I don't know what the little girl in this Sprint ad is complaining about

She looks to be about eight years old, maybe seven, maybe nine.  I don't know- but surely, she's old enough to know that there's no point in complaining when her parents don't use their phones to film her little recital thing because their data plan is reaching it's monthly limit.

I mean, she grew up with her parents owning cell phones.  Which means, her entire life has been spent watching her parents scrolling and texting and yakking away instead of paying attention to what she was doing.  When she took her first step, it went unnoticed because Mom was checking out text no. 146 for that day.  When she wanted her dad to watch her on the slide, she had to beg because dad was checking the football scores on his iPhone.  And she's probably seen countless near-accidents from the back seat of the SUV while the driver kept glancing at the phone instead of paying attention to traffic.   My guess is that until she was four or so she thought that people just grew phones on their hands and wondered how old she had to be before hers showed up.

In short, she's spent her entire young life with the phone as a rival for her parents' time and affection- and data minutes.  Everything she's done has been an effort to win out in the struggle for Quality Time with the phone.  I'm sure she's lost out a LOT of times before now- so why does she take not being recorded while dressed as a tree as anything but par for the course?

When I was growing up, phones were attached to cords inside the house.  In the house, sometimes my parents were interrupted by calls and I had to wait to ask for something or tell them something.  Outside was the land without phones- where my parents were my parents and they kind of had to pay attention to me because there were no IMs and no football scores and no Google to ask inane questions to- there was just me, and my siblings, and Mom, and Dad.  I can't help thinking that was better.

Oh, and when we did something like this recital?  Still shots taken on Polaroids (you may run out of film, but not Data Minutes.)  Movie cameras (same thing.)  When where they shared?  During family get-togethers.  Again, I can't help thinking that was better.

Back to this little girl: You actually do have one legitimate  complaint to make to your parents, you poor thing.  They had you too late.  If you had been born 20 years earlier, you wouldn't be in this nonstop competition with a little glowing box.  Sorry.

I think we all know what their Final Destination will be...

...I just hope they don't take too many of us innocent bystander/pedestrians with us before they get there.

Seriously, what's with the super-aggressive driving in the middle of a freaking CITY?  So if you own one of these Buicks, you can just do whatever the hell you want at whatever speed you want to do it, Everyone Else Be Damned?

(BTW, during my walk today I saw a guy make an illegal U-turn on a suburban street at about 20 MPH- while texting.  I'm sure he considered that "multitasking."  I consider that being a totally selfish, insufferable douchenozzle.  Guess whose side Buick is probably on?

Ugh, I was hoping I had heard this for the last time

As near as I can tell, the only reason this commercial exists is so that Geico can bring back a really crappy song by an incredibly overrated band that had it as a hit sixteen years ago because it refers to one headlight.  For a motorcyle insurance ad.  Get it? One headlight.  Get it?  And here's the gravy- the Wallflowers were so grateful that this stupid cloying song was going to get some unexpected screentime, they didn't even charge for it's usage.

Hell, they probably paid Geico to bleed our ears with it.

Cheerios presents: More corn than your average movie theater

Oh Christ just ask him which f---ing kind of Cheerios he wants to eat and end this crap already!

I'm not even a dad, and I figured it out, why can't you?

Oh yeah- because without the noxious levels of twee, we wouldn't have the Hallmark-channel level of f---ing adorable at the end.  Which would have been fine because jeesh, this is bad.  Hey, doofus dad?  Next time, just buy ONE type of Cheerios and put it on the freaking table.  "Problem" solved.

The apple didn't fall far from the tree....

(Not that anyone in this house would know what an "apple" is....)

Ugh, it's got a family.

And that family is just as obsessed with Wendy's cruddy fast food as it is.  Too obsessed to wait for its boyfriend to show up before beginning----umm--- "dinner."  Or to introduce themselves to said boyfriend.  More like "oh, this is why we bought an extra chicken sandwich.  So this can eat it."

It's pretty cute, but I think it would be a real charity if it's parents DIDN'T love this guy and he was thrown out of the house and leave Loony Daughter With the Horrible, Learned Eating Habits alone.  His heart may be broken, but only in the poetical sense.  In the actual physical sense, his heart will thank him later.

Samsung's point seems to be "if you thought our phone was ugly, you're out of luck because soon they'll all look like this, losers."

Anyone else think that this minute-long piece of self-congratulatory crud sounds like nothing more than a witless, smug geek explaining why "the experts" were wrong when they didn't like the Samsung Galaxy WTF-EVER three years ago because now Hey Look All The Other Phones Are Trying To Look Like It?  Anyone else feel like they don't really have any skin in this game of competition between Samsung and WHO-THE-F-EVER is also claiming to have This Month's Must-Have Phone?

Anyone else think that this commercial sounds like a totally pointless wankfest that has absolutely nothing to do with anyone who wasn't so devoid of a life that they spent part of 2011 snarking on a fricking phone because they thought it "looked like a piece of toast?"

Anyone else want to hunt down the smug narrator of this crap and punch him in the nuts with a two-by-four?

Point of Personal Privilege: My problem with Suze Orman

I love the Suze Orman show, though I admit that I don't really know why.  Most of it features people who have vastly more money than I do calling in to ask permission to make what are usually very modest purchases, only to be told that they don't have enough in retirement savings to afford to buy something they want right now.  Which makes me feel even more impoverished than I do most of the time.

I'm pretty sure it's not the Multi-Millionaires calling in to ask permission to spend a tiny sliver of their mountain of wealth on a trinket, a bauble or a man cave.  I think those idiots only call so they can talk about their money to a stranger on television.  And I know I don't take any pleasure out of the interviews with 35-year old knotheads who are $300,000 in credit card debt and who make $35,000 a year but live in $2 million dollar homes and who mysteriously find themselves in financial trouble.

I guess what I like about this show is Orman's ridiculously curmudgeonly attitude toward spending money.  She has people calling in every week who have what seems to me tons of money and would like to spend a little of it- only to be told that they are DENIED permission because they "don't have enough for later."

I'm all for saving money- I save almost 30 percent of my take-home pay (I'm not bragging- I have to save that much, because my take-home pay is so pathetically low, if I want to have ANY money "later.")  But I also know that people who are so obsessed with "later" that they can't part with a nickle right now are really letting life pass them by- and may end up finding out that "later" isn't so hot even if you HAVE money.

In my opinion, everyone should travel when they are young.  I waited a long time to visit Europe, but not TOO long.  Suze Orman would have DENIED my trip to the UK in 2013, telling me I need that money for retirement.  And I would have asked her what the hell is going to be so great about retirement that it's worth giving up a trip to the UK.  Orman's attitude smacks of Christianity- "suffer now, reap your rewards later."  Nice things, like trips to Europe?  That's for rich people- or for you when you are really, really old and have that retirement fund set.

Well, to hell with that.  I know people who have saved and saved for something only to have an emergency pop up to wipe out their vacation/new car/whatever funds.  I don't like debt, but I've learned not to be so afraid of a short-term credit card balance that I do without everything but the bare essentials.  And I also don't see the value of waiting until you are in your seventies to take that dream vacation- and then seeing it from a bus seat or experiencing much less of it because you are now suffering from limited mobility.

In short (I know, too late) I think Orman's show is valuable but she's way too mean with money.  My father-in-law used to shrug "pigs won't eat it" when called upon to spend.  I'll just say that while savings are very important, life is meant to be lived, and money is meant to be spent.  If you wait until you have the cash before you buy anything, you'll rarely buy anything.  And if you keep putting off a dream because it costs a little money, there's a very good chance you'll never get there.