what it’s been like living in an apartment complex or a condo ever since these infernal devices have been available! In a house, it’s maybe acceptable; but in an apartment building, these subwoofer systems rumble the floors and the ceilings and walls to a ridiculous extent, making the bass even louder upstairs and downstairs from the source apartment, like the whole building is some kind of giant speaker itself! It’s ridiculous!

I don’t want to sound mean or anything, but I really hope there’s a special place in hell reserved for the people who invented such wonderful things as boom-box Jeeps, the home theater surround sound system, the car alarm, etc., where they get to be continuously exposed to them for all eternity, with no escape; for only then will they realize what they have wrought!

And get off my lawn, you damn kids! (As in, I know this makes me sound like a complaining old curmudgeon; but anyone who has experienced this sensation, regardless of age, how can you stand it? It’s intolerable!)

Keep Wikipedia Free

As anyone who uses Wikipedia knows, they’ve been running their version of the NPR Fund Drive lately, with a big banner running across the top of everything you look up on Wikipedia. This was especially amusing for me when I was looking up Pol Pot last night after reading a story about his underlings going on trial in Cambodia. When I opened the page, it had a picture of some guy in the banner plea for funds, and directly under his picture it said: “Pol Pot”.

Um, maybe they ought to move the picture to the right or something. Because, couldn’t encyclopedia competitors use stuff like this as an attack ad? They could search for the page on Adolf Hitler, and then have Jimmy Wales’ picture above it (in an actually accurate snapshot of the webpage), and then say: “Did you know that Wikipedia was run by Hitler?” (Because it would say “Adolf Hitler” right under his picture! And this could happen easily by accident with the way they’re doing it right now!)

But I suppose this is all a moot point: for if Wikipedia wasn’t free, then nobody would use it anymore; so in a way, it’s really just an empty threat. If they charged money, then a new Wikipedia-type service would arrive, and they’d go under. Eventually, they’ll have to add advertising to stay alive, and then the only real concern will be to make sure they don’t have a Pepsi ad on the page about Coca Cola, etc. So why bother us? We already write all their stuff; now we have to pay for it too? Whatever!

Pandora Jewelry

Pandora is the name of a jewelry company that makes these charm bracelets and stuff that I guess are getting kinda popular these days. (Reminds me of add-a-beads, but whatever.) But is Pandora really the best name for a jewelry company? After all, Pandora was the girl who opened the box and released all the evils of the world, so I guess that was apparently a jewelry box? They didn’t say, but I suppose with this company being called Pandora, we can be pretty sure it was.

So, now having established that this is indeed jewelry that comes from Pandora’s box, it becomes obvious what its purpose is: to inspire evil in everyone! So, if you go to look at these bracelet charms, you’ll be “charmed” into wanting them all: GREED! And then when you don’t get them all, you’ll be mad: WRATH! And when you finally do get them all: GLUTTONY!, and your friends see them, they’ll be jealous: ENVY! But you’ll feel good about yourself, at least: PRIDE! And so your friends will try to seduce other boys to get the same jewelry: LUST! And once you’ve all got what you want, you’ll just sit around and admire it: SLOTH!

See? It really is evil! That’s why it’s a good thing Kay Jewelers has ripped this stuff off (with their “Charmed Memories” collection)! Now you can have the same-looking stuff, without any of the evils! (Yeah, right! Why do you think they call them "charmed"? It's black magic!)

Kay’s Leo Diamond

Yes, Kay Jewelers is offering the Leo Diamond: the diamond that is visibly brighter! And you know what that means: this is the kind of diamond SPECTRE tried to use to destroy the world with lasers in Diamonds Are Forever! So if you’re an up-and-coming super-villain, and you want to destroy the world, you’ll need the diamonds with the brightest-possible luster! So look no further than Kay jewelers! For these diamonds are none other than the diamonds from rings where the guys were rejected when they proposed marriage, so they have that extra-special vengeance quality needed for nefarious purposes! (Yes, I know the ones from guys who were married for their money and then divorced for most of their net worth would work even better, but we can’t get those!)

Indiana Jones and the Hemorrhoids of Doom

I was watching this Richard Roeper’s Holiday Movie Picks review show, and he said that Steven Spielberg had two holiday movies out this year; and after reviewing Tin Tin, he said he’d tell us the other movie later. So I wondered aloud: “What is it: Indiana Jones and the Arthritis of Doom?” (Because a lot of people complained that Harrison Ford was too old to do the Crystal Skull one recently.) But then it struck me that this would be the perfect set-up for an ad campaign!

They’ve always got old famous people shilling for products based upon their former fame, so why not fictional characters too? And so Indiana Jones could talk about how it’s not so easy to fight bad guys over archaeological treasures when you’re old and you have (whatever problem, let’s say) hemorrhoids. So that’s why he uses Tucks Medicated Pads (or whatever product)! And then they show him having to break off a chase because his butt hurts, or whatever; and so he uses the product, feels better, and resumes the chase, defeating the malefactors and retrieving whatever priceless object, etc. It would be perfect for advertising! (Especially in our current culture, where nobody wants to grow old gracefully!)

And as Harrison Ford got older and older, they could have him shill for other products, like Hoveround scooters, etc., and Life Alert panic buttons! It would be perfect, especially for advertising to seniors who still fancy themselves the adventurous type! He could say: “Boy, if only I’d had that Life Alert pendant when I got trapped in that den of snakes! (etc.) Then I would have been rescued without all that worry and hassle!”

Clemson and Hobbes

After Clemson definitively won their conference championship game tonight, the Clemson coach had an on-field interview with ESPN, where behind him was the Clemson Tigers’ mascot. This looked like a cute plushie tiger suit, or something like that; but probably a more accurate description would be to say that it looked like a stuffed animal or a cartoon character: like Tigger, or like Hobbes (from Calvin and Hobbes). In any case, it was a lot more cute than it was intimidating. I thought that being called the tigers would be to make people think of the ferocious, clawed, man-eating jungle cat predator; but apparently, it’s to make you have a cute attack, and forget that you’re supposed to be fighting hard to win. But hey: history is littered with stories of reverse-psychology winning the day for armies and such, so maybe this is what they’re trying to do here.

Dove Football Star Antiperspirant Ad

There’s a new commercial for Dove antiperspirant where they have a football star from yesteryear, and they show him playing football years ago, and then they show him today, shilling for Dove antiperspirant. And I had the mute on, so I don’t know what they said, but I could clearly see what would have been really fun for them to do. They could have had him say: “When I was a player, I used to smell really bad on the field, so nobody wanted to get near me; but if they did try to tackle me, I’d be so disgustingly sweaty, they’d just slide right off! But now that I don’t play football anymore, I want to smell nice and sweat less! That’s why I use Dove antiperspirant!”

(BTW: I don’t know who the guy in the ad is, so I’m not trying to bash him. It’s just this idea of showing some football guy running around and breaking tackles, and then having him advocate for using an antiperspirant that I found funny, because it looks visually like it’s the route they’re logically going to take for an antiperspirant ad to do what I joked about above: saying that smelling bad and sweating a lot helped him in the past, but now, yadda yadda...)