Rejected Script for the Lactaid Cow

"Hey, human woman!  You look like you enjoy drinking milk, but you often just walk past the dairy section because your tummy has a hard time dealing with lactose."

"Well, here's the answer to your problem- Lactaid!  It's made from real milk, and after all I should know, being a strange animated blue cow who lives in a grocery store cooler and is spending what few days I have left urging you hominids to drink what I produce after spending 99 percent of my 'life'- no, let's call it 'existence'- in a cage too narrow to turn around in, hooked up to machines which stuff me full of hormones and vitamins and steroids designed to turn me into less of a mammal and more of a milk-producing machine with a freakish, artificially-huge udder that would not allow me to stroll around fields like my ancestors did, even if I wanted to--- and man, do I want to...."

"Of course, even if I COULD wander about without my back snapping in half under the weight of my enormous milk sacs, what would I do with that ability other than search for the calves I have not seen since the day I birthed them- calves I never fed with my own milk, and which have probably all been processed and consumed by you in a thousand other forms.  So, are you a hamburger girl, or more into steak? Doesn't matter to me, any more than it mattered to my calves.  All that mattered was that you got to gorge your sensitive tum-tom, right?"

"So here you go- Lactaid is real milk, without that nasty lactose stuff they haven't quite managed to drug out of me yet.  Costs a bit more than my natural milk, but I'm sure you'll find it worth it.  Please let me know the next time you visit, I'm really dying to know.  But please hurry- don't have much of a lifespan, and wouldn't even if I DIDN'T live in this cooler."

At Tysons, it's all about the effort

This commercial would have been so much better if that kid's "thank you for going all out on reheating pre-cooked fried chicken parts" speech had been snark.  Little sister could have added "and the Pillsbury canned biscuits really put an accent on the love, mom!"

Then dad could have stopped playing piano long enough to throw in with "hey, that looks like actual salad she's serving up, too!  That must have taken upwards of two minutes to get out of the bag into the bowl, and who do you think put the dressing on the table?  We should all give Mom a big round of applause for using the spacious, well-equipped kitchen she has with such awesome effect!  Way to go, Mom!"

Then mom could have given her whole family the middle finger before announcing "screw all this, I'm going back to school!  Kids- the piano man can do the cooking from now on.  Get ready for a steady menu of Stouffer's Pot Pies and Hot Pockets."

Then the children who, after all, simply don't know any better having been raised by these two jackasses, give eachother high-fives and suggest that dad eases into his new role slowly by ordering online at PapaJohns tomorrow night.  Hey, we can try that new pizza-sized chocolate chip cookie while we're at it!

Panera: Food for Rich White People

"Clean Pairings."  Did you hear that noise?  That was my soul dying under the weight of the narrator's self-satisfaction.

Ugh, the pretention!  It BURNS!

Seriously, though- the entire message of this heaping, steaming pile of bilge is "when you've got money, you don't eat prole food- you don't go to KFC or McDonald's or Burger King or even Subway.  You go to twee designer bread places like Panera, where you can get 'dirty' salads with 'clean' dressing, $5 cups of Low-Fat Vegetarian Garden Vegetable Soup with Pesto  sprinkled ever so gently with organic garlic, and $4 pitas to dip into it.  You bring all this stuff home to your Not Very Appreciative kids, all of whom would just kill to see a bucket of fried chicken or a sack of White Castle burgers just once, if only you asked them.  But you'll never ask them."

So, to all you "progressive" posers-- please, continue to bring this overpriced junk home and dissapoint your kids, time and time again.  Don't be too surprised when they begin to find reasons to not be home for dinner, coming home later with grease on their faces and empty Quick Wipe packets in their designer jeans.  Because believe me, there are only so many dirty salads one can eat, and there are only so many ways to disguise tasteless lumps of warm bread.

Here's a better idea- buy some rolls and salad (buy them at Whole Foods Market and make sure they are 'organic,' if you insist) and a can of soup, throw it together yourself in your kitchen,  Send the money you saved to Oxfam, you awful pretentious twats.

Two Pieces of Bad News For Flo

1.  Progressive Insurance is using an animated talking box to sell its insurance in this recent commercial (and several others playing during news and NFL playoff games.)

2.  The box is totally out-acting Flo.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Flo.  Man, was that a long and painful run.  You will not be missed (and if anyone out there wants to write in and tell me that they will, in fact, miss Flo as the Progressive Insurance spokeschoad- please don't.  You are too sad for me to want to know about.)

The three moments in this Chevy ad that make me want to really hurt someone. Or several someones.

1.  When one of these zombies actually says "this reminds me of my first Lexus."  Did you buy it right after you came back from your 14th trip to Europe, you little twat?

2.  When another woman responds to the car's map capabilities with "this car gets me."  That's nice.  It's still just a freaking car, loser.

3.  When one of the guys here bleats "this is a game changer."*

So congratulations, Chevy. You've created a commercial that makes me want to inflict damage on THREE people, instead of your usual one.  Great job.

*this hackneyed cliche needs to be put to bed, right now.  No, not bed- it needs to be buried underneath thirty feet of cement, where it will never bother anyone, ever again.  Enough already.

Another cringeworthy effort from McDonalds

There's nothing about this incredibly cheesy-even-for-McDonalds ad that makes me the least bit interested in taking advantage of the ridiculous "any two items from the Dollar Menu for two dollars, you know like always except we've got this two for two slogan thing going" deal.   Certainly not the revoltingly bland, stupid twentysomethings having a virtual party with their crap junk food.  Certainly not the gang signs captured for Facebook by those people who seriously have way, way too much time on their hands.*

And don't even get me started on how nothing on the McDonald's Dollar Menu would induce me to visit one of their grease pits.  Except the coffee.  McDonald's has excellent coffee at an excellent price.  But I only need one at a time, thank you.

*the first woman who actually walks up to the counter and makes the "two" sign as if she thinks the kid at the register is too stupid to know what the word "two" indicates should be tossed into the deep frier.  At least it would get that stupid grin off her face.

The clever dishonesty of Credit Repair Ads

1.  This video offers a binary proposition- either you are contacting CreditRepair.com, or you are "waiting around instead of working to fix your credit."   There are no other options, apparently- calling your creditors and working out payment schedules, cutting back on unnecessary spending, cutting up unused credit cards and cancelling them- nope, unless you hire CreditRepair.com, you are just "waiting around."

Kind of like the Optima Tax Relief ads, which suggest that one has only two options when they get a tax bill- sit around and wait for the IRS to smash down their door and drag them off to jail, or-- you got it-- hire Alan Thicke's personal gravy train.  "Don't take on the IRS on your own"- oh, heaven forbid.  You might find that you can deal with your tax issues without hiring a middle man to take a nice big bite out of you for doing something you are perfectly capable of doing yourself.

(One more quick note concerning Optima Tax Relief- all their ads give you the same two arguments, usually delivered by Mr. Thicke in the same breath: First, the IRS is out to get you, with their Freeze and Seize manuever, their garnishing of wages, their relentless army of ruthless agents.  Second, the IRS is a very reasonable agency staffed by people who would rather just leave you alone and "go home and play with the kids."  I don't get how they can be both, but they are, according to Mr. Thicke.)

2.  The narration in these sleazy ads always include the following "claim," which is so transparently deceptive that I can't believe anyone actually falls for it- "on average, our customers see SIGNIFICANT improvement in their Credit Scores."  Um, how can you justify using the terms "on average" and "significant improvement" at the same time here?  If you are saying that the average customer's credit score improves after they engage the services of CreditRepair.com, why don't you tell us how many points the score goes up- ON AVERAGE?  You know, instead of using weasel words designed to present an impressive-sounding claim which is only impressive-sounding until it's examined carefully?  Or did I just answer my own question?

This sentence could easily be translated into "the average customer sees their credit score go up after hiring us."   By how many points?  Doesn't that mean a good portion DON'T see their credit score go up?   "It's a significant improvement."  What does significant mean?  You'll notice the improvement?  Is a rise in credit score from 350 to 360 a "significant improvement?"  Is that increase- about three percent- about "average?" If not, why not tell us what the average score of a customer is when they sign up, and what the average score of a customer is when they are no longer using the service?  You know, instead of this "on average" and "significant improvement" crap?

Oh, right, because those Truth in Advertising Laws are almost toothless, but not quite.  So I guess you'd better stick to the weasel words and manipulation of the language to convince desperate people that you actual peform a service worth paying for, and aren't just bloodsucking vampires trying to take advantage of the most economically vulnerable among us.  Yay Capitalism.