Divide and Conquer, the Verizon Way

A pair of upscale breeders cruise through their upscale neighborhood, quietly pretending to have concern for one of their formerly upscale neighbors, who are about to fall from the top branches into the Let's Pretend It Isn't There land of How the Other Half Lives.

Some of their "friends," you see, are on the verge of losing their house. "So many bills" mutters Hubby to Obviously Pregnant But Keeps Touching Stomach and Don't Worry There Will Be a Reference To Future Child Just To Make Sure You Get It Later. Mommy First/ Wife Later replies something about how Verizon is now going to require that she pay a little bit toward her insurance. Seems like an innocent, "hey I want to be part of this conversation too" thing to say, except...

Fox News Viewer and Sean Hannity Worshiper Hubby instantly jumps down her throat with a line that I think I've seen misspelled on a sign at every Tea Party event ever held. It boils down to "shut up, it's still a good deal, and hey we are a million times better off than our friends" and strongly implies that the reason why those friends are about to be homeless is because one of them objected to contributing to their own insurance. In other words, were whiny, demanding, entitled losers who simply failed to appreciate their jobs and their Godlike employers- you know, the Most Productive Amongst Us.

Hubby's "shut your mouth you never know who may be listening" admonition does it's job- Mommy/Wife not only regrets her half-uttered criticism of All Good And All Giving Verizon, she quickly puts on a smile and folds herself back into focusing on Baby To Be and Former Baby in the Back of the Minivan Made Possible By Verizon. It's strongly implied that the mildly anti-Corporate afterthought throwaway line has been tossed down the Memory Hole, never to be retrieved and certainly never to be spoken of again.

One of the YouTube commentators gets it exactly right here- this commercial is all about dividing Verizon's worker drones into opposing tribes. Yes, Verizon is demanding that it's employees (who, by the way, might want to notice that unemployment rate and remember how much they like living in a house and how much it costs to feed kids these days before they start to bitch) pay "a little" into their insurance funds, which had formerly (probably due to some silly "contract agreement") been paid in full by Verizon. Maybe some employees have a problem with this. Verizon would just like to remind them that hey, jobs are hard to come by these days, and maybe they'd rather have no job at all and be out on the street? Would that be better? Hey, it's up to them. But complaining about it- well, hey, it would be a real shame if the company shut down because it wasn't profitable enough after paying out for all that insurance. If that happens, you know who to blame (wink, nudge, point at noisy, greedy, selfish, lazy neighbor.) Go ahead and kill that golden goose- but don't blame the goose when you don't find any eggs in there when you are done.

You can almost HEAR the whip cracking, can't you?

Because moving, even a little, really sucks

Oh yays, now I can just bleat at my television instead of wearing out my fingers clicking my Medieval remote control! This is how people must have felt when the wheel was invented. Or maybe the light bulb.

Seriously, though. I guess that if I had grandchildren (and no, I am not old enough to have grandchildren) I could amaze them with stories of how grampa used to have to get off the damned couch and turn this big, heavy thing called a "dial" which protruded from the non-HD, non-70-inch, non-color television which looked more like a big ugly box than a big ugly window. Back when "plasma" was what people had in their blood, and had absolutely NOTHING to do with tvs.

Continuing my story, I'd tell them about the invention of "remotes" which weren't very remote- they had cords attached to them. Then the remotes lost the cords, but we still had to wait for something good to come on the tv, and if we missed a show, we were out of luck (oh, and if nothing good WAS on, we'd find something else to do. And no, that didn't include surfing the net, because surfing was something you did on the ocean, not a net. It might be hard, but I'd try my best to explain how there was Life Without Television, the Internet OR Cell Phones back then.)

Then I'd tell them about how grampa managed something called a "video store" back when he was in Graduate School, and how people would actually have to leave their houses to browse our library of "tapes." At the risk of aging myself, I might tell them the story of how grampa sold 300 copies of "E.T." six months before it was even released to the general public, $24.95 each, and how people would have to "rewind" their movies when they got done watching them. But maybe not- I don't want to scare my own grandkids, after all.

If I still had their attention- and they hadn't already abandoned me to talk to the X-box- I might even expand on that Life Without Television thing- about how the people of my generation actually spent a lot of our time outside, playing tag and hide and seek and a thousand other games we invented with our own brains without asking a single question of an electronic device, and without Googling or using a single App. Not even once. Maybe they'll think we were geniuses. More likely, they'll just think Grampa and his friends were really lame. And that their lives were really, really sad.

I think I'll skip the part about how, after turning the dial controlling the antennae, we'd run outside to watch it rotate so it was aimed toward Plattsburgh, New York, so maybe we could get a picture. I don't think they could handle that. After all, they are just kids, and they are living in a world which allows them to just sit on their butts and tell the X-box what they want to see or do. And what a wonderful world it is.

This guy should correspond with his brain more often

This commercial features a guy who takes the time to write little mental notes to each side of his brain, and is careful to include the term "dear" when he does it. It seems he's gone and used "our" hard-earned money to purchase as KIA, and now justifiably feels the need to explain why he's done such a thing. To both sides of his brain. Individually.

He concludes by suggesting that upon the purchase of this overpriced piece of junk, his brain threw a hissy-fit and assaulted him with condemnations. "Now shut up, and let me drive!" he demands. Yikes. Hey, buddy- we all have those little voices in our heads every once in a while. They usually show up when we are about to do something really stupid- like spend luxury car money on a KIA. Those voices come from our Inner Common Sense. Sometimes we listen to them, sometimes we don't. But the argument we have with them comes before the moment of decision. Once we've made our choice, they tend to go away.

At any rate, I hope this guy isn't really having this conversation with his brain while he's driving. I hope that the protests coming from inside his skull aren't really so loud that he feels compelled to repeat the talking points the slick salesman at the KIA dealership read to him, and then tell his brain to "shut up." And I especially hope that he really does want his brain to stop distracting him so that he can drive, and not so that he can get back to texting, adjusting the seat temperature, updating the GPS and doing all those other things that commercials for expensive cars urge us to do instead of drive.

"Shut up and let me drive." Hey, no one's stopping you, pal. Except, apparently, your brain. Which you argue with a lot. Weird.

That does it; I'm converting!!

I've never heard of this "Christy Lane" person. I'm not sure if she's really a professional singer, or a regular on the Old Time Gospel Hour, or the minister of the most popular megachurch this side of Lynchburg. What I do know is that she scares the hell out of me.

Christy Lane sings Christmas Songs. And not just ANY Christmas songs; Christy Lane sings only the most smarmy, treacle-laden, dripping with gush Christmas songs, suitable for any December at Wal Mart, but not a welcome addition to any home I'VE ever been to.

Christy Lane's voice has "conquered the world." Yikes, where have I been? Again, I've never even HEARD of this woman. And besides, I thought that the world had ALREADY been conquered, years ago, by Jim Neighbors. Or was that Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute? Is there a brutal War of Allegedly Inoffensive Yet Horribly Grating Music going on somewhere I don't know about? A war I am reminded of only around the final month of every year? A war fought exclusively by Extremely White People whose uniform is big fuzzy red and green sweaters? A war in which all down time is to be spent cuddling golden-haired cherubs* and decking every spare inch of the house with tinsel and blinking lights while congratulating ourselves on our painfully vanilla Christian "beliefs?"

Let me know how it goes, Christy et al. Whatever world you and the rest of your weirdo ilk is fighting over is one I want no part of. I'm not sure how all this glitz translates into hating gays, reproductive rights and Barack Obama, and to tell you the truth, I don't really care all that much. I'm too busy looking for the exit. Buddhism, anyone?

*If you look very carefully, you can see that little girl blinking out "CALL THE POLICE" in code.

What's really sick is, this has probably already happened in real life

These people are cooing and giggling over a live video of a baby which appears on a laptop screen. They are passing around that laptop as if it's a real baby. This is supposed to be cute and funny on some level. Instead it leaves us wanting all of them to put that damned thing down and just look at the screen as a group- so we can slap them upside the head, hard, without damaging the computer.

The Designated Flummoxed Male in this ad is just standing there with a clueless, confused look on his face- and for a moment, we can engage in the fantasy that he's the only person with two brain cells to rub together here, and has no interest in playing this stupid Pass the Laptop Game. For a moment, we can pretend that look on his face means "what the hell are you idiots doing?" or "Oh my God I am related to you scary morons?" Ah, but only for a moment- then we realize that he's just Being A Guy, and part of Being A Guy means Being Afraid Of Holding A Baby. Because why would a guy want to hold a baby, or have any idea how to? What do guys have to do with the creation of babies, right?

Anyway, this stupid, mercifully short little nub of an ad just makes me angry at Windows, because it joins so many other commercials in suggesting that technology doesn't really enhance our lives; it just makes us act like really, really pathetic morons. Except for the Guy- it can't change him, because he is a pathetic moron already. Because he is a Guy. See, technology doesn't have the power to change EVERYTHING.

Give the Gift of Nothing (If you're lucky!)

I'm quite thankful that I've never known anyone who would appreciate getting lottery tickets as a Christmas present. It seems to me that the only difference between giving a regular lottery player a handful of scratch tickets as a holiday present and giving a raging alcoholic a case of Heineken is that the alcoholic might at least have some friends over to share the gift. This is just so wrong, on so many levels.

Besides, as Norm MacDonald explained in an old stand-up bit, no one who gives lottery tickets as gifts could possibly want the recipient to actually WIN anything. Just think about it for a minute- you spend ten bucks on scratch-offs because you can't think of anything else to give your mail carrier. Next thing you know, your mail carrier is standing in a tv studio holding a novelty check for $45 million- and is now your FORMER mail carrier, heading off to Bermuda for a few weeks in the sun to consider how he's going to spend the rest of the dough you unwittingly handed him. What a nightmare!

So the people who give these things are either feeding a sad addiction, or playing a cruel, cynical game of Let's Feed False Hopes, And I'm Really, Really Hoping they ARE False. The best the giver can hope for is that the recipient has a few moments of "fun" scratching numbers before the flimsy pieces of cardboard end up at the bottom of a trash can. Happy Holidays to you too, Pennsylvania Lottery.

I wish he would stick to racing down hills on a Norelco razor

If it's December, it's time to portray Santa Claus as a creepy stalker with a taste for high-end trinkets and a really bad case of Tourette's.

How else can you explain Saint Nick's yearly approval of the ugly pieces of rock guys choose to waste their money on in desperate attempts to be semi-worthy of the women they've already talked into marrying them?

And why does Santa always act so damned deranged in these ads? He's not being jolly- he's just being irritating. And I'm sorry, I'm just not capable of the suspension of disbelief required for commercials like this- if a fat old man in a flashy red suit suddenly appears in my living room, I'm not having a casual conversation with him. I'm going for the gun. Especially if I've got kids. Instead, we always see this ho-hum "oh hi, Santa- kind of thought you were just a myth my parents told me when I was young- so, you're real, huh? Live and learn, I guess." Not even a "oh man, I KNEW I shouldn't have guzzled that egg nog I found in the back of the fridge from last year- how long is this vision gonna last, and when does the vomiting take over?"

In the long version of this commercial, the guy sits under the tree with his wife on Christmas morning (in his PAJAMAS, because that's what grown men wear when they are alone with their wives, on some planet) and hands her the string of pebbles that is supposed to symbolize his love for her, but actually only serves as a reminder of his pathetic lack of imagination or interest in discovering what the Love of His Life really wanted for a gift. He tells her that "Santa knew you'd like it," she gives him a totally appropriate odd look, and instead of adding "Um, I mean the guy dressed as Santa at the jewelry store" like a sane person, he attempts to keep the joke going with a "no, really."

Because Wifey is too exhausted and past her prime to consider putting herself on the market again, and after all it IS a pretty nice looking trinket, she just shuts this crap up by kissing him. Pretty good move, actually, considering the lack of alternatives. This is all supposed to be charming and sweet- again, on some planet. Just not the one I live on.

What a pity Thomas Nast or Coca Cola couldn't have maintained the copyright on the Santa Claus character. Would have saved us a lot of garbage like this ad. Sure, there would still be plenty of commercials featuring guys blowing enough money to feed a hundred homeless people down at the shelter on a string of hardened dirt, but at least they wouldn't be able to enlist Santa in the cause.