Because Going Green is easier when you have some

Hey look everybody, someone has found a way to make exercise more fun and accessable to wealthy people!

Seriously, here's the deal with Capital BikeShare:  you can take any of their bikes, from any rack, for 30 minutes absolutely free.  And you can do this as many times a day as you like.  Wow, that's awesome- what a terrific way to encourage people to get out of their cars and rediscover the benefits of moving their legs! Yay Capital BikeShare!

Except, hold on, dammit- turns out that there's fine print.  You'll need a credit card if you want to take any of those "free" bikes.  And it's going to cost you $8 for a 24-hour membership.  Ouch, you think- eight bucks for a bike?  Better look into this some more. Maybe you want one for a weekend?  That's $17.  Hey, that's not terrible- Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for $17....of course, unless you want to start paying additional fees, you'll have to get off that bike and get on another one (if you can find one) every thirty minutes...so this isn't exactly the best option for that 30-mile roundtrip to Mount Vernon you had in mind, but....

Let's say you decide that you really want to spend a day on a bike, and you want to cruise around without stopping and constantly changing bikes every 30 minutes.  Ok- the next thirty minutes are going to cost you $1.50.  The next are going to cost you $4.50.  The official site doesn't tell you what the next thirty minutes cost, or how much you are going to get billed to your credit card if you keep the same bike out for, say, three hours, but my guess is that it will involve taking out another mortgage on your house.

(Ok, ok, I actually just checked- the cost would be $30.  Ugh.)

Oh but hey, there are discounts available if you are willing to make a small financial commitment to Capital BikeShare- if you take out an annual membership for only $85, you can save fifty cents on that $1.50 second half-hour fee, for example.  Can't afford that kind of money up front? No Problem, just get a Day Key for only $10, and $7 per day- either way you get all the benefits of that First 30-Minutes Free awesomeness!

Let's be honest, ok?  Capital BikeShare looks for all the world like it was conceived and birthed by a panel of twentysomething trust fund babies from Portland as a way to hit fellow one-percenters in the wallet by appealing to their social conscience and apparently inborn need to at least look like they are Doing Their Part To Save The Planet.  It certainly isn't for people who can't afford to drive or take the bus, which is why you would be justified in assuming that neckties come with the bikes when you take a quick visual survey of who is using the system.   Nice to know there's another option when it's nice outside and you just have to get to Whole Foods for another bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon before the guests start to arrive and you don't want to take the Audi out again.  Take that, global warming!

I've heard the food is pretty good for a chain, though....

There's actually two compilations of these Sonic commercials available on YouTube, and I can't imagine why.  I certainly don't want to meet anyone who enjoys this stupidity so much they'd sit down to twenty minutes of two-guys-in-a-car-talking-food ads.

I mean, really.  If I want to watch two guys sitting in a car engaged in witless, inane, self-indulgent blather, there are countless episodes of Midnight Screenings also available on YouTube.

It's Awesome in Every Way....well, except....

Ok, I feel kind of bad about this, because I think it's a great idea and I'm totally down with the whole Going Green thing (I don't even OWN a car.)  Still...

1.  This thing looks like a lot of fun to drive, until you are in any kind of accident with anything larger than a skateboard.  I especially don't like imagining an accident.  Never mind the lack of side airbags.  There's NO FREAKING SIDE on the most basic models!

2.  90 percent of all car travel is less than ten miles, so I guess it's ok that this car seems to lack any kind of trunk space.  Or room for more than 2.5 people.  I guess.  And I appreciate the honesty of the ad- it doesn't show families with children cruising around in it.  So it's basically a beach buggy for legal road use.  Ok, fine.

3.  What happpens the first time you encounter high winds while driving this thing?  My guess is that it becomes a very expensive kite.

All this being said, I really hope this thing turns out to be a huge seller, leading every other car company to rush to build competitors.  I just don't see that happening until they find somewhere to stick a DVD player and WiFi, though.  Because people are spoiled brats with their cars and electronics these days.

(BTW, Critics?  You really need to get help if you can't stop raving about everything.  I suggest rabies shots.)

The best reason to watch MeTV - the Awesome Commercials

If you don't buy this wallet, you are all but certain to be one of the people who lose a combined One Hundred and Ninety Trillion Dollars per year through credit card fraud!  (Seriously, that's what the opening graphic asserts.  One hundred and ninety trillion dollars- twelve times the national debt of the United States, more than the annual Gross Domestic Product of the entire country- lost EVERY YEAR through CREDIT CARD FRAUD.  Good lord, where is all that money going???? )

Well, that question is answered right away- it's going into the pockets of people who own handheld devices which can read credit cards through ordinary, not-locked wallets and purses.  People who by now must be so insanely rich that it's kind of odd that they would continue to risk arrest by stealing even more credit card numbers.  I mean, let's say that there are a hundred thousand people out there actively engaged in stealing credit card numbers.  According to the Must Be True Because It's On Television statistics presented here, each of those hundred thousand scammers are pulling in $1.9 million per year.  That's a lot of Sham-Wows and Eagle Eye Sunglasses!

But this unbelievably huge criminal enterprise- far more than needed to fund every terrorist organization and activity on the planet, including the purchase of nuclear weapons, delivery systems, submarines, etc- can be thwarted with the purchase of a wallet which blocks the signal credit cards with old-fashioned magnetic strips eminate?  Holy crap, why didn't the scammers just kill the genius who invented this and burn his notes, or buy up the rights and keep the product off the market?  This is like an invention which makes gasoline obsolete -- how did it make it to a totally convincing commercial being presented before an enormous tv audience during Wonder Woman on MeTV?  My faith in Capitalist conspiracies is completely shattered!

BTW, I love the totally-believable crooks nonchalantly holding the card reading devices two inches from purses while we are told they work "up to ten feet away" and the even more totally believable laptop screen reading "NO DATA" because the card is encased in a LockWallet (why would it read anything at all?  So it can detect that there's a credit card in the wallet but can't read it?  Does this make sense?)  But then again, I love everything about this commercial, because it's so fun and cheesy and stupid and easy to snark on.  And to make it extra awesome, we get ten seconds of The Benefits Of The Amazing Free Magnifying Glass Which Can Magnify All These Things And More.

The zipper on the wallet sure makes sense, though.  I wonder why more wallets don't have zippers.  Not going to buy this wallet- and the second "free" one which magically doubles the price through the typical Just Pay Extra Shipping scam- just for the zipper, though.

Another Medication which creates more patients- and another wonderful benefit of marrying Medicine to Capitalism

1.  Notice how so many of these ads are about "adding" a medication, rather than "replacing?"  I strongly suspect that it has something to do with the fact that there's a lot more money in adding than there is in replacing.  Just once I'd like to see a commercial where the doctor "explains" that the drug she prescribed isn't doing what it was promised, so it's time to try something else.  Instead it's always "that perfectly good antidepressant doesn't eliminate your symptoms 100%, 100% of the time?  Nothing wrong with that drug, you just need ANOTHER drug to fill in the gaps."

2.  Notice how happy the doctors in these ads are to prescribe another drug?  The cartoon doctor here seems downright thrilled to hear that her patient's symptoms aren't being 100% masked by whatever Miracle Drug she prescribed eight days ago.  Wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that doctors are essentially drug dealers who went to Medical School, and their money- along with junkets and other free goodies- comes primarily from dealing.

3.  Notice how one of the two constants in drug ads over the past thirty years (since they've become nauseatingly ubiquitous?) is the line "(Insert Drug Name Here) Is Not For Everyone?"  Like we don't know this already?  We are all well aware that drugs for Depression, Diabetes, Arthritis, Erectile Disfunction, etc. etc. etc. aren't for "everyone"- just the people who have been diagnosed, and who have the insurance required to pay for the expensive drugs needed to mask the problem.

4.  Notice how the other contant in drug ads is the long list of absolutely horrible possible side-effects, always delivered calmly in a matter-of-fact, no-big-deal manner?  If you take Abilify- the drug your television doctor told you to try because you aren't in a constant state of bliss- on top of the antidepressent your actual doctor told you would work the last time you visited, you might suffer from all of these other issues, each of which when experienced by normal people (with health insurance) drives those people to the doctor for therapy and-- of course-- medication.  I strongly suspect that if, after a few days of taking Abilify AND the original antidepressant, the patient begins to feel any of these symptoms, they'll be back to the doctor for even more drugs.   Putting more dollars signs in the eyes of that smiling, compassionate doctor.  And so it goes.

How do the lawn care professionals get around all that damn furniture, anyway?

As you can tell from the title, I think about this stuff way too much.  That being said.....

1.  This family should be called the Allergys, not the Yardleys.

2.  The kids on the couch aren't doing anything other than glancing awkwardly at each other.  If she were my daughter, I'd have no problem with this.  It sure doesn't look like it's going to go any further- after all, they look like they are about 12 years old.  And outdoors.  In broad daylight.

3.  Including Little Brother in Dad's "triumph" really ramps up the Creepy meter here.  Why would Little Brother care that his sister is hanging out with a boy on the lawn?

4.  I can't believe this is part of a series of commercials about the same family which loves its chemically-produced lawn so very much that it moved the furniture outside to be close to it all the time.  Oh wait, yes I can.  Because stupid knows no boundaries in the land of tv commercials.

The song isn't good enough. I'm going to need actual evidence of brain activity before I buy this one

Actually, if you had a brain, you would have planned out your life just a little bit better than you did, getting the college degree before the two kids and a mortgage.  You know, so you don't have to study while they sleep, and all that.

And if you really had a brain, you wouldn't be shelling out your money to a For-Profit "Education" service monster birthed by the Apollo Group, an organization becoming increasingly well-known for taking money from desperate, poor and easily-manipulated dreamers and delivering worthless degrees and mountains of debt in exchange.   You'd be going to a real college and not a Diploma Mill.

So sorry, I know you mean well but I'm not going to give you a whole hell of a lot of credit for the way you planned out your life.  Not to be mean, but let's be honest- this isnt' what you are going to encourage your kids to do when they get older, is it?

"When you get out of High School get married and quickly have two kids- once you find yourself with mortgage payments you can't handle, sign up for even more debt with a crooked bs online non-college and spend the next three years completing the work needed for the Print At Home 'diploma' while you are half-asleep from the two jobs you'll need to hold down while you see your kids for roughly twenty minutes a day."   Yeah, sounds like a plan, Brainiac.