Nintendo Switch- yet another way to waste the only life you'll ever have!

First things First!  Don't even wipe the sleep out of your eyes or get out of bed before picking up your drug--- err, Nintendo game system-- and start your day of electronic addiction!

Walk around hunched over your stupid toy as you fix breakfast, and don't let your eyes wander away from the screen until you manage to grope your way to the living room, where you can stick it into a console and transfer the mesmerizing but stunningly vapid and pointless pretty images to a larger screen!

Then flop down on the couch in a posture which will play havoc on your spine (don't worry, you won't feel the effects until later, so it doesn't really matter) and idle away the hours of your life pretending to do something while your brain and muscles atrophy and life passes by outside your window (it doesn't matter- there's nothing out there but sunshine and people and other non-electronic stimulus, which means it's all boring and pointless and lame and doesn't even come with a cool soundtrack or extra lives like that game does!)

When you finally do get enough of your drug of choice, don't notice that another day that you'll never get back has passed you by, because nothing outside your cocoon had any meaning to you anyway- after all, it didn't include a single jumping cartoon character or castle or battle or anything that is really worthwhile!

(By the way, if this advertisement wasn't quite depressing enough for my readers, please check out the comment section.  There really is no hope for the future.)

TV "Everywhere." Because really, what else is there?

I guess we are all supposed to be jealous of this zombie idiot's ability to endlessly watch tv as he strolls through what he laughingly calls "life."  No matter where he goes, his eyes are fixed to that screen, gazing at everything from Game of Thrones to ancient Seinfeld episodes to Back to the Future.....

Personally, I'll never understand what could possibly be attractive about staring at a phone like one of the freaking Walking Dead, oblivious to the world around you as you lose yourself in whatever witless crap you used to have to stop watching for a few moments because you left the house for some reason.  Thank goodness THOSE days are over, huh?  Now it's all television, all the time, which just leaves me wondering....why DID you leave your house, moron?  Because you could?  You sure don't look like you're about to accomplish anything beyond a crick in your neck (and premature blindness caused by thousands of hours of gazing at a glowing screen.  Please,  There is a G-d, isn't there?)

The only way this commercial ends well is if this drooling jackass walks in front of a doubledecker bus and gets squished like a ripe grape, him and his g-d-mned addiction shaped like a phone.  Loser.

Breathe Right, or go viral. I guess.

Because it's 2017, nobody thinks it's at all intrusive for this little girl to be making a YouTube video of her mother while she's sleeping.  Just keep taping your mom, isn't it hysterical that she's having trouble breathing and is snoring, boy does she need help- and the attention of as many viewers as we can find!  "Like" my post, everyone, and don't forget to Subscribe to my page, #StupidMomGaveMeAPhone!

It would be nice to imagine that in this commercial's sequel, we see Daughter lose her data plan for being so stunningly disrespectful- at least by 20th century standards.  But it's 2017.  This is just what people do now.  It's perfectly normal.  Really.

We are, on the other hand, right on par with Mexico.....

At least we can be assured that the people coming across the border looking for a better life won't turn on the tv for the first time in their new American home and instantly sneer at the poor quality of our commercials.  Not if this is any example of the junk they are currently being subject to back home.

Heck, I can see commercials like this as one of the reasons why people would flee to the United States.  Sorry, Dreamers- we may have more job opportunities, but our ads are just as rank and insulting.

In which we fall even farther behind Canada.....

American advertising agencies fully intend to start making commercials like this as soon as they've run out of drooling "Real People Not Actors" to gush over Chevrolets, zombies who need need need the latest SmartPhone because the one they bought last month Isn't Quite Good Enough Anymore, and middle-aged jackasses looking for magic pills to cure the slightest annoyance preventing them from living their lives in absolute 100 percent comfort at all times.

Soon as all that's done, we'll start putting out commercials like this.  Promise.

Sorry I asked, Grampa....

Does anyone think it really makes sense that granddaughter's innocent little "just like you, grampa?" comment should serve as a segue into grampa explaining the details of his lung illness?  Holy crap, grampa, she's like four years old.  When she says "just like you," the most you should reply is "yes, but I'm taking medication to make me breathe better."  She doesn't need to hear the freaking pitch you memorized from the commercial before you pushed your doctor to prescribe whatever the hell this ad is trying to sell us.

I don't care what Home Depot says. You don't got this.

I've been in a Home Depot maybe 500 times in my life, and not once has anyone walked up to me to ask me if they could help me find what I was looking for.  Maybe I needed to stand in front of stacked piles of former trees with a stupid, lost look on my face in order to attract attention.  I suspect that if this had worked, the Home Depot guy would have been irritated when I told him that I was just trying to decide which of the 1500 light bulb options were right for me- "oh no, I'm not here to buy $6000 worth of wood and tools so I can hurt myself in a hundred different ways, I just need a few light bulbs...."

But of course Amazing SuperSuburbanDad, being hit over the head with the hammer of Inadequacy and realizing that having a job which pays for this great house in the suburbs, the trophy wife and the kid is suddenly not good enough, figures that the credit rating that bought all that stuff can buy him the skills to build a treehouse, too (a treehouse which suddenly must be built because his son has got it into his head that Dad knows how to build one, or its awesome that he has a friend whose dad knows how to build one, or something.  I'm not sure what is really going on there, but if I have it right, what the kid learns at the end is that all he has to do to get what he wants is to casually mention that Cody's  Dad Got One For Cody.)  He just needs the right materials.  So the Home Depot guy, spotting him as an easy mark from across the store, quickly convinces him that even though he can't boil an egg without setting the kitchen on fire he's perfectly capable of handling heavy materials (including a power saw- I can see this ending well) and putting together a treehouse twenty feet above the ground...well, if nothing else, it should make an amusing afternoon for the neighbors...

Naturally the guy who can't find his ass with both hands and a flashlight manages to slap together a virtual mansion of a treehouse in no time at all, and without losing a single finger in the process.  Which makes me wonder why anyone learns carpentry when all one really needs is a few minutes with a Home Depot guy and the willingness to spend a huge chunk of money on tools you'll use exactly once because you couldn't bear the thought of your son not realizing Daddy Can't Do Absolutely Everything.

But hey, at least he finally got some practical use out of that enormous pickup truck he bought for some reason last year.

Saturday in the park, mugged by another dumb Verizon Commercial

1.  How many total losers can you get to stand around in the middle of a park to listen to a Verizon spoakschoad make a fool of himself if they think that there's a slight chance that they might show up on television later?  Apparently that number is in the dozens.  Or maybe the crowd in this ad is made up of handpicked Not Actors who flunked the Chevy commercial audition because they didn't drool and squeal enough over the looks-like-every-other car they were being shown.

2.  Just imagine- the guy who wrote this ad thinks it's clever.  You can just tell.  He probably presented the idea to a group of mentally ill squirrels and they didn't respond by tearing his face off, so he figured "hey, that's a good sign, people will find this amusing."

3.  The only way this commercial ends well is if the crowd starts booing or just walks away in disgust at the wannabee standup's sad attempt to be funny while admitting that yep, Verizon set up those enormous letters in the middle of the park and asked people to gather around.....for a fifteen-second sales pitch and a bad joke which didn't get better with repetition.  Otherwise, it's watching it is a waste of time.  But at least we didn't have to set up those letters or stand around around for twenty minutes waiting for the director to tell us we could start pretending to be interested.  So that's something anyway.

I want to be a "Social Media Manager!"

Seriously, it sure looks to me as if Lilly has just landed the easiest job on the planet, if it really does consist of sending out one-sentance alibis to disgruntled customers she doesn't even have to talk to. She even has Grammarly to help her- meaning that she quite literally needs no expertise at all to do her "job" (when the network goes down, she has absolutely no clue- yet it's apparently her "job" to respond to customer complaints that the network is down and to reassure them that someone- certainly not her- is working to fix it.  Please explain to me why an automated system couldn't do what she's doing, and much faster?)

And yet, when the day is over, she's asked if she had a tough day.  Holy crap, if that was a tough day, I wonder what an easy one looks like!

Happy Valentines Day from Amazon and Doritos!

1.  This is a perfect opportunity for you to re-evaluate this relationship, and your life in general.  Why are you so desperately afraid to be alone for a little while, when THIS is the alternative?  Instead, you are just going to do what you always do, which is rationalize- "he's usually not like this," "every guy on the planet acts like a disgusting eight-year old with food,"  etc.  And just sit there like a slug and ask your electronic friend to order Doritos.

2.  This is also a perfect opportunity for you to excuse yourself to go buy more Doritos.  Maybe you can use the time outside the house to, yes, re-evaluate that relationship and your life in general.  Maybe you'll admit that you've had enough of spending every Sunday sitting on the couch for seven hours while "your man" fills himself with grease and stares at the screen like a zombie.  Maybe you'll admit that you jumped the gun a bit because you hit 25 and you heard that clock ticking.  Maybe you'll realize that you want a bit more out of life than this, and he's NOT going to change, and in ten years he's going to be 50 lbs heavier and even more loathsome and there's still going to be football every Sunday.

3.  Just think- the way technology is going, we are only a few months away from Doritos automatically being ordered when his fingers hit the sensors at the bottom of the bowl.  They'll arrive by drone and just tip into the bowl, and he won't even notice he's eating a fresh supply.

4.  Why are you sitting there?  Oh right, I keep forgetting- the house.  The MRS degree.  It's Better Than Being Alone in This Scary World.  But is it?  Really?

Oh and BTW, what's "Atomic" about the Atomic Lantern?

Notice how so many of these late-night Only Available on TV products are sold as "military grade" by scruffy guys with tough voices who I'm pretty sure are all trying to convince us that they are veterans of Operation Desert Storm and not serial killers?  The guy in this ad "needs" a tough "lantern" (i.e. flashlight) because he has this habit of tossing them into the back of his pickup truck and driving for several seconds through rough terrain before stopping and using it again.  Jeesh, why not just leave it in the front seat with you, moron?

Anyway, this "lantern"- which is just four sets of LED lights made in China- is available for $19.99 with free shipping, and if that isn't good enough to get you rushing to your phone, you can get a seconed one "for just an extra fee."  I really hope that the "extra fee" is another $19.99, because that would be hilarious- "you can get a SECOND Atomic Lantern for just double the price of one!  WOW!"

Anyway, the weird psychopath who likes to toss it into the back of his otherwise-practically-empty pickup before driving another twenty yards really likes it, plus you can encase it in ice or blind the fish in your aquarium with it, so I guess that's pretty cool.  Except I found another guy on Youtube who tells me that the only difference between this Atomic Lantern and the electric lanterns you can buy at Big Lots for $5 is that the Atomic Lantern is black and the ones at Big Lots are orange.  Hmm.

April 15 can't come fast enough...another stupid tax prep ad.....

Let's just ignore the fact that the only way that this guy knows how to research online tax preparation services is to use three laptops.  Because "New Window" is just not a thing in this guy's universe.  Whatever.

I'm more irritated at the thought that the guy in this ad can afford a nice house and three laptop computers, but he's spending his weekend looking for an online service that will do his income taxes for free.  Ugh, talk about penny-wise and pound foolish.  He's the kind of clown who is going to end up using LegalZoom to write up his Last Will and Testament because.....well, it's the cheapest option.

Moron.

Cookie Do. Less Solution, More Problem

Maybe the only thing the fattest nation on the planet needs more than another McRib season:  the perfect dessert to grab on the way home from another trip through the Taco Bell drive-thru.

Remember when eating cookie dough was something little kids did when there was some left in the bowl mom had used to mix it to....you know, make cookies?  Remember when eating large amounts of raw cookie dough was something comedy show writers imagined that heartbroken young women and single young men did because they were damaged or just plain infantile?

Of course, those were the days when watching hour after hour of television was seen as the last refuge of the friendless loser.  Today we buy cable packages which allow us to record thousands of hours so we never, never have to STOP watching tv, and gazing at it while sitting on buses or walking down the street is seen as perfectly normal, even desirable.  So, overflowing waffle cones stuffed with cookie dough?  Just par for the course.

I'm buying stock in pharmacutical companies that specialize in insulin tomorrow.  My comfy retirement is assured.

It's a Glade Air Freshener commercial. I'm not kidding.

No, seriously.  All this crap is here to sell you one of those things you buy to cover up the fact that you don't clean the bathroom as often as you really should.  I expect the woman in this ad to be entering the mystical, magical land of Lysol pretty soon, because spraying a house with chemicals is also easier than lugging out the freaking vacuum and mop.

This is just plain bizarre.

"What's Important" according to PNC Insurance....

Turns out that ninety percent of this advertisement is dad's fantasy of what his daughter's wedding will look like (and cost.)  He's daydreaming about his little girl's wedding day as he stares at her sitting on her bed.  The little girl looks to to be around six or so, meaning that wedding date is a little while off, but considering the scope of the wedding he's imagining I guess it makes sense for him to start saving now.

So when this guy looks at his little daughter and thinks of the future, he doesn't imagine his little girl graduating from Law School or starting her own business or traveling the world or writing the Great American Novel.  Nope.  Today she's his daughter, but someday she'll be somebody's wife, and she'll be out of his house (maybe he's just fantasizing about what he can do with the room once she's been handed off?)  That day of transition will come with a big, beautiful and very expensive party, but it will come.  And when it does, it will include all the stupid stereotypical showy frilly bells and whistles dad can afford.  So if he wants to show well to his neighbors and the family of the Appropriately Male and White Groom, he'd better open that investment account right now.

College?  Meh, whatever.  Maybe later, if he's got time and money and if he ever gets around to seeing his daughter as something more than a princess in a fairy story getting whisked off by her Prince Charming.  Hell, I'll be happy if he just stops staring at her and imagining her on her wedding night.  Stop that, creepy dad!

Bud Light Presents: Spuds Mackenzie, and another illustration of why I mute the Superbowl Commercials

In this truly reprehensible take on A Christmas Carol, an ugly young man who decides that he's just going to stay home and not spend yet another night drinking cheap, crappy watered-down beer with his loser friends is shown the error of his ways by the ghost of a done-to-death advertising campaign from the 1980s.

After admitting that he "has no excuse" for why he doesn't feel like yakking it up with the dumbass clueless idiots who try to fill every free moment of their lives with pointless blather and alcohol, the ghost of Spuds Mackenzie (remember him?  Me too.  Miss him?  Me neither) dangles before him and takes him on a journey of discovery in which it's revealed that while he has been hanging out at home, his friends have been busy being stupid at bars and bad neighbors in the suburbs.  If only he had made better choices, he could have been there when the illiterate morons he used to hang with couldn't finish a common phrase to win a trivia contest!  If only he had not blown off that party at his Nameless Friend's house, they wouldn't have run out of Bud Light, causing Rudy to fail to score with Suzy.  Or causing Suzy to make it home safely instead of driving her Kia into that van of kids trying to get home from the movies.  He could at LEAST joined in the fun when Bob got into that fight with the police officer who came to issue the noise complaint.  Or something.

At no point is it even suggested that this guy's friends really care one whit whether he's there or not, by the way.  They seem to be having a great time without him- probably because, despite the ad's tagline, it really is all about the beer, not the friendship.  We don't see them mourning his absence.  Nobody offers a toast to him and wonders why he became such a weirdo who wants to do something other than hang out and drink even when he doesn't have an "excuse."  They are just One Idiot Short, and that seems to be just fine with them.

Anyway, thanks to the dangling spirit of the Bud Light mascot, our Hero realizes what a terrible mistake he's been making whenever he's decided that he just doesn't feel like spending another evening drinking garbage with his drooling idiot friends.  So from now on he'll be there, and those friends will notice because he has the trivia answer and he brought another case of Bud Light-- and that's about it.   Pretty sad.

(Go Patriots.)

Verizon's "Half House" commercial makes NO sense

I suffered through this entire stupid commercial because I thought that at the end, the message would be "if you live in a space only half the size of the average house, a lot of companies will make you full price, and that's not fair.  But Verizon doesn't charge you for more than you get, so if you live in half a house, we only charge you half THEIR price...."

Instead, the whole "half-house" thing seems to be completely pointless.  Yes, these idiots live in "half a house," for whatever reason.  But Verizon doesn't discriminate against them "just" because they live in "half a house"- Verizon treats them exactly the way they treat their customers who live in normal, full-sized houses (or the kind of houses that exist on tv- massive, gleaming mansions.)  Verizon charges the half-house people every bit as much for cable as they charge people who live in those full-houses.  Um, yay Verizon?

(By the way, the "half-house" shown here is still bigger than my apartment, which is connected to the outside world by Verizon for a fee that makes me feel like I live in a big house...um, thanks again, Verizon?)