What the Rich White Kids will be doing this summer, I guess

Wow, check out the awesome coolness, Rich Kids!  While your hedge fund manager parents are away and your nannies are at Whole Foods stocking up on $30 bottles of wine, you've got the run of the mansion to play laser tag along the winding staircases and cavern-sized living rooms!

And if for some weird reason you feel like going outside, that's cool too!  Just head out on to the massive lawn and run between the Audis on the street as you get "coached" by the little voice strapped to your chest.  Don't get confused, that's not your iPhone8, its that other toy you got your "parents" to buy for you to get you off their backs for a few minutes!

So have a great few hours pretending to shoot your friends before getting back to staring at that iPhone or maneuvering a character in a video game on that massive screen in the basement!  And a quick note to the "parents"- hey, at least if you do buy this set, your kids might find themselves outside once in a while this summer!  Wouldn't that be something!?

Ugh, Dads really need to stop thinking of their daughters like this.

This is the second insurance commercial I've seen this year which features a dad looking at his little girl and remembering all the good times he had with her in the back yard and then imagining her wedding day in that same back yard.  Two insurance commercials produced by two different insurance companies, but both with the same message: that when dads look at their daughters, they think about giving her away to an appropriately white, appropriately tall young man who will marry her in that back yard.

I'm not a dad, but is this really all dads think about- their daughters being young women in wedding gowns gazing adoringly at the young man they are going to have sex with that night?

And what does any of this have to do with insurance, anyway?

Questions for Chevy's "Real People, Not Actors"

1.  What incentive to these loathsome, camera-sucking little tools have to obey the bidding of the Chevy spokeschoad?  Were they promised a good truck if they won the "contest" by reading off the awards, or just a Chevy?

2.  "That's a lot of pressure...." um, why?  Is this like the Hunger Games of commercials, where the person least proficient in reading off awards quickly is "eliminated?"  It sure sounds like there's an award being offered to the best reader.  Is there a reason we, the audience, have not been clued in?

3.  Can we all agree that these "Real People, Not Actors" Chevy commercials went to seed quite some time ago, and if we aren't making snarky comments on blogs we are creating parody videos for YouTube making fun of them?  Can they just go the hell away now, because all of these disgusting knobs pretending to be super-excited over Chevy trucks aren't the least bit convincing.  They aren't even attractive or compelling in the slightest way.  They are just camera whores, and we know it- so why can't these ads just go away already?

Booking.com's great big slap across the face of every teacher in the United States

"There's nothing more important to me than my vacation."

Oh yes, I can see that, Ms "Teacher."  I mean, it's clearly a lot more important than teaching, or even keeping the kids in your charge safe- you've got one kid duct-taped to a chair, and another in danger of drowning in an enormous fish tank.  While you stand there like a zombie on valium.

Please, get to that vacation to Mexico or wherever.  And when you get back, find another career.  The kids deserve a hell of a lot better than you.

Wow, this woman has totally given up. Which means she should call me.

I'd like to interrupt this woman's nervous proposal of shared nights with her dog to suggest that if that gigantic house is hers free and clear, and she's really this lonely, I know a blogger who would not mind meeting her in person.  She should reply to this address if she's at all interested.

I mean, I can definitely overlook the obvious insanity- again, if she owns that house free and clear.  We have a lot in common- we both like big houses, and coffee.  She can have all the Coffee Mate, as I take mine black.  I'll even take that dog for a walk now and then.

Nissan presents: How to pass the asshattery on to the next generation

I guess the "joke" here is that the little girl riding the Big Wheel is a "black sheep" because that Big Wheel is black and not pink like it's supposed to be because she's a little girl.

Meanwhile she doesn't need to share the sidewalk- others get out of her way to let her pass because hey, that black Big Wheel is so totally cool and awesome.  Just like her mom doesn't need to be at all concerned about anyone else on the road, because she's driving this hot car after all.  So she can cruise through the suburbs with her eye on her daughter instead of what is in front of those several tons of steel and glass she's driving.  Way too cool to care.  Hey, she'll know right away if HER kid is in danger, so it's all good, right?

It's also totally fine that the little girl bangs that Big Wheel into one of a dozen or so cans of black paint inexplicably left out in the middle of her driveway (seriously, what the hell?)  Because she's a black sheep and a rebel and oh man forget it this just isn't worth the effort.

Xfinity "challenges" us to ramp up our addiction to electronic stimulus

Because what these pasty, fat, electronics-addicted losers really want and need is More More More TV Everywhere All The Time.  Which is why they are outside yet gathered around huge flat screen tvs listening to some spokeschoad for Xfinity sell them on the idea that, well, More More More TV Everywhere All The Time would make their non-lives worth living.

Hey, here's an idea, you f--ing zombies:  You are outside.  Why not just take a walk?  Why not visit a museum or park, and while you're at it why don't you take your kids and grandkids with you and actually watch them play instead of just being in their vicinity while you stare at your g-d d--med phones?

Oh right, I forgot- its because you've bought in to the idea that no matter WHAT you are doing, it can be made better by adding television.  The world outside your house is scary, so you should spend as much time inside watching television.  When you DO have to venture out into the Big Scary World, bring your television with you so you can pretend to be in your safe home.

There is simply nothing out there that's as awesome as thousands of hours of television, live or recorded.  And now you can stream it into your brain no matter where you are, thanks to Xfinity.  Don't forget to drop them a tweet thanking them for feeding your insatiable addiction to Nothing.

If you don't drive a car, the Terrorists Win. The General told me so.

"Woah, what's with the bike?  What are you, a reject from the 19th century or something?"

"Um, no, I just can't afford car insurance after my accident."

"Oh, whew!  For a minute there I thought that you were actually getting into saving tons of money, engaging in healthy exercise, and working to reduce your carbon footprint! If that had been the case, we could not be friends anymore because man would that be lame!"

"No, I don't want to ride a bicycle to work- its not a tree-hugging loser!  I just can't afford car insurance!"

"Well, I've got a solution for you- go to The General online and get cut-rate, virtually-no-coverage but totally legal car insurance.  Then you can dump that stupid bike thing in the trash where it belongs and get back to being normal and driving into work by yourself, spending thousands of dollars a year on gasoline, parking, and repairs."

"Thanks very much!  I'll never ride this ugly, non-polluting, non-motorized Not A Car ever, ever again!"

Mommy just loves her Philly yogurt "breaks." And I just love these visits to 1959.

Enjoy the 4.3 minutes you have to yourself, lady- because then it's back to taking care of "your" baby while hubby does whatever the hell he was doing before he graciously offered to do "your" job for those 4.3 minutes.

Yes, relax happily while you consume that dish of yogurt and fruit- but only for 4.3 minutes.  Then its time to get off your butt and raise that kid all by yourself, at least until your next scheduled break.  And don't forget to lavish praise on that husband of yours, who after all isn't really required to do any of this- his "job" was completed when he got you pregnant after all.

Oh, who am I kidding with all of this snark?  Chances are that Mommy will be gushing to her friends for the next several days how Her Awesome Wonderful Man actually took car of "her" baby for almost five whole minutes while she took in nutrition, and she barely even had to ask!!

Shut up, Jimmy, or youse be sleepin with de fishes!

Want to know what is only about 2000 times more annoying than hearing someone snore?  Listening to this braying jackass yell at me from my Sirius/XM radio several hundred times a day about how I "gotta get a Zyppah."  Naturally he does it in a fake, thick New York accent which I guess is supposed to be down-to-Earth and maybe vaguely threatening (is he gonna bust my kneecaps if I don't get a Zyppah, whatever the hell that actually is?) but just comes off as ear-bleeding obnoxious and downright insulting.

Hey, advertisers- I'm going to buy a Zyppah from a noxious windbag who sounds like he should be falling off a bar stool in the Bronx at around the same time I'm going to take insurance advice from "Big Lou" because hey, he's a drug addict who is on his second trophy wife (seriously, his commercials come right out and say this.  I'm not kidding.)  In other words, never.  Now, stop making me jump up and change the damn channel during every commercial break.  Dump "Jimmy" to the curb already and get yourself a spokesperson who doesn't make my ears bleed and my blood pressure skyrocket.

Here is my not-very-nice  letter to Zyppah:

Body: I hope you and your company burn in hell for subjecting us to Jimmy From Zyppah every god damned commercial break on XM Radio. Your ear-bleeding insulting stupidity sucks and I would never patronize your company because of it.

And here is their not-particularly-sincere response (I don't want to meet anyone who finds Jimmy from Zyppah "hilarious," conceding that there are such people, which I'm not sure I do:)

Good Afternoon Sir,

Thanks for your feedback! Believe it or not, we get messages from customers every day who want to let us know that they find Jimmy hilarious. We understand that it isn't for everyone, but it certainly accomplishing our goal of drawing attention to the problem of snoring. All of our ads and all Sirius radio ads in general go through a rigorous screening process in order to ensure that they abide by all standards set forth by Sirius as well as the FCC. I apologize that you found the ad offensive, as it was never meant to be, except to offend snorers.
Thanks for your interest in Zyppah and I hope you have an awesome day.

Best wishes and I do hope this satisfies.
Karen Kraines, CSA
Zyppah

Capri Sun Presents: Latchkey Kids of the 21st Century

So are these kids only in communication with mom through video chat?  The only way they can get her attention is by threatening to kill themselves performing dangerous but highly shareable stunts and posting them to YouTube?

Where the hell is mom, anyway?  This stunt which turns into a plea for more Capri Sun juice boxes looks like it took a little while to set up.  Maybe mom is still relaxing on the couch enjoying her Philly Yogurt Me Time, under the impression that Daddy is on Temporary Parent Duty?

Where IS Daddy?  The kid doesn't even mention him.  Out of the picture already?

Do these kids even HAVE parents?  What the hell is going on here??

Oh Verizon, will you never stop giving me material?

Why nobody is ever, ever going to hire the insanely stupid woman in this ad:

1.  She has a very important job interview, but she's going to miss it because the subway she planned to take is twenty minutes late.  That's right, folks- she really really wants the job, but not enough to give herself ANY extra time to get there.  If she had a car, she might have been stuck in traffic.

If she really wanted that job, she would have planned to be an hour early and parked herself at a coffee shop across the street from the location of the interview.  This isn't freaking rocket science.  She does not really want that job.

2.  She thinks that she's going to save her job prospects by just calling in to the prospective employer.  Oh sure, lady, this is going to work really well.  Your call in from the subway platform is going to be much more impressive than, say, the person-to-person interviews the guy on the other end of the line is going to be conducting with job seekers who actually got their act together and managed to show up on time.  Might as well spend that first paycheck right now.

3.  She tells the prospective employer that she's a "people person."  Seriously, she comes right out and says that.  The cymbal crash which accompanies this makes perfect sense, though not for the reason that Verizon thinks.  It's basically the end of the interview.  I can't imagine ever being impressed by a job applicant who tells me "I'm a people person."  It's like being asked "what do you consider your greatest weakness" and responding "I'm kind of a workaholic, I tend to do everything my employer asks of me and never consider whether its really my job or if I'm getting paid for it, tee hee hee."

I'd be more likely to respond "Oh, you're a people person?  Me too- now if you'll excuse me, I have actual people waiting in my office who are so interested in working for me that they managed to get here in time for their interviews."

Or just tell her that I'm not a person especially impressed by hackneyed cliches OR job applicants with crappy planning skills.  Either works for me.

(BTW, how is the guy holding up the phone to make the interview happen going to prevent a train from approaching in the opposite direction and blocking his view of Stupid Woman on the other platform?  Is he going to order that train not to enter the station, just like he commanded Jackass Please Die Right Now "musician" to stop making a noisy nuisance of himself so Stupid Woman could talk to her potential employer?  I mean, what the hell?)

Un-Flipping Believable....but lots of people believe it anyway....

This guy brags on his radio commercials that he was "once so broke, I had my electricity turned off NINE TIMES!"  Yes, this is the guy I want to go to for advice on how to manage money and flip houses.

He's certainly has figured out how to make money in the largely unregulated property market, and it doesn't involve hard work or study.  Those things are for suckers like he used to be, when he was getting his electricity turned off NINE TIMES.  Only a total loser who doesn't share his beautiful vision of American Capitalism would work hard, live within one's means, and invest wisely when this guy has this book which is FLIPPIN' AWESOME and FUN TO READ to boot!

What you do is, see, instead of all that hard work and saving and investing, you send money to this carnival barker to attend his seminars and buy his DVDs and learn how to flip houses like a pro (because flipping houses is a profession now.)  He gets rich and famous.  Maybe you flip a house now and then, maybe you don't.  But let's not take our eyes off the main point- he gets rich and famous.

There's nothing new about any of this.  Late-night television has featured "Magic Real Estate Secrets" packages since before there were VHS tapes, never mind DVDs.  I can remember being offered standard audio tapes and a series of workbooks which would turn me into a Real Estate Wizard, Wall Street Genius, and Multilinguist fluent in Japanese and Mandarin inside of six weeks Or My Money Back Yeah Good Luck With That.  In High School I had a close friend become a cultist for a certain Sell Ridiculously Expensive Household Cleaners Door to Door pyramid scheme I won't mention by name here but which rhymes with Scamway.  Get Rich Without Work was invented the day the first person discovered that work was hard.   It's still the most attractive proposition out there, and if you don't believe me, check out your state's Lottery sales.

This Verizon ad really should end....

With this socially disfunctional jackass being run down by a truck or at least dumped by his girlfriend because his electronic addiction takes priority over EVERYTHING ELSE.

Seriously, we see this guy spend his ENTIRE DAY staring at his stupid hand-held drug of choice as the world goes on around him and without him.  He manages to get on buses and elevators- awkwardly- because a tiny part of his brain still operates like the warning lights in a well-equpped car to remind him that he still inhabits a damage-prone body and there are these other life forms around him he has to avoid.  He goes to theatres for some reason- I'm guessing because for a few more years going to theatres is something humans do and he's a human so there you go.  But he can't even pick his ass off the seat before consulting that G-d d--ned phone again....which means that, like I said, we really need to see that girlfriend dump his sorry butt.  Or push him in front of a truck.

Come on, Verizon, give me SOMETHING here.

Apple, making the world just a little bit dumber

Or you could just say it using your voice.  You know, in person.  Like in olden times, before you became a socially disfunctional hermit crab who doesn't have the first clue how to communicate with your fellow homo sapiens without using an electronic device.

Like people did for thousands of years before these things came along and made Conversation a Lost Art.  Thank goodness those days are over, huh?

Intellivision to the Rescue!

Since Mattel stopped making the consoles in 1990 after a very successful 12-year run, you probably don't remember these if you are under the age of forty.  I never owned one myself, but they were for a time Atari's only real competition in the home video game field.

Back in the 70s, the idea was that the home video game would replace the board game as the best way to keep families engaged with eachother instead of the images on the screen.  Mom, Dad, and Kids would compete in fun contests of skill by manipulating joysticks instead of dice or cards.  Innocent fun and all that.  And much better than the pathetic, zombie-like couch potatoes they were when they were just watching tv, never interacting in any meaningful way.

Ugh, can you imagine?  People used to spend up to two or three hours a night watching television.  Then Atari and Intellivision came around and instead they started spending an hour or two a few nights a week playing video games.  We sure were obsessed with glowing screens back then- if it hadn't been for Atari and Intellivision, I bet we'd still be spending hour after hour ignoring our families and staring at the tv.

This was in the late-70s.  Thank goodness things have changed so much, right?  Thanks for saving our society, Video Game Industry!

Nice Job, Hasbro.

Every once in a while I have to stop snarking on commercials and actually endorse one, because the message is just too good.  It doesn't even bother me that the games being featured indocrinate kids to be Good Little Capitalists and Breeders.

If I was married with kids, this is what my house would look like, except that the kids would be a lot better looking of course.  We'd be playing board games on the nights we weren't reading or just talking.  Nobody would be blathering away on cell phones and nobody would be texting or staring at a glowing screen.  Because as the ad implies, none of that involves living, just existing.

I see adults with kids in parks, at ball games, at the beach etc. all the time redefining "family time" to mean "people related to each other being in the same general location fiddling with and staring at electronic devices."  It's freaking heartbreaking, and it's also so repulsive to see such asshattery being normalized.  Is the "connectivity" addiction so damned powerful that people need to be forever putting their alleged loved ones on the back burner?  Aren't we all getting a little sick of playing second fiddle to a glowing box?  Why is someone who isn't there always a higher priority than someone who is?

Maybe I'm just in a mood because every day I have to be extra careful crossing streets, watching for people who think that self-driving cars are already a reality and its perfectly ok to text while they are in motion.  But I think its more than that- more and more I wonder why people even bother to pretend to be social animals when all they really want is to crawl into an electric cocoon and be left alone.   Or why such people went through the motions of getting married and having children if they weren't going to give spouses and kids any quality time beyond "lets go to the AT&T store and get you hooked up so you can leave me alone until you move out."  What the hell is going on here?

When you're watching racist McDonald's Commericals- there's a Big Mac for that!

You know what, never mind.  I could spend the next hour spilling out eight paragraphs of rant fixated on how a multi-billion dollar sludge factory owned by massively rich white people made rich by churning out poisonous but very cheap junk for poor black and white people thinks that the best way to appeal to its customers is through bad rap.  But I've got things to do, so I'll just focus on the revolting behavior of the people in this ad:

According to this loathsome two-minute wall of noise, there is a Big Mac for That if

1.  You're sitting in a library.  Because libraries just love it when patrons use them as a setting for eating hot, greasy food.  But hell, if you feel comfortable letting out a loud squeal of delight while sitting in a library, you probably don't give a damn about the other patrons anyway.  So please chomp down that Big Mac while blathering at high volume on your cell phone.  Because as far as you are concerned, society is for losers anyway.

2.  You're sitting on a bus.  See No. 1.  Everyone on that bus loves the smell of your food and the site of you jamming it into your face.  The bus company loves the mess and the vermin it attracts.  We all wish you'd just go back to yelling into your iPhone or playing your music with no headphones or with ear buds (same thing.)

3.  You find money in the dryer at the laundramat. Because I don't know about you, but the heavy smell of chemicals and lint really spike MY appetite.  Sometimes I go out of the way to eat dinner at the local 24-hour Wash and Dry.  Especially when the library is closed.

4.  A hot girl returns your text.  Because if you think you are going to land a date with your dream girl, the first thing you want to do is shove about half a pound of grease and carbs down your pie hole.  Try to make sure she's there to see you do it.  She's sure to swoon.

I think that the real message of this commercial is "no matter how big your mouth is, we've got a sandwhich you can shove into it if you open that mouth really really wide and really don't care who might be able to see you, you disgusting trashy slobs."

Tax Solutions: Let us help you become even bigger victims!

I don't know why all of these Duck Your Taxes commercials don't just cut out all the narration and just skip to the obvious punchline- "I'm a tax cheat and I got caught, oh noes what do I do now?"

Oh, right- because the message in all these ads is "the big bad Internal Revenue Service lives in a giant white castle and uses the power of the Evil Federal Government Run By Faceless Money-Hungry Socialist Bureaucrats to take YOUR money, and its coming after you so you need help call this toll-free number before it's too late!"

And in case you don't realize how late it really is, check out the digital clock, counting down the seconds until that knock on the door!

Of course, all of these tax cheats- err, I mean Honest Americans Who Are Being Victimized- live in big houses and have innocent, pretty wives and pretty children who are all made out of ticky-tacky and all look just the same, and who all just want to go about those pretty little lives in peace but can't because the Trolls at the IRS are hounding them to death oh please make it stop all we did was not pay our taxes, its not like we are criminals or anything!

I'm sure commercials like this do a great job massaging the sense of victimhood the tax cheats watching them desperately want to feel- they aren't bad people.  They are just Good, Decent, Hard-Working, Home-owning, Breeding Americans trying to Live the Dream but Can't Sleep at Night because the Government is Interfering Why Cant they focus on Defeating the Terrorists like they are supposed to this Must Be Obama's Fault?  If you think I'm exaggerating, do a Google search of "Complaints about Tax Masters" (a now-defunct company which spent years stealing money from would-be tax dodgers.)  They include things like "the government was hounding our small little business" and "instead of doing their job the IRS was picking on little guys like me," etc. etc. etc.  They would actually be hilarious if they weren't so pathetic.

And of course they all include testimonials like "they offered to settle my $80,000 debt for $27 and an upfront fee of $3500, but they LIED!"

Yes, the IRS makes mistakes.  When that happens, guess what you can do to address the problem besides hire a middleman like these scum-sucking pigs?  You can call the IRS and work it out.  In rare cases, you may need to hire a tax attorney- and if that's necessary, you hire someone local, not a damn voice on the phone you can't visit in his office, you morons.  Oh, but if you do any of those things, you might have to accept the reality that you aren't going to be settling that debt for pennies on the dollar.  Which means you don't get to victimize the society you are supposed to be doing your share to support.  No sympathy here.

Don't Worry, Trump Supporters- you can still earn that Advanced Degree in Dumb

Go to Prager University (you can do it without even getting up from your couch, since its an online "college") and you can get a "degree" by taking classes which explain

1.  Why Socialism takes countries which are prosperous and happy and turns them into crime, disease and-poverty ridden hell holes, *

2.  Why Global Climate Change is a China-and-Al-Gore-inspired myth designed to bring down the Bible-endorsed Capitalist System that God Intended us to live under,

3.  Why Athiests murder people all the time because if you don't believe in God there is no reason to be Moral,**

And so much more, all brought to you by exactly the person you'd look for for all the answers to the questions about life you've ever had- a Right-Wing Radio Yakker.  Especially now that the wonderful school you thought you'd be graduating from got shut down by the Libtards just because its founder was elected President and had to settle so he could go about keeping his promise to Make America Great Again.

*The video I embedded is a painfully obstuse five minutes featuring a "Brazilian Journalist" explaining how his country was well on its way to becoming a paradise filled with happy, successful middle class families and zero crime until The Evil Socialists came to power and created a dystopia of murder, poverty and high taxes for The Most Productive by attempting to create a social safety net (which was silly because like the journalist says, life was awesome in Brazil, why would anyone need a social safety net?)

**It must be endlessly frustrating for Prager and his ilk that Athiests make up such a tiny percentage of people in prison for committing violent crimes.  How could this be, since non-believers have no concept of an Ultimate Judgement after death?  My guess is that their answer is Shut Up, That's Why.