One of the Kardashians for Pretend Meat. I'll Pass.

 

Well, if America's favorite walking, talking mannequin thinks it's good, who are we to argue?

Seriously, though, this is the same vapid 3-dimensional magazine cover that was selling us "skinny teas" and "cleanses" roughly thirty seconds ago.  The same person who has pretty much come out and told us that she'll sell anything, to anyone, at any time, for the right price.  Why would I care what she thinks about chemicals pretending to be meat?

Is this the way people are supposed to watch their weight in 2022?  I just listened to an episode of Young Dr. Kildare on XM Radio Classics in which a woman wanted to lose 20 lbs. through SURGERY, but was instead put on a diet of - dry toast, grapefruit, lettuce and black coffee (you know, the standard Joke Diet that dominated most of the 20th century before someone noticed that eating more protein and fewer carbs allowed one to actually feel FULL while losing weight.)  Of course the diet worked- once Lionel Barrymore's character figured out that it "wasn't working" because the woman kept cheating with chocolate malteds- and we had our happy ending without surgery- but not before we got the ridiculous conversation between Dr. Kildare and the woman's husband, who resented being "forced" to exercise despite not needing to lose weight to be an ally to his wife, because seriously why would anyone exercise if they weren't trying to lose weight?  Ah, America in the 1940s....

That being said...I'll be off on my annual beach vacation starting tomorrow, so sadly this is the last blog post until the second week of August....based on the view counter, nobody will notice anyway, but I thought I'd just throw that out there.  Enjoy the archives till I get back!

GOLO is yet another example of Expensive Nothing for Sale

 

"I've tried detox, I've tried teas, I've tried pills..." have you tried Calories In, Calories Out, Denise?  I mean, now that you've tried all the stupid get-slim-quick gimmicks, have you considered using basic thermodynamics?

That's a pretty damned substantial-looking living room you've got there, Denise.  Did you ever consider a gym membership or a personal trainer?  Don't tell me you can't afford that, Denise.  

I'm told you lost 22 pounds in six months using GOLO.  Well, isn't that something.  That's what you could have done with a modest, 500-calorie-per-day deficit.  I'm glad you've taken the weight off and kept it off, but why did you need another gimmicky program to do it?  You achieved rather slow, sensible weight loss- which is remarkably simple if you just cut out processed carbs and sugar and consume more protein and healthy fats.  And move more.  There, I just gave you an absolutely trustworthy and safe way to lose a modest amount of weight in a medically safe way, and I didn't charge you a dime.  And if you had asked, I would have told you to skip the stupid "detoxes" (they are not a thing, you have organs that came with your body that detox for you, for FREE) and teas and pills, all of which almost certainly did you more harm than good and don't come close to addressing the real issue, which is the amount and type of food you eat and the amount of work you make your body do on a daily basis. 

Don't know much about GOLO, but if it involves healthy eating habits, then go for it.  But if it does, it seems to me that this is another case of Stone Soup Syndrome- putting a fancy label on common sense behavior and then giving the label rather than the behavior all the credit for positive results.  I guess you've got the money so it doesn't matter, but I wonder about people who are influenced to put this "system" on a credit card when eating less and better, and moving more, is really all they need. 

Skyrizi is a lot of expensive, dangerous nothing

Most Americans are overweight, and a third are obese.  The favorite past time of the great majority of Americans is watching television or surfing the internet or (if they are really "ambitious," doing both at the same time. But not a single user of Skyrizi is anything short of a young, svelte athletic type* who is constantly on the goal with their mountain biking, swimming and overall just being outdoors with friends.  Is there a correlation between being healthy and active and having bad skin, or what?

Anyway, in the pursuit of ridding yourself of unslightly rashes more and more Americans with solid gold insurance plans are partaking in this extremely expensive ($30 k per year) series of injections which "may increase risk of infections and Tuberculosis" and maybe you shouldn't take if you "plan to or have recently received a vaccine" (any vaccine?  Even for the Illness that Shall Not Be Mentioned?  If you haven't received that vaccine and don't "plan to," what are you doing in the doctor's office in the first place?  Shouldn't you be ingesting horse de-wormers to rid yourself of that scaly red skin?  I bet you don't think the election of 2020 was stolen either!)

The real bottom line, though, is that I really hate this stupid song.  "Nothing is everything...I see nothing in a brand new way....I just got saved..." what the actual hell?  Get off my television already!

*ok, there is that one fat guy swinging his kid around.  He's still being very active.  Not one shot of people just enjoying clearer skin while waiting for their McDiabetes at the drive-thru or bingeing on Tiger King?

Those Bamboo HR ads....

 

Especially the ones on the radio always feature clucking idiots who, before BambooHR came around, were still keeping receipts in shoe boxes and (presumably) using an abacus to calculate payroll taxes.  Because technology didn't exist until this particular program, apparently. 

Oddly enough, the industrial age managed to give way to the internet age without missing a beat despite the lack of BambooHR, regardless of what this company wants us to think.  We had these things like electronic calculators, computers, word processing and payroll software way before BambooHR came along to save us from the avalanche of paper they would like us to imagine existed before this Amazing Thing Called Paperless Accounting was invented by BambooHR.  Funny how we missed this Renaissance in office management that just happened a few years ago and not back in the 1980s like we thought.  Memory is a weird thing, isn't it?

And I'm not even going to get into the rather blatant anti-labor messaging imbedded in ads for companies like Bamboo HR, Bambi, Indeed....they all involve the Immense Sad of being an Executive who must deal with whiny, unappreciative minions---err--employees- who demand things like decent working conditions, living wages and time off, like they don't understand the glories of Capitalism or share in the dreams of their benevolent bosses who "gave" them their jobs in the first place (because remember kids, Jobs are gifts handed out like candy to people who are supposed to be grateful for the opportunity to continue to purchase food and shelter.)  I'll save that for next time.

Those Shopify Ads....

 

I swear, every small business in the United States was started in someone's garage or a kitchen crockpot.  Either that, or the people in these Shopify commercials have zero interest in even ATTEMPTING to tell a unique, compelling story about why they started their business, let alone why I should give a flying damn. 

I mean, seriously.  You started your business in your garage, or in a kitchen crockpot.  That doesn't tell me why I should want to start a business, let alone why I should want to patronize yours.  Get over yourselves, people.  99 of the Small Businesses Built on your Dreams and supported by Spotify will not exist two years from now.  Don't care now, won't care then. 

Mark Levin and Carshield. Should've seen this coming.

 

So when this smarmy a$$clown isn't encouraging insurrections, promoting Stop the Steal BS, or trying to convince gullible mouth-breathers that Trump is the Second Coming, he's peddling Car Shield, everyone's favorite non-insurance that promises to Cover all Covered parts and Covered labor Just Don't Ask what's Covered until you sign up and give us your credit card number.  Why am I not surprised?  

Want to "take advantage" of this "limited offer?"  But hurry, because this "opportunity" to get "coverage" is only available "during the current decline in the economy" which, if you've paid attention, has been going on for as long as CarShield has been ripping people off.  Which is to say, as long as CarShield has been in existence.  Just like Mark Levin has been a conspiracy-peddling, lying creep for as long as he's been on the radio.  Yeah, these two totally belong together. 

Trulicity: Because the concept of controlling your diet is soooo Fatphobic!

 

1.  "Trulicity should not be your first medication for Type 2 diabetes."  Translation:  "This drug should be your last resort, after you've refused to sensibly restrict your diet to assist that much less dangerous but less invasive drug your exasperated doctor put you on in the first place- which, by the way, he did after you refused to take your health seriously and sensibly restrict your diet.  If it sounds like we're going in circles, well, your doctor feels the same way."

2.  "Do not take if you are allergic to Trulicity."  No S--t, Sherlock. 

Optima Tax Relief: Eric's (very familiar) Story

 

Eric's story is one that could happen to any of us who fail to pay our fair share.  Let's all root for Eric and hope he gets the "relief" that he "deserves."

Fifteen seconds in-- "I tried to make payments..." Yeah, we've all heard this from people who owe money:  "I wanted to pay it back, I tried to save the money, I intended to cut you a check, I was waiting for my tax return..." blah blah blah, as if Stated Intentions paid the bills.  It's remarkably easy to make payment plans, to write down a budget, to set up a Schedule- but when it comes to actually parting with your money, you found that more difficult, didn't you, Eric?  And the mean old IRS didn't seem willing to take into account that you had all these great intensions.  Because they're mean.

"The IRS wasn't satisfied with Eric's efforts..." any more than my landlady would be satisfied with my "efforts" to pay the rent if they didn't result in....the rent getting paid.  Funny how that works.

"They're putting a lien on my home, my income..." yes, Eric.  That's what happens when you take the money you are supposed to be using to pay your taxes to buy other stuff instead.  If you won't pay voluntarily, the money needs to be taken involuntarily.  This is called Life, Eric.  Not quite sure why it seems so threatening and arbitrary to you.  

"Optima Tax Relief is A+ rated by the Better Business Bureau."  The BBB is not a government agency.  It's a rating service that depends on advertisement, the Chamber of Commerce, and ignorance to be taken as a valuable gauge of trustworthiness.  I'm constantly amazed at how many people think that it's some kind of official, nonpartisan, nonbiased judge of good business practices.  I care about as much about the BBB's rating of any company as I do about how many stars another company has on Yahoo Reviews.  They are equally trustworthy. 

So I guess that in the end, Optima Tax Relief got Eric out from under the burden he created for himself, so Eric can go right back to being a scofflaw living off his neighbors- who, I presume, are actual taxpayers- until he finds himself the "victim" of the IRS once again.  Another happy ending, right?

Indeed stretches credulity to the point where it snaps back and blinds everyone.

 

So this woman was working from home, but she's so irritated by her roommate's new hobby that she is not only looking for a new (presumably in-person) job, but she's "willing to relocate."  She's willing to pack up and move out- and maybe violate her lease, and say goodbye to her friends- rather than stand up to her roommate and set down some ground rules for an apartment she is presumably paying half for?

There's fear of confrontation.  And then there's this woman.  Jeesh grow a spine, lady.

(By the way, does her roommate also work from home?  If so, doesn't this require her to actually concentrate on work rather than her stupid noise-making hobby for eight hours a day?  If not, doesn't that mean she still has the apartment to herself eight hours a day?  Sense this does not really make.)

Medishare: Health Insurance for Religious Bigots

 

Commercials for this horrible company are really polluting XM Radio this summer, so I decided that I had to stop just zoning out on the cheery sing-song sales pitch that never seems to stop and actually address this garbage.   So thanks again, YouTube, for providing a tv version of this gawd-awfulness.

For those of you who have never heard of Medishare, it's a network of medieval-minded, hand-wringing idiots who think The Handmaid's Tale is a Utopian look at a promising future and who think that the Affordable Health Care Act was just a Communist conspiracy created by Obama when he wasn't trying to replace the Bible with the Quran in America's schools.  As the woman in this ad who clearly had her brain sucked out of her skull case with a straw because it was getting in the way of her being a good incubator explains, it doesn't have to follow those awful awful laws that have regulated health insurance since 2010 because technically it's not a health insurance company, it's just a friendly group of book-burners who have agreed to pool their money to "share" the burden of medical bills that don't include abortion or contraception (sorry for all the cursing) and don't even ask about gender reassignment surgery/drugs seriously don't even go there.  It's a way for magic sky monster-fearing, tongue-clucking, church-going-because-your-neighbors-keep track harpies to avoid risking actually paying for medical care of which they don't specifically approve to people whose beliefs don't perfectly align with their own.

In other words, it's just another example of the celebration of tribalism that these goofy grovelers-for-show revel in.  If there's anything that these jagoffs hate more than people who don't think exactly like them, it's the concept of shared sacrifice.  You just know that Medishare appeals to people who live in constant dread that they might accidentally do something that benefits someone who doesn't march in lockstep with their favorite version of myths that arose in the twilight of the Bronze Age.  You can't spell "Society" without "Socialism," after all.  

Whoever the hell Karen LeBlanc is, she sure as hell isn't interested in helping anyone who doesn't use the correct translation of the correct religious life manual pay their medical bills.  I'm just wondering how long it's going to be before the cretins who run Medishare branch out to provide Not-Car-Insurance for self-proclaimed christians- I mean, surely there are millions of pre-Enlightenment-minded mouth-breathers just south of the Ohio River who would object to helping pay the claims of Heathens if they knew there was an alternative.  And they need something to keep what is laughably referred to as their brains occupied until they can get to work reversing the Great Steal of 2020 now that the Plandemic has run it's course.  

Is Quora is the worst of Tiktok, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all in one big dumb package?

 

Everyone knows what Quora Digest is.  It's where questions nobody ever asks are posted to fish for responses from bored losers who then engage in a boring Battle Royale to out-BS each other with their totally made up "Real Life Experiences."  The "winner" is the one who ends up with the most Upvotes, and the prize is Internet Karma.  I guess.

Quora is where you get queries like "what's the dumbest thing you've ever seen on an airplane?" where the first responses are things like "they were charging $4.50 for ten Pringles" but within an hour or so you've got posters insisting that they saw the stewardesses having sex in the lavatory while the pilot's 3-year old was manning the cockpit.  "What's the bravest thing you saw your dad do?" starts with "he yelled at an unfamiliar dog to scare it away from me" and turns into "he took down five members of Al-Quaeda with a plastic fork as they launched an assault on my Middle School."  

Anyway, you know all this if you ever made the mistake of subscribing to Quora, and apparently if you ever made the mistake of subscribing to Quora you are still subscribed to Quora no matter what you do because I've been reading more and more articles lately about how people who try to Unsubscribe either have their requests ignored or get error messages in response to their request.  Of course they can just trash the Daily Article links, if they aren't already completely addicted to the Tall Tales of the Lonely and attention-starved.  And if they are...seriously, therapy is still a thing.  So is actual socializing with actual people in actual real life.  Something to consider, at least. 

Dave is Nobody's Friend

 

There seems to be no end to these "build your (crappy, broken) credit by (doing what you did to destroy your credit in the first place:) taking out small loans that encourage you to be nonchalant about paying them back because heck they are so small" services.  I imagine that the lure of getting a quick hundred to five hundred dollars in a pinch is stronger during these tough times, but telling people that there's some virtue in living beyond their means is even more vile as spending power evaporates and a larger portion of the population finds itself living on a knife's edge of paycheck-to-paycheck stress.

There's actually nothing attractive about a company which "offers" you a bridge loan disguised as "early access to your paycheck" even if it technically offers this money "interest free."  That's because instead of charging interest- which requires expensive software - these bloodsuckers just encourage "tips" in the same manner that check cashing/pawn shop services charge fees to give you your money even just a few hours in advance.  The "tips" are completely voluntary, except that you're made aware that if you opt out, you'll soon find this awesome "service" unavailable to you.  So instead of paying a high interest rate on what is, simply put, a payday loan, you pay an upfront fee which is "conveniently" subtracted from the loan (and yes, it IS a loan, you are NOT getting your paycheck "early" any more than the nice people at H&R Block gave you a Rapid Refund.  In both cases, you got a loan based on the money you had coming to you and in exchange, you gave up that money or some share of it and THEN SOME.)

I expect to see more and more of these places pop up like ants at a picnic as we slip into our inevitable COVID Inflation Recession, so I also expect I'll be commenting a lot about Dave and every other BS "get your money fast" payday loan, annuity settlement, etc. scam until the economy readjusts, probably in the third quarter of 2023.  It's going to be a long haul.  Good luck, everybody- and please, let's get educated on the high cost of quick money.   As I've said before, it's expensive to be poor, but there are pitfalls you can avoid to make it less so.  Dave is definitely one of them.

Cirkul is the ultimate in First World Products

 

Look, pretty much everyone needs to drink more water.  The great majority of Americans walk around every day dehydrated, and we tend to react to our thirst by misinterpreting it as hunger and consuming excess calories (yes, Dehydration is strongly linked to the obesity epidemic.)  A large percentage of headaches, body aches, muscle pulls, etc. are also caused by dehydration.  Every day millions of Americans respond to a headache by taking two pills and a glass of water- when all they need is the glass of water.  Americans (including me. Especially me.) drink way too much coffee, which contributes to dehydration, which again we respond to by eating and/or taking drugs.  

In short, this is a real problem that calls for a real solution.  But because this is the year 2022, the solution "drink more water" isn't good enough, because water is "boring" (and if it doesn't taste good out of the tap, you aren't going to drink it no matter how aware you are that you should.)  Bottled water is expensive- it has not been spared by inflation, believe me.  Brita filters are expensive.  I'd LOVE to have one of those water delivery services deliver 20 gallons or so of water to my own personal cooler systems every month, but that's not going to happen.  So anything that encourages people to look beyond the inconveniences and consume more water is going to get a pretty strong pass from me.

This is just weird, though.  It's a water bottle with a little flavor filter that can be adjusted to make the flavor being added stronger or weaker by turning a plastic dial that I'm sure breaks after a dozen or so uses and even if it doesn't, the fruit flavor powder stuff doesn't dissolve properly and starts clogging it- again, after a dozen uses or so.  And then you've got another addition to the landfill that won't break down for a few million years.  And for some reason- I suspect there's a "cool/hip/trendy" factor here- this is superior to just adding a squirt of flavoring to your regular water bottle or getting a bottle with a wider mouth so you can add a few slices of fruit...I suspect there's also a "convenience" factor here, and as we all know Americans Are Way Too Busy To Do Anything These Days, including handling a water bottle that isn't cool/hip/trendy/convenient.

I'm not going to be purchasing this stupid gimmicky nonsense.  I like flavored water, but I can buy flavored water or add my own flavor, I don't need a special bottle with a dial and a special set of flavorings I'll have to be ordering all the time because I know Me, I'll stop doing that and this will just become another water bottle with a stupid dial on the top.  But you do you- and if you're a typical dehydrated American, you'll get caught up in what this ad suggests is the Super Awesome World of Exciting Flavored Water.  At least you'll be less dehydrated, and maybe a bit less likely to try to treat your thirst with a two-for-$5 special at Burger King or a grease bucket from KFC.

Burger King's offer to people who feel like life takes too long to wrap up?

 

I mean, really.  This ad seems to be aimed at viewers who are frustrated with the slow pace of their diabetes.  If you "need 2" give your journey toward bad health- and the grave- then this is for you; for just five dollars, you can consume 1500 calories of grease, salt and sugar inside of ten minutes.  And bonus:  you'll be stripped of all that nagging ambition to take a walk or get some other form of exercise, as this carbohydrate loading/blood sugar spike  is all but certain to leave you exhausted and wanting nothing more than a nap once the crash comes.  Just to be safe, I'd wash it all down with a large Coke or maybe a milkshake.  Carpe Diem like this and you'll cut back on the number of Diems you will have to Carpe.

What's next, Insomnia Coffee? Paper Cups and LIDS?

 

I'm posting on this completely inoffensive commercial for two reasons:

First, I just came back from a week in Ireland, Wales and England and visited Insomnia Coffee several times and found each one a clean, well-maintained, attractive shop with decently-priced food (I had a very nice cheese panini and fudge brownie in Dublin- hey, I was on vacation, which meant that every day was a cheat day) and polite, efficient staff.   The coffee is much better than Starbucks, though that's not saying so very much- everyone who takes their coffee black knows that Starbucks is more of a last resort than a first choice, unless you care more about your cup being hot for three hours than how the coffee actually tastes.  For taste, it's Dunkin Donuts, McDonald's, and then Every Other Place in a distant third.  

(Except that 7-11 Coffee is even worse than Starbucks, for the opposite reason:  If Starbucks is too bitter and excessively hot, 7-11 is too weak and never hot enough.  Ok rant over, back to praising Insomnia Coffee.  I'm entitled to use this space as a Shout Out now and then, right?)

Second, I thought this ad was funny in its presentation of a Drive Thru as some kind of amazing Game Changer in the world of retail, probably because I live in the United States where pretty much every food establishment catering to people in a hurry already had Drive Thrus before 2020 and the outliers are scrambling to catch up now.  Where these things rare in the UK before the Pandemic that Shall Not Be Mentioned?