Heisman House Bottom of the Barrel absolute nothingness

The "joke" of this ad is that all the former Heisman trophy winners (including Tim Tebow, who has NOTHING but time)  some beer company could get to appear in an ad show up for a reunion and sit down to a banquet- only to suddenly revert to stupid little boys and engage in a food fight.  All of this is supposed to be LOL HYSTERICAL and I guess it is, if you are anything like most of the YouTube commentators.

Personally, I don't get it- but that's pretty much par for the course as far as I'm concerned.  I am forever being subjected to ads I know are meant to be funny in some way but which just leave me disgusted, sad or - at best- indifferent.  Why would anyone think that watching middle-aged men pretending to throw food at eachother is funny?  Why would anyone be inspired to buy beer by watching this ad?  Does it make anyone thirsty?  What the hell?

(I guess the "funny" is supposed to be in the idea that decades after these guys left college and did or did not have successful NFL careers, they still carry their old collegiate rivalries deep inside and really can't stand to be with eachother because they didn't all get athletic scholarships to the same school?  In other words, because they are still trapped in their lost childhoods?  Um, LOL?)

Anyway, that's all I've got for this bit of garbage, except to give another shout-out to the YouTube commentators who just got so much joy out of this 61 seconds of infantile crap.  You guys are real winners.  The future of our country you are.  Go get 'em in 2018- climb every mountain, test-drive every truck, go to every backyard barbecue and play every video game.  Just don't vote, ok?  No voting next year- voting is stupid and lame and something Social Justice Warriors do and it doesn't even involve throwing food most of the time.  It's totally not for you.  Trust me.

Ending the year on a low (bank) note.*

First, this guy's "passionate dream" has "always been" to "build the world's biggest store to display and sell bank notes to collectors."  What, really? So when this guy was a little kid, he dreamed of creating a store consisting of currency under glass that collectors would look at and buy- no wait, the BIGGEST such store?  Did he even know that there were such stores, or how big they were?  Did he imagine that 99 percent of his income would come from online sales- meaning that people who want to buy currency would be purchasing it based on images on a screen and NOT the actual stuff?

Where did this guy grow up- I've never even seen such a store, but twenty years ago this guy was dreaming of having the biggest one?

Second, I can see foreign currency collecting as being a pretty cool hobby, but only if one actually picks up that currency in the actual country it's used.  Otherwise, this looks a lot like sending away for postcards from exotic locations.  Kind of pathetic. 

Third,  I'm sorry, but I find it hard to believe that this guy's "passionate dream" wasn't to eat a McDonald's at least two meals a day, and that he managed to achieve that dream at least five years ago.  Maybe you should use some of that money for a good life coach and a gym membership, buddy.

Yes, I went there.  I'm not very nice.

*And no, puns are not my thing. 

In the next scene she surrounds that Lexus with her spinneretes.

So the spoiled little girl in this ad grew up to wear the exact same clothes and have the exact same attitude toward material goods- they are what embody the Christmas season and, no doubt, her life in general.

And the guy in this ad never fails to be amused at the fact that the little girl he bought is always appreciative of the toys he purchases for her- the house, the security, the car.....trophy wives are just the very best.  So easy to please, as long as you've got the money.

Meanwhile, I'll repeat what several YouTube posters have pointed out- holy crap, this woman's arms must be five feet long.  Is she an alien from the planet of Trophy Wives, or what?

Nissan makes my day-glo green backpack a total waste of money

Every one of these ubiquitous Star Wars/Nissan crossover crap commercials have the same thing in common- that it's perfectly ok to drive while distracted by your juvenile daydreams, even through construction sites, as long as you are driving a Nissan and remember to enable the Let Us Do Your Driving For You Because You Are Too Damned Irresponsible collision detection system.  Hell in this ad, the "student driver" is so damned freaked out at the site of a few orange cones that she has to be reminded by her father to turn the actual driving over to her car before she indulges in her stupid panic attack and slips into her Safe Space, where she isn't responsible for maneuvering heavy machinery but instead has been whisked away to a magical fairy land of Imperial Walkers and Storm Troopers.

Great message, Nissan.  I'll keep it in mind the next time I have to jump out of the way of one of your damn cars because it's being "driven" by someone who bought in to the idea that it's the perfect vehicle for someone who just wants to get from Point A to Point B without putting down the phone or delaying the Walter Mitty episodes until they AREN'T behind the wheel any longer.

Don't you just mean "stay a kid," Belk?

I guess we're supposed to be surprised when the "kids" in this ad turn out to be "adults" who are just ACTING like kids.  We aren't, because adults acting like kids is pretty much the standard in American television commercials.

I mean, we've got "adults" gushing over cars like they are candy.  We've got them fantasizing about jewelry and cell phones and trucks they don't have any actual use for but Look How Pretty and They'll Make My Life Worthwhile.  Hell, this season we've got Lexus commercials which actually PORTRAY grown-ups as children as they prance and dance and have orgasms over LookAtMeMobiles.  So when we are shown children swooning over Shiny Stuff and living in a fantasy world of tinsel and lights, we are supposed to appreciate the "oh guess what they're adults" punchine? 

Really? I just ASSUMED these were adults.  After all, commercials showing kids acting like kids are pretty rare.  Generally, kids in commercials act the way we used to think adults are supposed to act.  That's kind of the joke.  Adults acting like kids?  That's the norm.  Try again, Belk.

(Oh, and "Belk?"  What the hell is THAT all about?)

More First World Problems, by Land Rover!

Everything isn't quite perfect for the daughter in this family- she really wants a White Christmas.  Well, that's understandable.  Lots of kids want a White Christmas.  Pretty much all of them who don't live in a Northern climate zone just learn to deal with it.

But this kid, who lives in the middle of the desert with her parents and their three Land Rovers, isn't like most of the others.  While she sleeps, her daddy carries her to the back seat of one of the family's Land Rovers and drives to their summer home in the mountains where there IS snow.  Everything must be Just Right for the little princess, and that's possible because this family has a summer home in the mountains.

And since that summer home in the mountains is within easy driving distance from the winter home in the desert, it's kind of hard to understand why they didn't just plan on spending Christmas there anyway.  Maybe daughter was perfectly happy decorating a cactus and looking forward to getting a Land Rover Of Her Very Own someday until the very last minute?  Maybe daughter figured out that using her pouty face and acting like she's at least five years younger than she actually is will get daddy to melt (again) and get her what she really really wants which is to spend Christmas week skiing with her friends at the resort near the Summer Home?

Well, at least they aren't Cleveland Browns fans....

So the point of this ad is that this stupid family is totally obsessed with the Atlanta Falcons to the point of dressing in Falcons jerseys, giving eachother Falcons-themed gifts for Christmas, and even wearing Falcons gear for the family portrait.  Mom's closet looks like she wears absolutely nothing BUT Falcons stuff.  Except....

Turns out that Mom is a "closet" (get it?) Russell Wilson fan, so I guess she roots for the Seahawks in the deep recesses of her heart.  Or maybe she just roots for Wilson the player and doesn't care what team he plays for.  Either way, this is the joke of the ad.  I guess.  I don't know.  The YouTube commenters think it's hysterical and even make it a point to let us know that they get why it's funny, etc. etc.  Because YouTube commenters are very, very stupid.

I'll just point out that this entire family, INCLUDING mom whether she loves the Seahawks or just Russell Wilson, must really, REALLY hate the New England Patriots.  Hey family- how did you like last year's Superbowl?  Hey Mom- how did you like Superbowl 49?  I thought they were both great, myself.

More "Real People Begging for TV Facetime" ads from Chevy? Merry Christmas, I guess.

The "Real People, Not Actors" gang reach a new level in butt-kissing in this ad, and considering what we've seen in the past I wasn't sure that was even possible.  One woman can't even let the spokeschoad get through his first sentence without an admiring gasp, and the rest chime in right on cue with their moans of approval as they stand a respectable distance from the Glowing Wonder which is whatever piece of overpriced junk Chevy is peddling with these played-out trashy ads these days.

Hey, Chevy People- nobody believes your lame attempts to convince us that you are stunned by the sales pitch of the spokeschoad.  And we don't need to be told you're "Not Actors" and are just sad losers who desperately want to be actors.

Hey, Chevy- enough, already.  These ads are already among the very hated on television.  Nobody believes them, nobody finds them convincing, nobody wants to see them anymore.  We just want to slap the non-actors for selling their souls so cheaply and punch that idiot Chevy whore in the face for showing up on our televisions way too often.  Move on.  Please.

Yoplait Moms have massive chips on their shoulders*

"Look at me?  That means you dissaprove."

"Glance at me?  That means you are trying to pretend I don't exist.  You're hateful."

"Don't look at me at all?  You can't ignore me.  I'm here anyway, and you WILL acknowledge my existance.  I am woman, hear me roar, etc."

Oh, and I am going to drink wine whether you like it or not- and don't tell me you don't give a flying damn either way, because no way that's an option.  You notice everything about me- what I drink, what I wear (don't criticize my dress- it's how I got that guy to nail me so I could become TrophyWife No. 2) and everything else about me that I just KNOW you and everyone else are totally obsessed with because I'm Really That Important In Your Universe."

And finally- I'm raising my little girl to eat this yogurt, and I don't give a damn if you dissaprove which of course you do because Reasons.  I told you to stop pretending you don't care!  Stop acting as if this means nothing to you!  YOU HAVE A PROBLEM AND I CAN TELL AND YOU CAN'T PRETEND YOU DON'T DAMMIT!  MY LIFE HAS MEANING TO TOTAL STRANGERS!"

If this is what it means to be a Mom in America these days, well....wow.  That's really sad.

*And now someone is going to find this blog and use it as proof that women are being "judged" everywhere, all the time, by everyone.  Sigh.

"My perfect life is exactly 1% more perfect- let me do my Lexus dance!"

The "adult" that this kid turns into at the 15-second mark is quite literally worshipping at the shrine of a Lexus LookatMeMobile.  Judging from his reaction to getting a car he is clearly capable of buying himself at any time- after all, didn't TrophyWife buy it for him out of family funds?- I just have to wonder- what was his reaction when he learned that TrophyWife was pregnant, or when the doctor told him that she had given birth to a healthy baby girl?  Was it anything even CLOSE to his reaction when he discovered that his family was $50,000 poorer because his wife had given in to his dream of adding a luxury automobile to what was already a fantasy life?

Just asking.  Doesn't look like this Eurotrash creep has his priorities straight, but that's just me.

I just want to punch this guy in the face

The doofus in this commercial takes a call from mom and tells her that while he's cut back on his spending, he's still having a hard time paying his bills.  He says this in a defeated, deflated voice which suggests to me that he's kind of hoping Mommy comes to the rescue with her checkbook.  Again.

Instead, Mommy tells Not Ready To Be Out of The House Yet loser son "I know someone you should talk to."  It's a bankruptcy attorney. 

So we've gone from "I'm having a hard time paying all these bills" to "you should declare bankruptcy" in 2.5 seconds flat.  I hope Beverly or whatever this attorney's name is suggests that Doofus just admits that he can't afford his own place and should move back in with Mommy until he gets his finances in order rather than royally screw up his credit rating for the next decade with a "oh heck budgeting is too much of a pain" bankruptcy, but I kind of doubt that's going to happen because Mommy and Beverly both seem to think that filing for bankruptcy is a Magic Bullet which solves every problem.

Personally, Doofus, I think that sweater is the root of all your problems.  I don't care if Mommy did make it for you special.  Stop wearing that thing.  It's dragging you down.  And stop whining to Mommy about your money problems.  You're really depressing me.

Holy Crap, Jaguar!!

"Why are there so many miles on it?"

Are you F---NG SERIOUS, WOMAN???

It's an F---NG JAGUAR!!  It's a 2018 F--NG JAGUAR!!  And when your husband hands you the keys and you start it up with a push of an F--ng BUTTON, your only response is "why are there so many miles on it???" 

And take a look at that odometer.  There are LESS THAN A THOUSAND MILES ON THIS CAR.  That's "So Many" miles to you?  Could you be just a little more spoiled rotten?

And what's YOUR deal, buddy?  You've handed your trophy wife and the mother of your children the keys to a F---NG JAGUAR and when she responds not with "Oh My Gosh thank you sooooo much I'm so glad I sold myself to YOU" but with "why are there so many miles on it?" your immediate reaction is not to take the keys and return it to the dealership for a refund but to hem and haw with a sheepish look on your face?  What did you ask TrophyWife to give you for Christmas?  Let me guess- it's something you were born with, but surrendered to her quite some time ago, perhaps?

Are you F---NG KIDDING ME???

There's really no room for anyone else in this Cadillac Commerical anyway

And to think, for all those years I thought that the song "One is the Loneliest Number" by the Three Dog Night was about the desperate sadness that goes along with being alone.  I remember listening a bit further and learning that "two can be as sad as one" when the relationship is sterile and devoid of love...or, at least, that's what I thought it meant.

Thanks to the magic of tv commercials, I now know that I've been wrong for forty years, and it turns out that the song was about how awesome it was to be Number One in your own heart, and that the best way to achieve this feeling is to be a status-absorbed douchenozzle with a stereotypical engineering job in a cliche'd all-glass office who drives a Cadillac. 

Boy, is my face red.  Oh wait, that's not embarressment.  More like rage.

Eventually, all of the songs we grew up with will be whored out to big corporations to be used in advertisements.  "But that's not something that I'm looking forward to"-- Ringo Starr, Photograph

You don't have DirecTV? So you LIKE being eaten by fire ants?

Remember when cable was the greatest thing ever, and if you didn't have it that meant you had a big piece of metal on your roof and snow on your screen and your life wasn't worth living?

Well, I woke up today and found out that cable was the equivalent of wet grocery bags, banging my head into a turnstile and pouring hot coffee all over myself.  In other words, what used to be the greatest thing ever is now absolute torture and if you don't have DirecTV you must enjoy torture.  I'm guessing you're probably also a Commie who Wants the Terrorists to Win and doesn't Support the Troops.

So I guess I have to be like the guy with the extremely punchable face at the beginning of this ad- you know, the guy who looks like he's about to settle down for 26 hours or so of binge viewing with his awesome new best friend, his DirecTV setup- or the people who like things that pretty much everyone finds annoying, slightly painful, or potentially deadly.  Let me think about it, DirecTV.

(Oh and BTW, please don't read the YouTube comments.  Even sadder than usual.)

Not surprised that comments are disabled for these Apple Commercials...

I mean, when you combine the horrible non-soundtrack with that little brat laying on the grass with a $2000 piece of technology responding to his mom with "what's a computer?" in a zombie monotone, I can totally understand why Apple doesn't want to hear what anyone has to say about this hideous nugget of dreck.

"What's a computer?"  It's that thing you're casually risking destroying because Hey It's Not Your Money and the stores have plenty of them.  "Where do you want to go?"  Well, I can tell you where I want all of the people involved in this commercial to go.  I won't say where that is, because it really doesn't fit into the holiday spirit.



The most aggravating thing about this pretentious pile of time-wasting dumb is that you just know the people who created it broke into tears and gave eachother high-fives when they saw the finished product.  Never mind that the product being sold is pretty much the ultimate in self-indulgent conspicious consumption.  This thing is made by Asian children who whose only relationship with the product will involve putting it together so that it can be sold to spoiled rotten First Worlders like the horrible people in this ad.  Who will then proceed to prance around as if it provided some level of significant meaning to their lives and isn't going to be replaced by a Much Better Update in six months.

F-- you, Apple.

Everything Wrong With Prager U's "The Progressive Income Tax: A Tale of Three Brothers," Epilogue

First, let me start this conclusion by admitting that yes, the title of this series is meant to be total clickbait.  I might have included "Spoilers (Duh)" but maybe that's copyrighted.  Anyway, I justify this by pointing out that this blog is not monetized so it really doesn't matter how many people read it as far as ad revenue is concerned, since there's no ad revenue.

Ok, so here's what's missing in Mr Prager's Tale of Why Requiring People to Pay Their Fair Share is Bad, Wrong, Communistic and Helps the Terrorists Win.  Harry and his wife sock away large amounts of money in two ways- by purchasing a house far below what they could actually afford, and by totally neglecting their children.

I'm absolutely serious about that second point.  To make the brothers completely equal in every way except what Prager considers their "work ethic," he has them all married and with two children.  But while Harry worked sixty hours a week and his wife also worked full-time, Tom worked "only" forty hours per week while his wife worked ten hours, and Dick worked only 20 hours per week and his wife worked at home (she didn't "not work," you jagoff Prager.  Stay-at-Home Moms work.  They just don't get paid.)  Sorry, Harry and Wife- all the money in the world won't add another minute to the day.  Every extra hour you spent working was time you didn't spend with your kids.

So Tom and his wife decided live a normal, 21st century middle-class American life which involved a double-income household but also time to raise their children, who grew up to appreciate a life which balances work with leisure and does not put a massive premium on constant work and hoarding money.  Dick's kids were raised by both parents and learned that doing without all the material possessions their relatives and friends had was well worth it because Mom and Dad are kind of priceless commodities.  Harry's kids were raised by daycares or, more likely, Dick's wife down the street, whom they learned to address as their "other mom" and Dick and his wife as their "real parents" - the ones who got them to soccer practice, gave them good advice on love and relationships, and essentially served as their role models while their biological parents spent all their time in the mad pursuit of wealth.  On the rare times they ate dinner with those biological parents, they defended Dad's "deadbeat" brothers against the Libertarian ravings of the money-grubbers they happend to share a house with (sometimes.)  They often envied Dick's and Tom's children- sure, they didn't have a lot of "stuff," but they weren't latchkey kids.

(And Dick and Tom seemed to be in much happier relationships, too- Harry and his wife don't spend a lot of time together, what with Harry's sixty-hours-per-week schedule and Mom's full-time job, sometimes it's just a hurried few words at breakfast and a short argument before passing out in front of Netflix at night.  But check out that stock portfolio!)

So congratulations, Harry and Wife- you lived the dream.  You died with the money, despite our Terribly Unfair Tax System Which is Designed to Rob You and Reward Deadbeats.  I bet your gravestones are more ornate than those of Dick and Tom.  But I wonder if your kids remember to come to the funeral.

Everything Wrong With Prager U's "The Progressive Income Tax: A Tale of Three Brothers," Part III

Ok, so despite a wide income disparity between the brothers, they've all decided to buy equally-priced homes on the same private street.  Whatever.  Let's move on.

One day, the three brothers decide that for the sake of security, etc. they are going to pool their resources to build a fricking palace gate seperating their suburban estates from the rest of the world (the video puts it differently, but that's about it.)  They figure the landscaping, gate, moatwork WTF EVER I ALREADY HATE THIS FAMILY will cost $30,000.  Harry says the cost should be divided evenly, but the other brothers object- Harry has more money, well, shouldn't he pay more?

The first thing that bugs me is that the work has already been done before they figured out how it would be paid for.  I'd expect this from lazy slacktards like Tom and Dick, but not Looking to the Future Hard-Working Harry!  Why wasn't this planned out beforehand?  Who put down the deposit for the landscaping, paving and other work?  I hate plotholes!

You see, if the question of payment had come up during the PLANNING phase, Tom and Dick could have said something like "it may not be 'fair' for us to ask you to pay more than us, Harry, but here's how we see it- for Tom, $10,000 represents about 35% of his total annual income.  For me, it represents about 12% of our total annual income.  For you, it represents about 7% of your family's annual income.  So it's a much larger investment for us than it is for you, yet your benefit will be the same as ours.  So from our point of view, you should pay more because you can.  But if you and Dennis Prager don't agree, there's an even simpler answer- Tom and I and can't afford to invest in these improvements.  So if you want them done, you'll either have to take more of the burden on yourself, or wait until we can contribute more.  Sorry."

This isn't rocket science, is it, Mr. Prager? Do you offer science at Prager U?

Instead, Harry takes the opportunity to lecture his brothers and suggest that being asked to pay more because he can afford to would be "penalizing" his and his wife's hard work.  And now the straw men are really unleashed as the brothers have it out in the middle of the street.

Tom says "Harry, you and your wife can work as hard as you want, but my wife and I want to enjoy ourselves now, not 25 years from now."  Obviously Tom is supposed to be a bad guy here- a "live for today, let society pay our bills" immoral lazy twat with his hand out all the time.  When Harry replies "fine, but why should I have to pay for that?" Tom plays the "because we're brothers" card, clearly not understanding that while blood is thicker than water, it's the thickness of the wallet that matters most in the real world.

Dick steps in and basically endorses the Progressive Income Tax formula as a solution to their problem.  For a moment, Dick is the Voice of Reason here.  But only for a moment, because Dennis Prager is by no means a fan of the Progressive Income Tax.  So he has Tom jump in with an enormous Straw Man "let's do it like the Feds who like to give freebees to deadbeats like me I don't pay taxes at all so I should get these improvements for free" speech worthy of the Republican National Convention when there are no microphones around.  Dick KNOWS this isn't fair but he likes it anyway because it reduces his share while putting a much larger burden on his Evil Capitalist Swine brother Harry.  And so the Class Struggle is explained- the middle class is conned into joining with the poor to fight a war against the thrifty, hardworking rich.  There's another freaking minute and a half to this ad but I'm not even going to finish it- instead I'll sum up this monstrosity in Part IV.

Everything Wrong with Prager U's "The Progressive Income Tax: A Tale of Three Brothers," Part II

Ok, so we've got the triplet Class brothers who are all carpenters with wives and two kids and make $25 per hour. At this point in the video, they start acting like human beings who aren't following a script and begin to make actual choices:

"Tom chose to work 20 hours per week,  Dick worked 40 hours per week, and Harry worked 60 hours per week."  Harry's wife also worked full-time outside the house, contributing $50,000 to the family income.  Dick's wife worked part-time selling Real Estate and brought in $25,000, while Tom's wife didn't bring in any income (the video actually says "Tom's wife did not work," but this is contradicted by the previous information which included that each family has two children.   I think the narrator meant to say "was not paid for the work she did," unless Prager U. teaches it's "students" that being a parent is not work?

"Tom and Dick spent all of their family income, since they paid into Social Security they figured they didn't need to save...." Wait a minute.  Did they spend all their family income because they thought saving was unnecessary due to the future availability of Social Security, or because given their slack attitudes toward labor (Dick only worked 40 hours a week- what was he doing with all that spare time?) the act of living absorbed their incomes?  We aren't told- it's too important to get to "Harry and his wife, however, over many years, had put away money each month and invested it in stocks and bonds."

Again, wait a minute- Harry and his wife make a lot more money than Tom and Dick, so they have excess funds they can invest.  I get it.  But is it automatically virtuous to invest that money in stocks and bonds?  What if Harry and wife had reached 65 in 2008, when the stock market lost half it's value?  How smart would all their investing have been then?  And again, we still haven't been told if Tom and Dick aren't saving because they don't want to, or because they can't.

Man, I was right to break this up.  This IS going to be a long discussion....

"Here's how it worked out.  Tom made $25,000 per year.  Dick and his wife made $75,000.  And Harry and his wife, $150,000. "  We can tell by the numbers that Harry and his wife are the heroes of this little shpeal already, can't we?  But it's about to get more complicated.

"When a new housing development opened up in their community, the brothers decided to buy equally-priced homes on the same private street."

 Ok, we've just gone off the rails, Prager U.  For this to be true, one of two things had to happen.  Either Tom lied on his mortage application and told the bank that he made a lot more money than he actually does, or Harry and his wife decided that despite their big incomes and savings they'd buy an extremely modest home so they could live near Harry's deadbeat brothers and their pathetic, low-achieving wives.  I don't know, maybe it's the second option and Harry and Wife value that Feeling of Superiority over Relatives more than living in a house they've earned through hard work and savings.  This is definitely a logic speed bump, and I don't know how you're going to rescue yourselves from this, Prager U.  But we'll have to pick this up in Part III.

Everything Wrong With Prager U's "The Progressive Income Tax: A Tale of Three Brothers," Part I

For those of you who don't know- in other words, you hit "Skip Ad" as soon as possible when you saw these ubiquitious valentines to Libertarianism pop up- Dennis Prager is a right-wing talk show host who, when not bashing intellectualism and sneering at the idea that a college education is of any actual value, pretends to be a university professor who knows how to use Prexi on YouTube.  When he isn't blathering nonsense into a microphone, he's blathering nonsense along with whizzing graphics and infantile cartoon characters using equally infantile straw man arguments against Socialism, Atheism, and...well, that's about it, actually.

These stupid chapters all fall under the banner of "Prager U," which is even less of a university than Trump University and even less of a learning opportunity than Prager is a teacher.  I guess this is Prager's "answer" to the "wasted money" represented by college- "see, I'm just a jackass radio yakker and I know more stuff than your elitist university professors, you whiny know-it-all millenials.  Check this out, my intern did the graphics!"

Anyway, I didn't want to spend this entire blog post explaining and bashing the concept of Prager U, which is nothing more than Dennis Prager's ego showing up again and again to interrupt my viewing.  I wanted to focus on this particular chapter, in which Prager condescendingly tries to "explain" to us why the concept of "class" is bad and wrong and that if we don't have money it's because we're just lazy and made bad choices like deciding not to work ourselves to death and actually raise our kids and find value in things other than money.

I realized about two minutes in that this was going to take some time, and I'd have to break it up into episodes to avoid this post being several pages long.  So I hope you don't mind that this looks more like a long-winded project than the usual "I hate this Commerical here's why" schtick.  My intention is to look at key points in Prager's little "you make choices and live with them you whiny schmucks" rant and give my own interpretation of what is going on.  When I'm done, I'll post the entire thing on successive days.   Ok, here we go with the opening:

Tom, Dick and Harry Class are triplets who were all raised in the same home with the same family- ok, we get it, Prager is going to show that they all had exactly the same advantages, so we can't blame or credit environment.  This is pounded into us early on; Prager is very concerned we are going to notice something "special" about one of the Class brothers right away.  Nope.  Same skills, Same IQ, "same opportunities."  They are basically clones following the same script.  Fine.

Each of the brothers got married and had two children.  They were all carpenters making $25 per hour.  And it's at this point that their lives begin to diverge, because they had "different priorities."

Ok, that's where I'll leave off for now.  Part II follows tomorrow.  Arent' we all curious to find what happens to the Class brothers when they stop being exactly the same person and start making choices?  I know I am!

She traded down. We get it, Taco Bell

So let's analyze this one to find what Taco Bell really thinks of it's demographic, shall we?

Cute girlfriend is out for a walk with her man-child new boyfriend, who is clearly a lot more into eating crap with both hands than being with her or taking care of himself.  They bump into her ex, who is a non-Taco Bell-eating, healthy fitness-oriented guy who, from his reaction to seeing a former girlfriend, has moved on and hasn't given her a second thought.

At this point, I assume that Ex Girlfriend wants very badly to show well to Ex Boyfriend, but since New Boyfriend is already Not Tall, Not Athletic and eating Taco Bell with both hands, the odds are pretty heavily stacked against her.  Still, if New Boyfriend can just manage to be coherent and sociable for a few seconds, this might not turn out too badly.

Instead, New Boyfriend inexplicably believes that Ex Boyfriend wants some kind of physical contact with him, and he's got his hands full of carbs and grease, so he gives him a chest bump.  This comes off as unbelievably stupid and embaressing to everyone involved, and has probably ended his relationship with New Girlfriend, though that's going to have to take place off screen, because Ex Girlfriend still needs to make the best of the situation until Ex Boyfriend is gone.

Ex Girlfriend links her arm with Soon to Be Latest Ex Boyfriend and rather defensively moves on- as I implied, she can't break up with this clueless slob on the spot, otherwise hunky Ex Boyfriend jogs away the victor of the moment.  She must pretend that they are still a couple for at least a few more seconds, or until Ex Boyfriend is out of earshot.

But please, tell me that inside of three minutes this girl- who can clearly do much better- has dumped her latest mistake's sorry ass right there in the park.  Please tell me she isn't this desperate for a guy to hook arms with just in case she runs into Jogger Ex.  Please tell me she isn't THAT sad.

Masterpass shows how much Joe Montana likes money

I guess I'm supposed to know who the woman is in this commercial too, but I don't and I'm perfectly ok if no one wants to enlighten me.  It's Kat something, I know that.  Don't care.

The point of this movie is that the target audience is composed of mouth-breathers who are likely to forget the product being sold unless it's hammered into their skulls repeatedly over the course of thirty seconds but who really like anything that involves using their phones.  I doubt that there's any sensible reason for Joe Montana, who hasn't thrown a football professionally in 23 years (yes, that makes me feel very old) and is therefore pretty much an unperson for that target audience, to be here.  But whatever- hey everybody look, here's an old guy who played in the NFL a quarter of a century ago but can still be triggered to throw fragile decorations across the room by repeating a word!  Funny, right?  Right?

Oh by the way, before all this BS with Montana and Kat Whoever, we see a young woman totally flummoxed at witnessing the customer in front of her use her phone to pay for something.  Holy crap Mastercard, I grew up with phones attached to the walls by cords and I get the concept of paying bills with them by flashing the screen over a card reader.  We're supposed to buy the idea that some Millenial is astonished by this sorcery?  Seriously?

And one more thing- would the woman using "Masterpass" really respond to "what is that?" with "Masterpass?"  Not "I'm using my phone to pay my bill?"  Are people now programmed to provide free advertising to strangers?  That's almost as dumb as the Doddering Old Money-Grubbing Quarterback with One Less Ring than Tom Brady making a fool of himself crap that follows.  Almost.

Amazon Prime's mastery of laziness, incompetence, cluelessness....and a bonus dig at the U.S. Postal "Service"

Or "one week in the life...."

Exactly one week ago, I ordered something on Amazon Prime.  It "arrived" on Tuesday....somewhere.  The delivery guy put it on a porch and took a picture of the box on the porch and sent it to me, which was great except I did not recognize the porch.  Which means that rather than bring the package to the residence of the person who actually ordered it the delivery guy, apparently tired of driving around with said package, decided to randomly drop it off at a random porch somewhere.  And then take a photo of it and send it to me- "look, here's that stuff you ordered.  Try to guess where I left it.  It's kind of a game!"

On Thursday I spent thirty minutes maneuvering through Amazon's maze of circular "orders" options until finally coming across a chat opportunity.  Within a few minutes the problem was resolved in the form of an apology and promise of a replacement for the lost item.  To make it more likely I actually received the item, I asked Amazon to send it to my place of work, where there's pretty much always someone to sign for it and which is not likely to be mistaken for a random porch somewhere.

Well, today I check my Amazon Orders page and find that the package has been "Delivered"--- to the school--- which is closed---- because it's SATURDAY.  Did the driver, finding a closed, empty building, just leave the package by the door and move on?  Don't know for sure- I haven't received a photograph.  I can't go to the school to check for my package, and I'm hoping that the "delivered" notice actually means "attempted delivery," but I guess I'll find out on Monday.

Meanwhile, a few minutes ago I got home from the store to find an "Unsuccessful Delivery" notice from the Post Office for ANOTHER order I made on Amazon this week.  This one was brought by the US Postal "Service," which has this bizarre habit of randomly deciding that certain packages must be signed for while others can be just left by the door.  Since I can't get to the Post Office during the times it's open I'm probably not going to be able to secure this package, either.

Isn't ordering stuff magical, kids?

This IS the 21st Century, right?

So this ad wasn't produced by Chrome?

If I missed something, please let me know what it was, because all I get from this ad is "Firefox sucked because it was too slow, but we fixed it and now it's not as slow anymore."  And to let us know how slow Firefox was, we are shown a girl attempting to drag a refrigerator down the street with her bike.

I have to admit, I don't see "man our product was a piece of junk" ads very often.  But again, maybe I'm missing something?

Extremely faint praise for Surface Laptop!

 

Well, I guess Rich Woods is just trying to be honest here, but this is a pretty damning "advertisement" for Surface Laptop, isn't it?

I mean, you can't describe it as "fast" or "easy to use" or "innovative" or "reliable?" You've got "sexy" and nothing else?  It could be as functional as a paperweight and be described as "sexy."  Are laptops just cars now?  All about the looks?  Nobody gives a damn if they actually work, as long as they let you show well to total strangers as you sit in Starbucks?

When I buy a computer, I don't look for a machine I want to stare at or date.  Rich Woods does?  Maybe you could keep your personal issues out of your reviews, Mr. Woods?

What the hell?

NFL Sunday Night Football v. College Gameday- Which is the Greatest Moment since the Big Bang?

So, which is superior at providing over-the-top, redefining excessive glitz, hammer-to-the-head Oh Please Be Convinced That This Is The Most Exciting Thing In The Freaking Universe crank up the volume commercialism?  ESPN's College Football Gameday or NBC's Sunday Night Football?

ESPN's features the musical--um, "stylings?" of something named Lzzy Hale (seriously?) screaming her ass off before transitioning to three hours of the musings of recent NFL washouts and ancient fossils drooling over college-aged men (Lee Corso is eighty-two freaking years old.  He's been ranting about these young men on television for thirty freaking years, never mind that the last of his brain cells died out at least tweny years ago.  It should be downright ILLEGAL for him to crowd-surf.  Enough already.)

NBC's features the downright embarressing pomping of Carrie Underwood introducing whatever matchup happens to be the last of the day as if it's the freaking Second Coming.  I've never managed to get through either of these cringe-worthy eardrum-assaulting celebrations of excess without slamming down the mute button- and they are almost worse with the sound down.

Only one of them can be the Most Significant Event in Human History since Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Commandments.  So which is it?

Kind of makes you wonder where football in general is going- if it's still "America's Game" and dominant in the ratings, why all this fake glitz and glam?  Do I detect the slightest hint of desperation here?

There are no heroes in this NFL Shop Commercial

At least the family is being honest toward the boyfriend- they all love another team to the point that they insist on wearing THEIR jerseys to the dinner table but will not tolerate his.  So they are openly jerks who take their sports waaaayyy too seriously.  He should know this before he gets too involved with this Nowhere Near Worth It girlfriend.

But there's nothing admirable about the guy, either.  When told that he "can't" wear his jersey at the dinner table, he responds by wearing something far more obnoxious than a simple jersey.  I can get him refusing to pretend not to be a Raiders fan to avoid "conflicts" with the stupid family.  But to respond to "don't wear that" by revealing a blinking-light Raiders sweatshirt is just way too close to giving the middle finger to the other people at the table.  You don't look proud of your team, buddy- you look stupid and childishly confrontational.  And then you sit there and make little faces like you're trying to quietly pass a stone or really would like to say something if you could work up the nerve, but you can't.  Nope- you're just going to sit there and be a passive-aggressive douchenozzle. 

So everyone in this commercial is kind of a jackass.  Nothing new to see here.

The Ultimate in Manipulative Tripe from Volkswagen

(A Little Trivia: This song was the one my graduating class picked for departing ceremonies when it was time to leave Spaulding High School in June, 1982.  The ONLY reason we wanted chose this song was so that we could sing the "I get high with a little help from my friends" part, which we were forbidden to do but did anyway.)

All of the self-indulgent wankers in this ad really wanted to be at that Civil Rights/Out of Vietnam rally, but there was this cool outdoor rock concert on a farm in Upstate New York so hey, priorities.

And when the music stopped, all the males in this ad went on to become hedge fund managers or government employees with massive pensions.  A few of them went into teaching public school in New York and took a retirement bailout offer from the state at the age of 55.  They've spent the last 25 years touring Europe every fifteen minutes.

The female flower children in this ad went on to earn their MRS degree and now all live in the suburbs of Washington DC or Baltimore or NYC where they raised their 2.5 kids and did all the white bread conformist crap they cursed their parents for doing but justified it by shopping at organic farmers markets and Whole Foods.

Every single person in this ad did extremely well by discarding the "values" of their youth for the siren song of Capitalism and totally sold out way before they reached the age of 30.  If they saw someone stuck in the mud today, they might whip out their phones and call AAA, but only after tweeting the oh-so-hilarious situation to all their friends and posting it to YouTube first.

So when they were young they enjoyed free love, cheap and safe marijuana, practically-free college, a soaring stock market and all the benefits a strong labor movement had to offer.  Now they sit in their pretentious Tudor suburban palaces dreaming of the Lexus they hope their significant other picks up for them in this year's December to Remember promotion.  They all put Bernie Sanders yard signs up last fall and then voted for Trump.  And none of them ever, EVER gave a flying damn about anyone but themselves, I don't care WHAT the song says.

BTW, one of the YouTube commentators who clearly is no more than thirty years old posted that he really wants a VW van now.  I suggested that he could simulate the experience of owning a vintage VW van by tearing out the back seats and removing the seat belts and heating system of an SUV.  To make the experience even more genuine I might have added that he should rig the engine so that it fails to turn over at least fifty percent of the time when the key is turned.  No one who has ever owned one of those rusty, unreliable, uncomfortable and unsafe crapbuckets would fantasize about possessing one now, except to use as target practice.  With these over-indulged losers packed inside.

And again- to Amazon and Industry in general, NOTHING is sacred. NOTHING.

I challenge anyone and everyone to read the original lyrics to this Supertramp song and explain to me how any of it has to do with buying stuff online and sending it to the other side of the planet, in the process destroying the brick-and-mortar economy while reducing everything about the holidays to the amount of cash you manage to spend.

And again, the only thing more depressing here than the actual commercial are the comments that follow.  I think everyone on the planet is either a paid troll for industry or seriously deranged.  Either way, it's awfully sad.

(Hey, remember when you had to wait till Friday morning after Thanksgiving to start spending yourself into debt because TV Told You Too?  Well, those dark days are OVER.  Black Friday has already begun online!  Stop reading this!  Get out your credit card and start surfing and shopping!  Go Go Go Now Now Now!)

Another Very Relatable Lexus Holiday Ad

I guess the "bit" this year is that Lexus is going to show us a parade of spoiled rotten little brats having orgasms over luxury cars before transforming into spoiled rotten big brats having orgasms over luxury cars.  This is the second one I've seen in the last twenty-four hours, and once again the only message I really get out of them is that I can't wait for this season to be over so we can say goodbye to this horrible dreck for another year.

The "adult" in this ad is kneeling before his new diety- an extremely expensive, totally unnecessary LookAtMeMobile. He's letting his family know that the big, beautiful house and the massive bank account and the trophy wife and trophy kids are great and all but this car makes all that shrink into insignificance because that life, while a fantasy to 99.999 percent of the world's population, was seriously lacking before this car showed up.

So congratulations, you nasty little piece of crap.  Your practically-perfect life just got even better.  Absolutely heartwarming.  Know what else would be heartwarming?  A massive gasline break leading to a fireball which turns you and your scummy family into boiling liquid.  Your hearts would be warmed for several seconds before they ceased to exist.  My heart would be warmed for much, much longer.  I know what I'm asking for this Christmas.  I don't have a zillion dollars in the bank, so it's not one of these cars.

Allstate will have to look elsewhere for forgiveness....

First- neither of these "parents" seem at all concerned about the condition of the car.  Is it really a "minor fender-bender?"  Not if they are going to be using "accident forgiveness" for it- you get that ONCE.  If it's just a "minor fender-bender," they are paying for it out of pocket and holding off on the accident forgiveness for a major accident.  If this kid is talking about accident forgiveness, it kind of implies that this was a serious, costly accident.  Which leads us to our second point.

Neither of these "parents" seem at all concerned about the condition of their kid, or if anyone else was involved in the accident, or if anyone was hurt.  Just don't give a damn.  "The car has been damaged in a non-specific but expensive way? You're grounded.  Now go away."  Ugh.

(Oh, and if you think you can stomache it, check out some of the YouTube comments.  This kid is such a good actor, this kid is so cute, the Dad in the commercial symbolizes everything wrong with American Males today, the Mom is a Rhymes-With-Witch, etc.  It's pretty sad.  Forget I suggested it- don't check out the YouTube comments.   Not worth it.)

Morgan Silver Dollar Hilarity, Part II

8.  "You can get these Morgans for the same price we charged three years ago!"  Well, isn't that nice- despite the fact that silver MIGHT skyrocket in value, they are offering these coins in 2012 at the same price they were offered at in 2009.

Wait a minute- let's go back to that convenient silver price chart you showed us at the 56-second mark.  You know, the one that showed silver jumping from $6 an ounce to $20 an ounce between January 2005 to March 2008.  The price tripled but you are willing to sell us silver coins for no increase in price?  That would sound like a great deal, except for two reasons.  First, you are selling these coins in 2012.  Why does your graph stop at March 2008?  Is it because the price of silver peaked in that month, leveled off, and then started to drop?  Just askin'.  Second- well, I'll save that second point for the end of this commentary.

9.  At the 1:18 mark, you tell us that "Several prominent silver brokers charge twenty or thirty dollars more for a similar silver dollar.  These minted silver dollars are heavy with .900 Pure Silver..."

Ok, STOP.  Now the dishonesty has become blatant for anyone willing to actually listen to this ad with their brain in the "ON" position.  I'm not going to ask for the names of the "prominent silver brokers" because that's not the real point.  The REAL deception is in two parts here- First, the brokers charge "twenty or thirty dollars more" for a silver dollar SIMILAR to the one being hawked here.  What does "similar" mean?  It doesn't mean the same- so though the narrator clearly wants you to think so, those other brokers are NOT selling the SAME coin being offered here at a higher price.  THEY ARE SELLING A DIFFERENT COIN.  Second, WHICH minted silver dollars are "heavy with .900 pure silver?"  Well, since you've already told us that the ones YOU are selling contain .77 pure silver (check the 44-second mark) we can only assume that you are talking about the coins offered by your competitors.  That explains why they cost more- though you don't want us to put that all together, do you?

This goes on for another twenty seconds, meaning that I could probably throw a Part III in here, but I'm not going to because I'd rather cut to the chase with this little nugget- just before the end, the narrator tells us that these coins are "rich in historic value." That might be the only shred of honesty in the entire ad, but the fact that the company peddling this crap spent 95 percent of the commercial trying to convince us that it was the SILVER IN THE COIN and NOT THE COIN ITSELF that was valuable prevents me from cutting them any slack here.  Maybe they watched an early version of this ad and realized that SOMEONE might do the math and figure out that what was being offered was .77 of an ounce of silver (selling at about $18 an ounce at the time of this ad) for $19.90 plus shipping and handling.  So they decided they'd better add something about "historical value" to make up for the fact that this is a really stupid way to purchase silver (actually, there isn't a smart way, but that's an argument for another time.)  I really think that they should have stuck with the "piece of history" bit but I guess they know their audience thinks that history began with World War II and ended with Ronald Reagan, so Hey It's Made of Silver the Metal that got more valuable Because China, or something.  People are so weird.

Having fun with a vintage Morgan Silver Coin Ad....

1.  "Just Located!"  What, again?  Seems like every few weeks a huge number of Morgan Silver Dollars are discovered in an attic, a sunken Confederate warship, or under the 50-yard line at Giants Stadium (they were looking for Jimmy Hoffa, found these Morgan Dollars instead!)  Seriously, how many times can they pull this same pitch?

2.  "The most sought-after coins in American history."  I'd like to see the raw data, please.  What's the second-most sought-after coin?  9/11 Commemoratives?  I hope so, 'cause I got five of those.  I wanted more, but there was a strict limit.

3.  "9:45 New York.  National Collector's Mint releases 3487 of the last surviving Morgan Dollars still in existence..." notice the trick in language- I bet a lot of hillbillies watching this ad heard "the last 3487 in existence" and thought "I'd better snatch some of them up, once they're gone, they're gone."  But because I have ears and critical thinking skills, I'm left with two questions- how many Morgan Dollars are actually still in existence, and how did you you come up with that number considering that we keep finding more?

4.  "Condition is important, and all the Morgan Silver Dollars released are guaranteed to be in Brilliant Uncirculated to Fine Condition."  More fun with language, kids! None of these coins are guaranteed to be Uncirculated, just "Uncirculated to Fine Condition."  Who judges what "Uncirculated" means?  Doesn't matter- all that's required is that the condition of your coin be "fine" for this ad to live up to this particular promise.  And what does "fine" mean?  Whatever this company wants it to mean. 

5.  "Over 320 million Morgan Dollars were melted during both World Wars....all were .77344 oz pure silver...." MORE fun with language, kids!  So the government melted lots of coins, and those coins had a lot of silver.  What does this have to do with the ad?  Well, nothing, since the product for sale isn't a melted coin.  How much silver is in the coins being offered today?  Seems like that would be a good piece of information....which we aren't going to get, because we think we just got it with this blurb about coins which don't exist anymore. 

6.  "When Silver hit $50 an ounce, China was a poor nation.  Now China is rich, and uses three times more silver!"  Ok, now it's time to play Correlation v. Causation- except that the ad doesn't come out and claim that silver has anything to do with China's wealth, does it?  So what's the point of this little nugget of not-history? I strongly suspect that it's just there to equate Silver=Rich in our little brains.  And it's followed quickly by....

7.  "Will this drive the price back up to $50 or even higher?"  Well, apparently not. When this ad was made, in 2012, the price of silver was just under $21 per ounce.  Today it's just over $17 per ounce.  So if we take this ad's math to be accurate, once upon a time silver was selling at $50 per ounce.  Then it dropped to $6 per ounce, then rose to almost $21, and now it's at $17 per ounce.  Yeah, sounds like something I want to bank my retirement on.

I'm only a minute into this 108-second ad, and I've got to get back to work.  I'll do a Part II next time. 

'Tis the Season for Audi to shove this crap in our faces, again

The only silver lining here is imagining all these privileged idiots with obvious blood pressure issues who clearly think that because they own expensive cars they are entitled to pretty much everything else- including convenient parking places- will eventually suffer massive strokes and die with blood oozing out of their noses as they lay aside their pretty cars.  Hopefully before they run anyone over driving 50 MPH through parking garages. 

Other than that, this ad is nothing but bad news for people who watch tv.  It's not yet Thanksgiving, and the Season of Awful is already underway.  Strap in, everyone.  This is going to hurt.

Coming Next: Coke Zero Sugar No Calorie #Getitilliteratejackasses?

Some people were excited to hear the news.  Some were skeptical. 

And then there was everyone else, who couldn't give a flying damn about any of this, especially since Diet Coke has been around for forty years and has always had about a calorie a can which is functionally the same as zero calories.  And that this is just Coke Zero renamed and repackaged.  This managed to excite some people and make others skeptical?  Really? Oh well, why the hell not- this is a country which elected a reality tv star/grifter President.  Anything's possible.

No celebrity endorsers holding the bottle "just right" so we can see the label.

The narrator is basically admitting that Coca Cola has absolutely nothing new to sell here.  It's just Coke Zero  in what looks like a retro Coke bottle, which I suspect is the really big selling point here.

So a commercial about nothing.  Thanks, Coke.

The perfect payment method for Androids

A few years ago I saw a commercial featuring an assembly line of consumers quickly using their credit cards to swipe and chip their way through purchases at some coffee shop.  The monotonous but speedy and efficient process was suddenly interrupted by some loser who LOL Can You Believe It actually attempted to fumble for cash No I'm Not Kidding That Stuff Is Still Out There And Even People Who Aren't Your Grampa Still Try To Use It Sometimes.

Flash forward to today, and we get obnoxious crap like this ad, in which we are informed that using your credit card to swipe or chip is LOL lame and soooo very 2016 and look at all the disgusting, stupid, hilarious things which happen when people reach for even THAT level of interaction.  In the few months that are left before every store is equipped with AmazonGo, we must use this scan option if we don't want our bratty kids rolling their eyes and bleating "dad....dad.....dad....." while the rest of the crowd behind us wonders why we insist on inserting pieces of plastic into card machines because we just figured out how to do that.

Not to mention that this Android Pay thing is happening despite the fact that a lot of stores haven't even gotten around to switching over to Chip technology yet.  I can see stores getting super-cynical about payment methods that are all the rage for a few months before being classified as ancient history and replaced with the REALLY EFFICIENT way of paying for stuff.  Maybe this is all about getting us ready for the "final" transition to cashier-less stores with no payment methods other than product detection on our phones (back to that AmazonGo thing again.) 

Ok, we get it.  Human interaction is disgusting and slow and sloppy and we really need to stop engaging in it- the only reason people did that for thousands of years is because they didn't have a choice.  We do.  So we should listen to the commercials and the kid bleating "dad....dad....dad...." and stop trying to have a society here.  Society sucks anyway- after all, "social" implies "other human beings," and why on Earth would we EVER want to share the shopping experience with other human beings? 

I'd still rather watch this than the prequels

I thought I was completely jaded about product placement, and as far as I'm concerned the last Star Wars film was released in 1983,* but this still managed to tick me off by scraping the bottom of the barrell, getting all the way through it, and then tunneling through the muck underneath until it suffocated from lack of oxygen.  If I cared about the crap that passes as Star Wars these days, I'd be angrier, but as it is I really can't go beyond ticked off.  And it's not because Lucas started making sci-fi fantasy movies again in the late 90s.  It's more because Lucas had to molest my childhood with "Special Editions" which demonstrated that he didn't even understand his own films.  Oh, and midichlorians.

I'd call it shameless, but that would require explaining to the people who made this ad what the word "Shame" means, because they clearly don't know.  All they know is that there's money to be made and there's a sci-fi fantasy movie to be released next month and it will make a billion dollars because it's got this iconic label on it that means something to millions of people my age or thereabouts.  Oh, and they couldn't give a flying damn about our childhoods.

*There's this thing called the Star Wars trilogy.  It includes three films, and they are called Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.  There's no such film as A New Hope and they certainly aren't episodes.  It ends with the empire being destroyed and the Republic being restored.  And yes, I mean ends.  Because the other stuff that's come along which uses the label "Star Wars" has nothing to do with Star Wars and everything to do with Capitalism.

eBay's soul-sucking salute to nonstop consumption*

Don't celebrate Christmas like everyone else, because you aren't like everyone else.  You're a pampered, white, rich American brat for whom three days for shipping seem like a crushing burden and is the reason why you spend $99 a year on Amazon Prime.

Oh, but this is an ad for eBay, that worldwide garage sale Weird Al Yankovic rightfully parodied more than a decade ago.  Ok, so if you buy your Christmas presents on eBay you certainly aren't like everyone else.  You aren't even like most spoiled brat American white people who live to have stuff show up on their doorstep in ugly brown boxes pretty much every day.  You are a different level of impulse, Live-For-Today shopper who has totally bought in to the Need It Right Now Gimmeee Gimmeee GIMMMMEEEEE philosophy that comes as a pre-loaded App on your Smartphone.

And no, I'm not apologizing to the jackass Youtube commenter who desperately needed to know what music accompanies this disgusting salute to instant gratification.  I really do want you to go die in a fire.  Because I hate you and the rest of your "I need to know what every piece of music I ever hear on any commercial right now plz plz plz" ilk.  You'll never contribute anything to anyone's life.  You are dumb as dirt and more vapid than I ever thought possible.  You won't be missed.  So go find that fire. Bet you can find one nearby using your Smartphone.  Maybe you can even get it delivered.

*wouldn't it be cool if this kind of behavior actually GAVE you consumption? 

Clarins Hysterical Word Salad....errr, Serum

In thirty-one seconds of narration and silly visuals accented by a zombie-pale woman who worries about wrinkles despite the fact that she's never been in the sun in her life, we learn that this bottle of pricey goo is

Two Serums in One!  (Wow!  That's twice as good as just ONE serum!  Where do I buy this stuff for the girl in my life who is starting to look her age, which is my age, which sucks?)

With 21 Potent Plant Abstracts! (That sounds so impressive!  So, what are these plants?  What do you mean, Shut Up That's Why?)

Hydric and Lipidic Systems!  (I don't know what those are, but if I admit that I'll look stupid, so This Is Impressive Too!)

And here's the hilarious punchline:  "After seven days, Instant Radiance!"  Ok, stop.  That doesn't even make any sense.  Seven days isn't "instant."  Does the narrator mean that there's no gradual improvement during those seven days, but the effects of the two serums with hydric and lipidic systems from 21 plant abstracts suddenly show up "instantly" on Day Seven?  Will it hurt?  Will it be scary?

Oh, and everyone in this Budweiser ad needs to die horribly. Right now.

If I thought that even one in ten of the people posting how much they love this ad were sincere and not paid whores for Budweiser, I don't think I could go on.  There is simply no way that more than a few dozen people on the entire planet think that this crap is even remotely funny, let alone Comedy Gold worthy of being imitated in real life.

As for being "Superbowl Worthy," I can totally buy that, since I think the Superbowl is the toxic waste dump of bad ad ideas.  There, I said it.

Grammarly- when you kind of want to sound like you, but not really because you're an illiterate idiot

"The Future" being one owned and controlled by idiots who don't read or write because Hey TV Was On Every Time I Planned To Do That Stuff.

"Does this sound like me?"  Well, no- it sounds like a literate person, and we know you aren't that.  As soon as the people who read this notice that it's not filled with grammatical errors, they are going to know you didn't write it.  And because they know what Grammarly is and get most of their information from Alexa and Siri and can't get to the local Starbucks without consulting turn-by-turn directions on their iPhones, they probably won't care either.

Oh, but this guy is going to be the "VP of Analytics."  Whatever the hell that is.  All I know about that job is that doing it doesn't require any actual English skills, because this worthless choad has already survived the interview and the rest of the hiring process and is now just momentarily flummoxed because for at least one day he has to pretend to know just a little bit about the language he allegedly grew up speaking (but never writing unless absolutely forced to, which wasn't often because Sports and TV. 

Two ways to "celebrate" prohibition, according to Budweiser

As near as I can figure:

First, you celebrate prohibition by drinking non-alcoholic "beer" because Reasons.  The only people who think this sounds intelligent probably add germs to milk to remind them of the good old days before Louis Pasteur came around and ruined everything.  Or they use chamberpots because it was so much cooler back when you had to fling your personal filth out the window instead of all this lame plumbing stuff.

Then, you wash that horrible taste of not-beer out of your mouth with "1933 Repeal Reserve."  If you are remarkably stupid- and the fact that you were just drinking non-alcoholic beer and are now drinking Budweiser in ANY form suggests that you are- you might just be able to con yourself into believing that this stuff is from the vaults of the Budweiser brewery.  It was just sitting there for 95 years, waiting for you to enjoy it for a limited time.  Uh-huh. 

Deleted Clip:  you then wash THAT horrible taste out of your mouth by consuming real beer. 

State Farm turns over a new leaf

Maybe it was visited by three ghosts on the night of August 10, 2017?

I mean, there has to be some reason why the State Farm Insurance Company, which was founded in 1922, waited ninety-five years before suddenly deciding that "starting today," it was going to work with Americans who are facing financial difficulties, publishing that declaration on YouTube on August 11, 2017.

What was so special about that day?  Why not the previous week? Not enough Americans having a hard time making ends meet then?  For that matter, why not during the Great Depression?  Seems like State Farm would have had no problem finding a whole lot of people having a tough time making ends meet back then, too. 

Maybe I shouldn't be too hard on State Farm.  The company has a total net value of a quarter of a trillion dollars and an annual revenue stream of about $87 billion. I have quite a bit less than that and I have a hard time deciding exactly how and where to spend my money- it must be at least TWICE as hard for a gigantic insurance company to make decisions like that.  Still, did it really have to take ninety-five years for State Farm to wake up one day and decide "hey, you know what we should do?  Help people make good financial decisions and secure their futures for retirement and college and stuff."

Maybe this is just something corporate behemoths do when they've spent nearly a century becoming obscenely rich by taking premiums and not paying off policies except when absolutely required to by law and with as much foot-shuffling and delaying as humanly possible.  I don't know- again, I don't have a lot of experience handling quite as much money as State Farm deals with regularly. 

Maybe State Farm noticed that Steve Jobs behaved like a disgustingly, insanely greedy pig-human hybrid who insisted on moving his manufacturing base to Asia so he could build a personal fortune of $10 billion instead of the $5 billion he might have had by staying in North America and paying the people who put together his electronic toys a living wage....and then died of cancer at the age of 56 anyway.  Kind of a nice reminder that there just might be more to existence than watching your vault of money burst at the seams. 

Or maybe this is just a bit of cloying soft-sell from another "Company that Cares."  If that's the case, I'd still like to know why, when I was hit by a drunk driver fifteen years ago, State Farm couldn't give me my $500 deductible back because it was unable to extract it from the drunk who had no assets.  Oh right, I forgot.  That was before August 11, 2017.  They weren't in to giving a damn back then.

Too Much Minimalism in this New Balance Ad!

If you don't blink, and if you watch very closely, you actually can catch a glimpse of shoes in this advertisement for New Balance walking shoes.

No matter how hard you look, you won't see anything which suggests that the shoes are attractive, or comfortable, or durable, or has any of the qualities the typical consumer looks for in a walking shoe (I hope.)

You will, however, get a pretty good window in the lives of two people who are the only residents of an urban area whose paths intersect once as they wander about the desolate cityscape.  I can only guess that the look on the girls' face as she passes the guy is one of annoyance- "we've got thirty blocks to ourselves- and you can't find somewhere else to walk?  You have to cross into MY zone?"

"New Balance:  They're Shoes you wear on your feet.  So you can go outside."  Hey look at me, I'm Darrin Stevens!

Wells Fargo: Favorite bank of very sad pet owners*

Here's an alternative response for this woman to give to her cat:

"Yes, I'm getting a dog.  I didn't even think to ask you about it, because you're an f--ing cat and wouldn't understand what I was saying and besides, this is MY house and you just live here.  If you don't like the idea of me getting a dog, feel free to run away and not come back."

For me, that works a lot better than this pathetic "oh please believe me I would never betray you" creepy pleading from crazy cat lady with an account at Wells Fargo.  But if that cat just keeps going, right down the hall, right past the stinky litter box, right out the door, never to return, well, even better.

You have nothing to lose but the stench and the expense, Crazy Cat Lady.

*On television, is there any other kind of pet owner?

How did I miss this gem from Best Buy?

This commercial is six years old.  I found it because I saw a brand-new Best Buy Time To Get Greedy And Overspend for Christmas commercial while watching the Patriots-Chargers game and went looking for it on YouTube.

I couldn't find the new ad, but this one will do because somehow it got past the radar in 2011.  I'm sure I just never saw it, because if I had I certainly would have posted it instantly.

I mean, look at what happens here.  Stupid, Selfish, Absolutely Horrible Woman just can't wait to see what hubby bought her from Best Buy.  Yet she has to until the family visits grandma.  So the moment Stupid, Selfish, Absolutely Horrible Woman sees her husband's mother, Missing Accomplished Lets Get Back to the House So I Can Rip that Wrapping off that Box and I can see what piece of machinery you've Added to my Life.

That was six years ago.  Maybe grandma is dead now, so SSAHW doesn't even have to hold her g--d d--mned s--t together long enough to go to her house and wave (maybe hubby makes the family drive past the cemetary every Christmas before the annual Ripping of the Wrapping Paper.)   Or maybe hubby one day woke up to the vicious monster that his wife is and called an attorney.  Either way, this is way too nasty to leave alone just because it's six years old.

Yes, we're done here.

The Intensely Sad world of Samsung

....and cell phones in general, I guess.

Anyone my age can probably remember the exact moment they first heard the words "I love you" from their significant other.  It's a magical moment I doubt any of us ever forget.  The softness of the tone, the exact time of day or night, the exact situation when the words just come out.

I can't imagine the same impact coming from a freaking text message.  How sterile and robotic is this?  "I think I'm ready to send you a scrawled virtual ink message to show up on your electronic device, I hope you respond with an emoji bc that would be kewl LOL."

Thank you, Mom and Dad, for having me be born when this wasn't considered normal.  I would not want to be growing up in this world.  It's really sad.

It's two seconds of this Nissan ad. But it's the only two seconds that count

There's a lot going on in this ad- as near as I can tell, the suburban dad here can't just have a nice time throwing a frisbee with his daughter, but notices that the family dog feels left out and is inspired to drive everyone to a stadium so he can....um....throw the frisbee and have the dog catch it instead.

Yeah, it's really stupid and pointless and maybe I'd understand if I were a dog owner- but you know, I'm not a dad either, and I'm pretty sure that if I had both a daughter and a dog I would put a higher priority on playing frisbee with my daughter than in making sure that the dog was being sufficiently entertained.

But putting all that aside, I can't get past the part where the giant Nissan Rogue comes extremely close to slamming into another dog owner and another dog because the guy driving it insists on cruising through a city street at 40 MPH.  Seriously, take a look at that moment in the ad- it's pretty clear that if this car didnt' have the auto braking feature, the Nissan Rogue Suburban Dad Moron would have ruined his daughter's day by running over another guy and another dog crossing the street at the crosswalk.  Don't believe me?  Watch it again- that car is going WAY TOO FAST and if it hadn't braked itself, the pedestrian and that dog would be DEAD.

And why was the Nissan Rogue driver going so fast?  Um... to get to a stadium so his dog could catch a frisbee in front of thousands of cheering people.  In other words, because Reasons.  So if this car didn't have automatic braking, the guy driving it would have MURDERED a fellow human being and his dog.  And then the driver would have shown up at the funeral to explain to the pedestrian's widow why he was driving so freaking fast through a city, and how he's learned his lesson and his next car will have auto braking for sure, Promise.

Ok, I'm going to be seriously ill now.

Heads up, Trophy Wives!

Get off that Peliton bike and put down that cup of cottage cheese and pay attention to the latest news!  Pores are bad things- your husband knows they exist, but he just as soon you not remind him that you have them!

So take a tip from Penelope Cruz and Loreal!  Want hubby to keep his hands off the babysitter?  Keep yourself looking her age for as long as possible, and rub this stuff all over your face several times a day!  Might just buy you another year or so of marital....um...."bliss!"

Ok, that's all we have for today!  Get back on that bike before you start sagging- but get hubby another beer first!  I mean, while you're up and those heirs you made for him are still in naptime!

The Answer is Gold! What was the question again? Never mind, just buy gold!

This commercial is practically a parody of itself.  It's almost hysterically funny that anyone would take it seriously- hell, I'm impressed that the actors here manage to keep a straight face during filming.  I could probably go on for several pages on how utterly asinine and insanely dishonest this whole thing is, but I have a really long weekend of test writing ahead of me so I'd better just boil it down to a few observations:

1.  "The U.S. Money Reserve?"  What the hell?  That just SOUNDS stupid.  So this isn't the Mint, and it's not the Federal Reserve- it's the "U.S. Money Reserve?"  Why didn't they just go with "Here at the U.S. Dollars-keeping Place?" It doesn't sound any more stupid or obviously fake than "The U.S. Money Reserve."

2.  "Tens of millions of dollars are being shipped here every month."  So what's with the reporters and other "important guests" who have been "invited by Special Invitation?"  If this happens every month, what's so important about this moment exactly?  And if this is such an important, By Invitation Only moment, why the hell are you broadcasting it on USA Network in between reruns of Law and Order?

3.  Oh, I see.  "Tensions are high" because an "Emergency Gold Conference" has just been called by "the 35th U.S. Mint Director, Phillip N Diehl."  Let's note, first of all, that Mr. Diehl is standing outside the U.S. Mint, just like you or I or any number of tourists could stand to have their picture taken so that the words "U.S. Mint" can appear above our heads.  Secondly, let's remind ourselves that Mr. Diehl resigned as the U.S. Mint Director in March....of 2000.  More than 17 years ago.  He's not an official of the U.S.  Government.  He's just a private citizen picking up a quick paycheck shilling for a company which specializes in convincing stupid rubes to put their hard-earned money into shiny pieces of metal that are valueless unless someone is willing to give them back paper for them in the future.

4.  Oh, wait.  Mr. Diehl is here because "he's about to reveal his new Classified and Confidential Gold Report," which sure looks like a single sheet of paper made up of nothing but a title page.  " Um, what?  How can a sales pitch by a private individual be "classified?"  Sure, it could be "confidential," but it sounds like Mr. Diehl is about to share that "confidential" information with a crowd of reporters, VIPs there by invitation only, and the shut-ins watching Law and Order on the USA Network in the middle of a random afternoon. 

5.  My favorite two lines from Mr. Diehl during his "press conference"- in the event of a crisis, "gold could be the only money you could get your hands on if everything else were inaccessible."  Can't argue with that.  The secondl line refers to the threat of terrorists armed with automatic weapons and CGI nuclear missles:  "It could be just a matter of time before a major attack may happen on U.S. soil again, and the Dow could drop thousands of points just like it did in 2008."  Wait, what?  The United States suffered a major terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.  The Stock Market crash occured for totally unrelated reasons seven years later.  WTF?

Holy crap, I'm only 29 seconds into this thing and it's two minutes long- I can't spend any more time on this total bs, so I'll just wrap it up here- Mr. Diehl's "report" on the "25 reasons you should buy gold right now because bad things happen around the world so trust us pretty rocks are a great investment even better than burying your cash in coffee cans or purchasing time shares" is available exclusively to people capable of holding their phone with one hand and a credit card with the other for thirty seconds.  And stupid enough to buy in to this choreographed schlock pitched by a retired beaurocrat who is currently a member of organizations such as the Industry Council for Tangible Assets, The Coalition of Equitable Regulation and Taxation, and the Gold and Silver Political Action Committee.  No, I did not make any of those up. 

Fools, Money- I wish you both a happy parting.  I'm sure it won't be painful, as you probably didn't get a chance to know eachother very well anyway. 

I hope Amazon is Skynet. It would serve us right

Here's another thorougly depressing commercial featuring a piece of technology which went from nonexistent to Absolutely Essential How Did We Ever Live Without this in about fourteen minutes following it's release.

I mean, look at what's going on here- remember how you used to make To Do Lists and then cross off each item as it was completed?  Well, that's way too cumbersome for busy 21st century people like these, now you just tell Alexa to cross it off for you.  Remember how you didn't know how to spell words and had to ask a fellow human or consult a dictionary?  Now you just ask Alexa, there you go.  Hell, you just figured out how to send text messages- and now you don't have to anymore, because Alexa (all you had to was figure out how to add all your future ex-friends to Alexa's saved data, but I'm sure that was super easy anyway- nobody in this ad looks or acts like a rocket scientist, after all....)

And thank goodness for Alexa for times like this, because it sure used to be super-awkward to have to call people on the day of a birthday party they were invited to and ask them to bring....candles.  Seriously, that happens in this ad.  Because Alexa isn't yet capable of producing candles out of thin air for these mouth-breathing, helpless dimwits.  Next year.

(Oh and you didn't have to ask Alexa to ask anyone to bring wine, lady.  It's a kid's birthday party.  The other adults are going to bring wine.  Lots of it.  They weren't planning on bringing candles- because who the hell forgets candles?- but they were bringing wine.)

Anyway, Alexa never gets shut down for the entire day of prepping for some stupid kid's stupid birthday party, and it's a good thing because it's pretty clear that the adults in this ad couldn't find the oven or the front door without it's assistance.   I can't believe that this helplessness-encouraging brain replacement device was produced by the same company that gave us the Kindle at the dawn of this millenium.  Oh but they turned that into a television in about fifteen minutes, so maybe I can.

I can clear this up, Stephen A Smith and Taco Bell!

(Oh and all the non-celebrities, cartoon characters, non-celebrities acting like cartoon characters etc. in this commercial- I'm here to help you ALL out too!)

See, what this is is Taco Bell's latest idea for selling cheap, greasy, fat-laden garbage to people with no money or taste buds.  This time it's a package of fried egg and cheese that fits into your hand (wow, how original.)  Eat enough of them, and someday your doctor will show you your EKG scan and you'll mutter "what the...." before he explains to you that your eating habits have shortened your life by many, many years so he's going to have to insist on full payment on the spot, as he can't be at all sure you aren't going to drop dead on your way home from the office.

Glad to be of service.  No charge.

Why Amazon Go is, in fact, the Mark of the Beast

No, I am not being hyperbolic here.  I hate hyperbole.  I've said many times that I view hyperbolic people as worse than Stalin.  But in fact when preparing to post on this particular ad I considered these alternative titles:

Because you need to justify spending hundreds of dollars a year on "updated" SmartPhones

Because we can't stop "improving" technology until everyone on Earth has lost their job- which will in turn solve all the other problems related to shopping, won't it?

Because you want to limit your social interaction as much as possible but aren't quite ready- or organized enough- to do all your shopping online yet.

Because you need another way to set yourself apart from the Lower Classes who still use stores staffed by actual people.

And settled on something which came close to "this is the end of civilization."  It's over.  You've already lost your ability to speak to people face to face or even over the phone, and must now express yourself using emojis and #HitAndRunAlmostSentences.  You already can't walk and chew gum at the same time without getting Google to explain to you, in step by step instrutions downloaded to that phone, exactly how to go about doing that.  Five minutes after chip technology replaced Swiping (which replaced those carbon-paper receipt machines five minutes before that, and which replaced cash and checks five minutes before that) you're ready to be convinced that holding your phone over a scanner for three seconds is So Very Yesterday and An Enormous Time-Wasting Hassle Surely We Can Make Things Go Faster Oh Yay Amazon Go!

Civilization.  It was fun while it lasted.  Remember people?  In the end, I guess we decided that their negatives outweighed their positives, so they just aren't part of our lives anymore.  Whatever.  It's a beautiful, sunny autumn day, so it's time to check out Netflix.

Hanes' Smellfie ad just murdered my soul*

Ok, let's just go with the idea that there's something called "the Smellfies," and it involves emitting foul body odor at very inconvenient times, like when you show up for a date or are at a wedding or actually pretty much any time you are in public.

You COULD just take regular showers, use deodorant, and make sure you are wearing clean clothes and not just whatever you found piled up at the foot of your bed this morning.  You COULD do that.  But that's a really low-tech, 20th century solution, something your parents might have done.  It's practically 2018, so....

What you should do now to "Stop the Smellfies" is invest in Hanes High-Tech BO-inhibiting undergarments.  Sure, it costs more than their regular t-shirts and underwear, but if you wear that stuff you have to go back to bathing regularly and using deodorant, like your parents did.  You want to be like your parents?  You want to keep clean? 

Didn't think so.  Buy this stuff, and continue to revel in being a dirty, sweaty slob who lost your ability to practice basic hygiene around the same time you lost your ability to carry on an actual conversation that didn't involve emojis.   The world you're stinking the hell out of?  You're welcome to it.  And if you're on the fence about being a customer for Advanced Tech Anti-Stink underclothes?  Just take a freaking shower, hippie!

*Silver lining:  The Youtube commenters hate this ad almost as much as I do.  That's got to count for something.

Subaru's latest Love ad just ramps up the stupid....

The TV version of this thing mercifully cuts the pain down to about thirty seconds.  The internet version is a painfully drawn-out, hammer-to-the-brain-smarmy minute and a half of your life you will never get back.  Hey, I didn't tell you to watch it.

The punchline isn't grampa's "I Love Thoreau" bumper sticker (holy crap, we GET IT Subaru.  We didn't need that hammer to the brain!) It's the grandson asking if grampa felt compelled to lie to grandma and tell her that he was going fishing instead of surfing.  Because I guess grandma has no problem with fishing but would dissaprove of surfing because....reasons?  Maybe Subaru thinks that Thoreau fans are best known for lying to their wives?

Why can't this guy tell his wife he wants to go surfing with his grandson?  And what does a pointless lie about it have to do with "love" again?  And while we're at it, what does any of this mess have to do with Subarus?  I mean, WTF?

Yowie, this is stupid!

The thought of this pale, fat, stupid little kid eating enough cheap chocolate to collect all those stupid plastic animals makes me want to call Child Protective Services on his parents.  It also makes me want to hurt everybody.

And the punchline is that his "mission" to spend all that money to purchase and consume that cheap plastic-that-tastes-kind-of-like-chocolate isn't over just because he's managed to complete his collection, because hey look here's ANOTHER set to collect.  Strap on your African Safari hat and grab mom's purse, Stupid Fat Kid!  It's back to the store---err, jungle---for another encounter with the cashier---err, tribal chieftain....or something.....

I can remember when commercials didn't whip me up into a psychotic rage on a daily basis.  I miss those days.  I really do.  But what am I going to do when I live in a world where people are encouraged to buy Easter Bunny-quality chocolate so they can get a stupid plastic toy you used to be able to get out of gumball machines for a nickle and can still buy by the bag at the Dollar Store for 99 cents?  I mean, what the hell is going on here?  Are you people completely f--ing insane, or what?

Domino's Soft Sell + Hard Sell = No Sale

I couldn't care less how much you love your stores, Dominos franchise owners.  Don't care how you got the money to start them up, don't care if they "mean everything to you," and sure as hell don't care that when the order came down from the people who REALLY own the stores to remodel, you were just fine with that.

So now that you've failed to win me over with your Tales of American Entrepreneurship....

I couldn't care less that Domino's sludge factories look more modern now, or include plexiglass partitions to allow stupid gawky kids to stare at the pizza-building monkeys who must really feel like they are in a cage, and wasn't working here for minimum wage humiliating enough without being on display like this?

And I'm sure you think that watching people smash windows and knock down walls in slow motion to some crappy rap song (I don't care how many YouTube commentors desperately "need" the song, btw) is super entertaining and all that, but it's not going to distract us from the simple fact that for all of the Spirit of the Small Businessman, the Glossy New Decor, or the Really Cool Destruction that went into making Domino's Lowest Common Denominator Pizza Distributors look different, this is just an attempt to put a whole lot of lipstick on a really, really ugly pig.  Because in the end, this is still just Domino's.  Adding giant pans of pasta isn't getting me through that door.  Improving the look isn't getting me through that door.  The only thing that could get me through that door is decent food- and I notice you aren't talking about making radical improvements to THAT anywhere in these ads.

So I'll continue to pass on the bland, flabby carbs and sugar, sorry.  Hope you own the rights to that music, though.  There are a lot of idiots on Youtube who apparently are willing to pay for it.