I'd switch, but I hate that stupid lizard even more

Full Disclosure: State Farm is my insurance company, and I've never had any serious complaints about their service. Whenever I have invested fifteen minutes to check out Geico I've been offered very uncompetitive deals and passed. My premiums are very reasonable, and when I got hit by an uninsured drunk driver some years back, State Farm took care of me.

All that being sad, this is a disgustingly clueless, insulting pile of steaming crud disguised as an ad for renter's insurance. First, when a baseball comes through the window of this guy's apartment his first thought isn't to quickly look outside to see who did it- you know, like any normal, functioning human being would. He doesn't even make the first effort to clean up the broken glass. No, it's all about contacting State Farm, and quickly.

Time out. We know this is an apartment in a rather substantial building, because "the girl from 4G" is about to be summoned (more about this later.) Would this guy's insurance company really be responsible for replacing the broken pane of glass? Even if the apartment management office didn't automatically take responsibility, how freaking low is this guy's deductible, that he's thinking State Farm is going to pay for this damage?

Ok, back to the commercial, because here's where it gets really really bad..

One of the renter's friends tries out the jingle by asking for a sandwich, which magically appears. Inspired, the renter requests that "the girl from 4G" is whisked away from her private surroundings to decorate his hovel. She appears, and seems not the least bit concerned that she's now apparently at the mercy of this doofus and his equally weird and worthless friends. Then, in what is (not surprisingly) a Howl Out Loud LOL moment to the knuckle-dragging glue-sniffers over at YouTube, one guy yells "And can I get me a Hot Tub?!" Of course, that magically appears too (creating more damage for the State Farm Agent to deal with.)

Assuming that this guy hasn't been harboring fantasies of getting his male friends into a hot tub, I think it's safe to infer that the tub is part of the "girl from 4G" plot point. Nice for her- not only is she transported against her will to an apartment full of half-witted, power-crazed jackasses who don't know what her name is, but the guys she finds herself with are now taking it for granted that she'll happily strip and climb into a tub with them. Not a lot of respect for female customers over there at State Farm, is there?

I'm not going to dump State Farm over this ad, not only because I get the best deal from them but also because EVERY substantial insurance company seems to be spending a lot of their customer's premiums to produce mind-numbingly stupid commercials. But I am more than a little irritated that my money played even a small role in the creation of this junk.

A little bit of everything except respect for our intelligence

1. Washed-Up Character Actor from the 1980s- Check.

2. Crowd of twentysomething jackanapes so ungrateful at having a job in an era of near-10 percent unemployment (adjusted to 17% when factoring in the people who have just given up) that they are willing to steal their employer's money by slacking off shamelessly- Check.

3. Sexist imagery (in this case, pompoms appearing from nowhere to be waved by the female coworkers)- Check.

4. Stern, grey-haired MALE boss asserting his position as Bull of the Herd by barking "JOHNSON!" (has anyone out there ever worked at an office in which the boss refers to you by your last name, with no prefix? Anyone?) -- Check.

5. Stern, grey-haired MALE boss congratulating Chief Slacker for coming up with a way to rob the business of productive work from it's employees, who are presumably being paid to work Sundays- Check.

6. Mindless cheering at male boss's stunningly predictable response to seeing his entire staff blowing off work for The Big Game (why do they "have" to work Sunday, anyway? If the work was so important, why is this slacking off even possible? I mean, what the heck?) --Check.

What kind of fantasy world is this, anyway? Why does the office have to be open on Sunday? What kind of coworker would risk his job setting up a projector to watch a football game when he's supposed to be working? What kind of coworker would practically GUARANTEE his dismissal by bringing beer into the office during working hours? What kind of boss would buy into this for a BUD LITE??

Most importantly (if the word "important" could ever really be used to describe anything that appears on this blog,) how can this ad sit well with the mass of unemployed or underemployed citizens previously mentioned? Here's a crowd of gainfully employed, good looking young people perfectly willing to risk dismissal rather than put in a few hours on a Sunday- and getting away with it. Great message, Budweiser. I'll remember it this Sunday, when I'm picking up a few extra dollars reading an SAT to a student instead of watching football.

But no, I won't be smuggling a television or a six-pack into the school to make the task more pleasant. Go figure.

Quick, Let's Avoid Talking!!

Terrified at the thought of having to sit with This Woman He Seems to be Married To for anywhere from fifteen minutes to three hours during a delay at the airport, Our Hero gets the bright idea of connecting to "The Cloud," which in his case means accessing their home pc and bringing up recorded television shows.

His unkempt wife is on board, as long as it's "Celebrity Probation- the Premiere." Is this a real show? It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Nor does the closing scene, which features these two sadly distant airheads happily watching television ("Yay Cloud!" sighs this truly pathetic, witless, sad woman as she stares at people who seem to be having a pillow fight on a couch. Not exactly PBS..) complete with sound, without the use of earphones.

In fact, there are several of these "Cloud" commercials which show clueless antisocial choads happily consuming brain-sucking television in public and using their laptop's speakers, oblivious to the possibility that the people around them just MIGHT want to be left to enjoy conversations, books, or their own God Don't Leave Me Alone With My Thoughts or My Life Partner Distraction Tool without being forced to listen to (gag) "Celebrity Probation." Just more examples of the "F-U, I'm having fun, if you don't like it, wear headphones yourself" culture we find ourselves living in.

It started with transistor radios. Then it was the Walkman, and then the cell phone with the loud, obnoxious ringtone which actually encouraged people to delay answering. Now we've moved on to portable television, which we are urged to enjoy any place, any time, without headphones. Awesome.

It's getting stupid out there. Stupid, and very, very rude.

This commercial has a camera in my head!

The disconnect here is AT&T's apparent misconception that when people are "using" their cell phones to text, surf the net, etc. they are actually USING them, and not just filling empty space in their equally empty lives. The misconception is that people who stare at cell phone screens are actually seeking information and not just trying to drown out the dull echo of nothingness that inhabits their skull. That they are trying to accomplish something, not just avoiding eye contact. That they are trying to get a question answered, not actively avoiding their children, spouses, and other fellow life forms.

Please, who are they trying to kid here? People who spend huge chunks of time staring at their phones are not victims of spotty service or slow connections. If they really are looking for specific info and find it a few seconds faster with this new phone, they'll just move on to some other brainless "activity" more quickly than they planned to previously (if the word "plan" has any application here.) I guarantee you that a phone which provides instantaneous, lightning-fast web access will cause people to cut back on their vapid, antisocial phone staring about as much as McDonald's Dollar Menu cut back on the consumption of cheeseburgers.

I do get what AT&T is trying to do here, though- people don't want to believe that they spend so much time staring at phones because their lives are so pathetically devoid of meaning and actual human friends. People don't want to believe that, left without their shiny toys, they'd be driven insane by their inability to form coherent thoughts about anything more deep than "I wonder what's for dinner?" I'm quite sure that nobody wants to admit that 99 percent of the time they spend on their phones is about as fulfilling and useful as a mouthful of cotton candy. And I'm also quite sure that there's a large audience of delusional morons out there who are capable of conning themselves into believing that if ONLY I could surf a LITTLE FASTER, I'd be able to get off my phone and have an actual conversation with an actual human being who is actually in the same room as I am. Just look at the vacant half-smiles on these zombies- they aren't doing work. They are just so devoid of personality and meaning and purpose that they can only find satisfaction and belonging with their phones.

The question is, what happens to these people when they purchase this phone-- and nothing changes? It would be nice to think that the hot girl in the teddy tells the asshole to take his phone and get the hell out. It's pleasant to imagine the little kid telling his dad to just stay the hell home and skip the ball game altogether next time, you useless prick. (The frustrated "here's a baseball to the head because you value your pointless surfing more than watching your son play baseball" is a good start.) It would only be justice if these worthless jackasses were just cut loose from society and left to waste their lives in sad isolation with their real loved ones, so we could stop pretending that what they really want is to put them away.

Meanwhile, back here in the real world, I'm not buying the "save us from our phones" line. For way too many people, it's an offer to "save us" from our security blankets or cloak of invisibility. I don't know anybody who honestly WANTS to be saved, because it's way too comfortable in that electronic womb.

Really.

Chevron's just like Santa Claus, if Santa were an environment-murdering self-congratulatory psychopath

"Chevron makes a lot of money. A LOT of money. I mean, you have no idea. Raping the environment has never been more profitable, and despite the rising cost of Congressmen, Senators, a President and the Media, we here at Chevron get to keep a whole lot of that money, thanks for asking.

We make SO MUCH money, in fact, that we have absolutely no problem dropping $21 billion dollars into 'local small businesses,' whatever the hell that means. Of course, plenty of those small businesses are Chevron gas stations, but isn't that beside the point? Those stations hire a lot of minimum-wage workers. Those are jobs that are important in this economy. Really. Just trust us on this one.

Yes, that's $21 Billion to local businesses, which did I mention creates jobs? That's a pretty impressive number for a company assessed at $166 billion, don't you think? Of course, I'm not going to tell you how long it took us to spend that $21 billion- considering that our last quarter's profit was "only" $3.7 billion, you can bet it's not a yearly amount, but if you want to believe it is, that would be fine.

Every penny of profits went into equipment, exploration, all that expensive stuff, which means that either I don't know what the word 'profit' means, or I'm actually trying to con you into believing that Chevron doesn't actually make a profit at all, but just rolls all of it's revenue right back into production costs. I'm just reading a script here, ok?

The bottom line is that we'd sure like you to shut the hell up now with your Greedy Oil Company Whining, and remind you that gasoline hit a national average of $4 not all that far back, and can again, if you don't show a little more appreciation. Now if you'll excuse me, we've got to get to work on discrediting the latest electric car. Driving a Leaf means you're gay, you know."

"Lean Forward...now turn. Keep your knees straight. Smile, damn it!, you're on MSNBC!"

This wall of noise and unconnected imagery, brought to us courtesy of MSNBC, starts with a spoonful of treacly nonsense- "from the time we are born, we really do know where we are going" (WTF?) and goes downhill from there. It would easy for me to dissect the blithering haiku-wannabee nonsense which makes up the narration of this condescending, self-congratulatory pile of rancid BS, but instead, I think I'd like to comment on MSNBC's entire "Lean Forward" ad campaign by pointing out how badly the network lives up to it's own sense of "purpose."

"Lean Forward" could, in fact, be nothing more than the advice Your Place for Politics gives to it's female co-hosts, Mika Brzezinski ("Morning Joe") and Savannah Guthrie ("The Daily Rundown.") As in, Lean Forward to get into the camera shot, Twist your body sideways, and Smile, Smile Smile while the camera is permanently trained on the Far More Important Male Host. Also- be sure to laugh at whatever the Wise Male Hogging the Camera says, bleat "Oh No!" and "I don't want to hear about this!" (Brzezinski may have trademarked these lines by now) and do pretty much everything short of pick lint off the shoulder of the Man in Charge Who Will Let You Introduce the Next Segment if You are a Good Girl and Behave.

"Lean Forward" to find out who MSNBC hired for the newest hour-long opinion program- that is, which middle-aged white male will be filling the slot you thought you might at least be interviewed for, you silly naive little thing, you. Haha, you thought that just because the network decided to cut out one of the reruns of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" and put a live show on, it might go to someone other than Lawrence O'Donnell? Why? Because you thought you'd put in your time? Don't be silly. Now stop sulking and get back to chuckling appreciatively at Joe Scarborough's "witticisms" and latest "when I was in Congress" war stories. Unless your name is Rachel Maddow, you ain't getting your own show, honey. Sure it's not the 1950s anymore, but that doesn't mean you are ready for your own desk.

Remember, this is the network which carried on an almost personal vendetta against Hillary Clinton in 2008, battering her relentlessly for her unforgivable refusal to concede defeat in the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination fifteen minutes after the results of the Iowa Caucuses were reported. Do Brzezinski and Guthrie really think that the network which rhetorically asked Hillary "how many delegates does the state of denial have?" and had it's franchise player suggest someone "take Hillary into a room, and fix it so she doesn't come out" is going to give one of them a shot at the big time? Keep dreaming.

After all, while the network embraces Evolution as a tag line, everything in it's own place, all change in it's own time, right? We can't expect TOO much from a company which essentially closes down it's operations at 10PM on Friday night to give us marathon sessions of "Lock-Up," can we?

CitiBank again captures the spirit of the times

We've all been here, haven't we? Our Precious Ryan had a hard time learning French, so his mommy did the only natural thing- sent him to France for school! Of course, I mean, what else would she do? Hire a (snigger, condescend) TUTOR?

And it worked out so well- when Our Ryan decided he wanted to make an impulse buy, Mommy was able to instantly transfer funds to his account via CitiBank. Oh thank goodness THAT crisis was averted quickly. We all know what a pain it is to get much "needed" funds into the pockets of our pathetically over-indulged children now don't we?

When this kid isn't enjoying the almost unlimited determination of his parents to give Their Precious Ryan each and every little thing he happens to want at the moment, he's being distracted by cute girls in class- girls who can smell "mommy's Citibank Account" in the pockets of pampered little American snots from a mile away.

"I hope the language barrier isn't too much of a problem" muses Mommy (or something like that- please don't make me watch this again to confirm.) Oh don't worry, Mommy- I'm sure that Ryan will pick up enough words to get himself in the sack before he crashes through your Available Credit Ceiling, if in fact you even have one.

I don't know what I hope for more as a sequel to this disgustingly clueless ad, which simultaneously asks us to appreciate Mommy's electronic apron strings AND her son's willingness to take advantage of her Anything For Our Ryan attitude. Is it Precious Ryan coming back home with an adorable new French Grandchild for Mommy? Is it the pampered little prick arriving back in the US harboring a delightfully European social disease (I'm sure the required shots can be purchased via credit card, and they DO have an awesome health care system over there.)

No, I'll go with Ryan deciding to follow his cute new girlfriend to a quaint little hostel in the Carpathian Mountains, where he learns that Mommy's Citibank card won't save him from three days of brutal torture at the hands of millionaire psychotics, ending with his entitled little head being used as a soccer ball. Hey, it could happen. I saw it in a movie once.