Some On The Spot Research would have been helpful here

This is hysterical.

Cicis, my favorite punching bag of a restaurant, had the "great idea" to scatter pennies around the sidewalk in front of their feed bins. The fat, sweaty slobs who frequent places like this would snatch up the pennies, hoping to find one that was labeled "Free Buffet." The Fat, Sugar and Carbs-addled loser who found the "lucky" penny would then jump up and down (sorry for the mental image) with delight at the prospect of saving the four dollars he usually had to cough up to gorge on pizza and cinnamon buns.

Just two problems: First, as previously implied, Cicis is practically free anyway. It's not like this is Ruth's Chris handing out free dinners. Getting excited about a free buffet at Cici's is kind of like rushing off to Sears upon learning that they are having a sale on tube socks. It's four dollars, people.

Second, the whole campaign presupposes that the prospective customers still retain the ability to see the sidewalk, bend over, and return to an upright position. Ever check out the crowd at Cicis, Golden Corral, Denny's, or any of the other All You Can Cram Into Your Cake Hole troughs? All I can say is, I hope Cicis had paramedics standing by for the people who couldn't quite make it back up- or at least a number of comfortable chairs and oxygen tanks for those who needed a recovery period after ten seconds of jumping around, chins jiggling, after "winning" another chance to add some artery plaque.

Thanks again, Cicis. You make this blog so easy to maintain sometimes. Almost makes the damage you are doing to our nation's health worth it.

"Look At Me"- Might as well replace In God We Trust on the money

This commercial does a very good job summing up what I loathe the most about our current obsession with "sharing" every little thing we say or do (I won't say "think," because I don't think there's a whole lot of "thinking" going on.) Unlimited Talk and Text is a GOOD thing, you see, because it allows us to desperately scream LOOK AT ME to a world increasingly disconnected from human contact- because we are all too busy trying to get noticed to realize that we have created little electronic islands around ourselves.

So while we walk down the street, sit on park benches or on the metro, or do anything else that used to at least create the possibility of bumping into an old friend or making a new one, we are encouraged to burrow deeper and deeper into our own little cocoons of isolation by keeping our eyes fixed on to the little glowing screen. As the airwaves become more and more congested with pointless garbage, we find it necessary to shout louder- where once we talked, now we text, because it's harder to ignore a text. Where once we texted, we now upload videos, because maybe a short of me doing or saying something really stupid will get me some attention before I am drowned out by the Next Really Stupid Thing.

This country is like a guy who finds himself on a crowded beach, surrounded by people with loud radios, each one playing his own tune. Rather than asking his fellow sunbathers to turn down the volume, he pulls out his own radio and cranks it up, providing his own contribution to the increasingly oppressive wall of noise. And cell phone companies just keep responding with the "solution:" Louder Radios.

And telling us this is a Good Thing. And using the closing song to The Yellow Submarine to do it.

I wish people who bought in to this technology would be honest for a moment and ask themselves: what happens if you get your wish, and people stop what they are doing and actually pay attention to you? Once you've hooked us with the video of your stupid face mugging for the camera, or taking a pratfall, now what? Do you really have anything to say? Or did you just want to be acknowledged for a moment, and it's ok for us to just move on now?

Have you always been this sad?

What's a little fracking amongst friends?

Ugh, this slimy, smarmy dick makes my blood pressure rise every time his nasty mug graces my tv screen- which is every morning, and several times every morning. There he is again, with that fixed know-it-all "this is so obvious, and so EASY" little smirk, explaining to us stupid non-vampires that "new technology" makes it possible to "unlock" a "hundred years" worth of natural gas from subterranean rocks. This "breakthrough" means a hundred years of OPEN signs, and lots and lots of patriotic bunting (and, we can presume, picnics featuring fried chicken, hot dogs and apple pie, fireworks, and White Presidents. You know, like G-d intended.)

All we have to do is ignore those flea-bitten, unpatriotic hippies who bitch and moan about flammable water coming out of the kitchen faucet, as the released gas makes DDT look like a benign chemical by comparison. Thankfully for this money-grubbing corporate whore, Rachel Carson has been dead for fifty years and the Bought and Paid For Media has no great interest in reviving the environmental movement. So it's Drill Baby Drill with a different kind of poison being extracted from the ground- it's not black, it's not slick, it's conveniently invisible- but it's effects sure as hell aren't.

But hey, life is all about trade-offs, isn't it? You want low-cost energy? Then let the oil companies tear the hell out of every National Park from the Green Mountains to Muir Woods. Stop bitching about oil spills which do no real harm unless you are a shrimper, a fisherman, or a living organism which depends on the sea for life. And when pompous, preachy little pricks with confident smiles tell you that we can make America energy independent, how dare you even ask about the environmental cost? I mean, come on- you want potable water? You can buy it by the case at your local Shoppers Food Warehouse.

After all, don't you WANT America to be a land of red, white and blue bunting and OPEN signs? Isn't that WORTH a little drinking water?

Priorities, people!

In the end, we'll all be working here

First, let me express how impressed I am at the ability of this advertisement to capture the truly agonizing, painful, hopeless experience of having to work for the bloodless corporate giant that is Wal-Mart.

Confronted by a customer who has found a lower price on the cheap, Made in China item she's interested in purchasing because she hasn't received a raise in salary in eleven years and has long since given up hope of ever buying Quality again, we get roughly 200 Wal Mart drones bleating "Match It!" Each of these zombies seems to be enjoying their moment of delusion, as they pretend that they have some say in the policy they are promoting, or how it is enforced. Of course, in real life, none of these sad little worker ants has any authority whatsoever, and in fact are more likely to be chastised later by a manager who happened to see them on a security camera saying something other than "can I get that for you?," "you'll be wanting the extended warranty with that," or simply "Welcome to Wal-Mart" during business hours.

The "associate" who has been confronted with the lower price gives a mock "thank you" to her fellow Grateful to be Making Minimum Wage God I Once Had Such Aspirations How Did It Come To This apron wearers as she confirms that yes, Wal Mart's policy is to never, ever let any small business offer a lower price- after all, the principle goal of this environment-raping, community-pillaging, middle class-gutting behemoth is to push all such companies completely out of existence, leaving a world in which prices don't HAVE to be matched, because the only source of ALL consumables is your local Mall In A Box.

Enjoy the low prices for cheap crap while it lasts, America. Don't forget to stop by on the way home to grab a coffee at that new Starbucks which just opened at the site of the old hardware/furniture/grocery store you helped drive out of business because it couldn't match Wal-Mart. What a nation of selfish, penny-wise and pound-foolish idiots we are.

Here We Go, Again

Before I start trashing this nasty little bit of cross-promotion (light beer and cell phones in the same ad- wow, that's like winning the lottery. If the grand prize were a pile of elephant dung, that is) let me point out that there's a perfectly reasonable answer to the first idiot's "hey, we're out of Bud Lite" comment. That answer is "yeah? So? Drink something else" or "who's stopping you from going on a beer run?"

Instead, we get the Not At All Clever sight of the party's host (I guess) downloading some App which allows him to pour out an endless supply of light beer, causing his guests to burst into a massive orgasm of beer-consuming bliss (again, I guess- as in all beer commercials, we never actually see anyone drink this stuff.)

In no time at all, everyone at this rooftop extravaganza is dancing around and hooting with delight at the virtual waterfalls of beer (including a preposterous pyramid of excess normally reserved for champagne.) The lucky owner of the App is especially popular, as a beer-enamored blonde has latched on to him, attracted by his ability to conjure up watery yet still calorie-dense liquid. And then we get the punchline, as a Not Alpha Male guest stares discontentedly at his own cell phone and wishes he had one capable of downloading such a cool App.

So this ad is for Bud Lite- even if we didn't see any cans or bottles, we know this because of the trademarked "Here We Go," which can't be replaced as Bud's tagline soon enough for this blogger. But it's also for phones which have access to the App Store- after all, wouldn't it have been just as easy to have this guy take a photo of a bottle of beer, make it his wallpaper, and then magically pour it out for his friends? Instead, we get the worst of both worlds- annoying, loud, beer-swilling doofuses enabled in their asshattery by a super cool cell phone App. All that's left is for someone to get punched in the stomach as a Volkswagen filled with idiots eating Subway sandwiches drives by.

It's only a matter of time.

NoLife.com

Here are a few signs that maybe, just MAYBE, you've got an internet addiction problem:

5. You are watching an episode of a tv show on Hulu which you've already watched twice and is available On Demand from your cable company.

4. You've done a search to determine exactly how many 7-11s are within reasonable driving distance from your house.

3. You've looked at your parking lot on GoogleEarth for the fourth time this week.

2. You've "refreshed" your FaceBook page ten times in the last ten minutes, hoping for a Notification to pop up.

And the number one sign that you MAY have an internet addiction problem: You find yourself asking "gee, I wonder if anyone is attempting to stalk me on the internet?"

"Who is looking for me?" Ok, there are two possible answers, neither of which is very attractive. You either find out that someone from your past that you really don't care to see ever again is trying to find you and is still too stupid to just use Facebook or Google. Or, you get the perhaps even more depressing news that the reason why you don't have more "friends" is NOT because the swarm of eager would-be acquaintances can't find you. It's because they don't exist.

So, my advice to this lady- get up and exit your weirdly glowing, eerily clean little study. Go spend some time with real people, if you happen to know any. Live in the Here and Now- not some fantasy world where you are enormously sought-after, if only all those people who long to renew connections knew how to use Google or Facebook.

Because seriously, if you think it's good news that people from your past are "looking for you," that's just really sad. If you insist on staying online, I suggest that it would be healthier for you to check the status of your parking lot on Google Earth again, or make sure a new 7-11 hasn't opened a bit closer to your house.

Or just stay a really sad, lonely, deluded weirdo. Either way. It's your life, if we can really call it that.

More Nastiness from Kraft

An adorable girl is sitting at a vast dinner table, with her back to a wall seemingly made completely out of glass, holding her frighteningly large head in her hand, complaining about the quality of the dinner her Valium-addled mommy has provided her with THIS time.

Judging from her stick arms, it's easy to believe that this girl is being absolutely sincere in her complaint that mommy pretty much never serves Kraft Mac 'n Cheese at this dinner table. After all, if the little girl were able to live her fantasy and shove "Kraft mac 'n cheese down my pie hole," I suspect that she'd be a lot--umm, more filled out, to put it delicately. Instead, she's "forced" to "push her food around to make it look like she's eating it," because that food is so very NOT orange pasta, cheese and salt product.

Judging from mom's reaction to the food-pushing, uncommunicative, bizarrely sitting-on-the-same-side-of-the-table-as-mommy daughter's lack of appetite, Conversation is not a regular part of the dinner experience. Mommy sees no issue with Daughter's staring blankly with a look of mild despair on her face; the food on her plate has been re-arranged, which means she must be enjoying it, so here's some more food for her to push around.

Taken as a whole, this nasty little slice of life is pretty typical of the offerings from Kraft Mac 'n Cheese these days, with a slight difference. Instead of the usual nasty little brat being indulged with forkful after forkful of the featured junk, this time we've got at least one sensible, responsible person showing a bit of concern over teaching proper, healthy eating habits to their offspring. Naturally that person is the clueless bad guy, standing in the way of Daughter's calorie-rich, nutrient-poor fantasy dinner.

Like cell phone commercials which seem to celebrate social detachment and outright rudeness, the message of this ad- that attempting to actually COOK food for your kids is a stupid waste of time which will only lead them to mock you- just makes me wonder why the makers of these spots hate society so much. Are they still trying to get over that childhood which seemed dominated by spinach and beet greens, and which featured way too few trips to the McDonald's Drive Thru window?

If so, can I suggest therapy? Or a final, cathartic confrontation with Mom and Dad? Is it too much to ask you guys to keep the scars of your upbringing out of your commercials, and stop trying to convince us Kids Know Best when it comes to proper nutrition?

And seriously, what IS it with this kid's head, anyway? Is that an allergic reaction to whatever mom put on her plate, or what?