Intellivision to the Rescue!

Since Mattel stopped making the consoles in 1990 after a very successful 12-year run, you probably don't remember these if you are under the age of forty.  I never owned one myself, but they were for a time Atari's only real competition in the home video game field.

Back in the 70s, the idea was that the home video game would replace the board game as the best way to keep families engaged with eachother instead of the images on the screen.  Mom, Dad, and Kids would compete in fun contests of skill by manipulating joysticks instead of dice or cards.  Innocent fun and all that.  And much better than the pathetic, zombie-like couch potatoes they were when they were just watching tv, never interacting in any meaningful way.

Ugh, can you imagine?  People used to spend up to two or three hours a night watching television.  Then Atari and Intellivision came around and instead they started spending an hour or two a few nights a week playing video games.  We sure were obsessed with glowing screens back then- if it hadn't been for Atari and Intellivision, I bet we'd still be spending hour after hour ignoring our families and staring at the tv.

This was in the late-70s.  Thank goodness things have changed so much, right?  Thanks for saving our society, Video Game Industry!

Nice Job, Hasbro.

Every once in a while I have to stop snarking on commercials and actually endorse one, because the message is just too good.  It doesn't even bother me that the games being featured indocrinate kids to be Good Little Capitalists and Breeders.

If I was married with kids, this is what my house would look like, except that the kids would be a lot better looking of course.  We'd be playing board games on the nights we weren't reading or just talking.  Nobody would be blathering away on cell phones and nobody would be texting or staring at a glowing screen.  Because as the ad implies, none of that involves living, just existing.

I see adults with kids in parks, at ball games, at the beach etc. all the time redefining "family time" to mean "people related to each other being in the same general location fiddling with and staring at electronic devices."  It's freaking heartbreaking, and it's also so repulsive to see such asshattery being normalized.  Is the "connectivity" addiction so damned powerful that people need to be forever putting their alleged loved ones on the back burner?  Aren't we all getting a little sick of playing second fiddle to a glowing box?  Why is someone who isn't there always a higher priority than someone who is?

Maybe I'm just in a mood because every day I have to be extra careful crossing streets, watching for people who think that self-driving cars are already a reality and its perfectly ok to text while they are in motion.  But I think its more than that- more and more I wonder why people even bother to pretend to be social animals when all they really want is to crawl into an electric cocoon and be left alone.   Or why such people went through the motions of getting married and having children if they weren't going to give spouses and kids any quality time beyond "lets go to the AT&T store and get you hooked up so you can leave me alone until you move out."  What the hell is going on here?

When you're watching racist McDonald's Commericals- there's a Big Mac for that!

You know what, never mind.  I could spend the next hour spilling out eight paragraphs of rant fixated on how a multi-billion dollar sludge factory owned by massively rich white people made rich by churning out poisonous but very cheap junk for poor black and white people thinks that the best way to appeal to its customers is through bad rap.  But I've got things to do, so I'll just focus on the revolting behavior of the people in this ad:

According to this loathsome two-minute wall of noise, there is a Big Mac for That if

1.  You're sitting in a library.  Because libraries just love it when patrons use them as a setting for eating hot, greasy food.  But hell, if you feel comfortable letting out a loud squeal of delight while sitting in a library, you probably don't give a damn about the other patrons anyway.  So please chomp down that Big Mac while blathering at high volume on your cell phone.  Because as far as you are concerned, society is for losers anyway.

2.  You're sitting on a bus.  See No. 1.  Everyone on that bus loves the smell of your food and the site of you jamming it into your face.  The bus company loves the mess and the vermin it attracts.  We all wish you'd just go back to yelling into your iPhone or playing your music with no headphones or with ear buds (same thing.)

3.  You find money in the dryer at the laundramat. Because I don't know about you, but the heavy smell of chemicals and lint really spike MY appetite.  Sometimes I go out of the way to eat dinner at the local 24-hour Wash and Dry.  Especially when the library is closed.

4.  A hot girl returns your text.  Because if you think you are going to land a date with your dream girl, the first thing you want to do is shove about half a pound of grease and carbs down your pie hole.  Try to make sure she's there to see you do it.  She's sure to swoon.

I think that the real message of this commercial is "no matter how big your mouth is, we've got a sandwhich you can shove into it if you open that mouth really really wide and really don't care who might be able to see you, you disgusting trashy slobs."

Tax Solutions: Let us help you become even bigger victims!

I don't know why all of these Duck Your Taxes commercials don't just cut out all the narration and just skip to the obvious punchline- "I'm a tax cheat and I got caught, oh noes what do I do now?"

Oh, right- because the message in all these ads is "the big bad Internal Revenue Service lives in a giant white castle and uses the power of the Evil Federal Government Run By Faceless Money-Hungry Socialist Bureaucrats to take YOUR money, and its coming after you so you need help call this toll-free number before it's too late!"

And in case you don't realize how late it really is, check out the digital clock, counting down the seconds until that knock on the door!

Of course, all of these tax cheats- err, I mean Honest Americans Who Are Being Victimized- live in big houses and have innocent, pretty wives and pretty children who are all made out of ticky-tacky and all look just the same, and who all just want to go about those pretty little lives in peace but can't because the Trolls at the IRS are hounding them to death oh please make it stop all we did was not pay our taxes, its not like we are criminals or anything!

I'm sure commercials like this do a great job massaging the sense of victimhood the tax cheats watching them desperately want to feel- they aren't bad people.  They are just Good, Decent, Hard-Working, Home-owning, Breeding Americans trying to Live the Dream but Can't Sleep at Night because the Government is Interfering Why Cant they focus on Defeating the Terrorists like they are supposed to this Must Be Obama's Fault?  If you think I'm exaggerating, do a Google search of "Complaints about Tax Masters" (a now-defunct company which spent years stealing money from would-be tax dodgers.)  They include things like "the government was hounding our small little business" and "instead of doing their job the IRS was picking on little guys like me," etc. etc. etc.  They would actually be hilarious if they weren't so pathetic.

And of course they all include testimonials like "they offered to settle my $80,000 debt for $27 and an upfront fee of $3500, but they LIED!"

Yes, the IRS makes mistakes.  When that happens, guess what you can do to address the problem besides hire a middleman like these scum-sucking pigs?  You can call the IRS and work it out.  In rare cases, you may need to hire a tax attorney- and if that's necessary, you hire someone local, not a damn voice on the phone you can't visit in his office, you morons.  Oh, but if you do any of those things, you might have to accept the reality that you aren't going to be settling that debt for pennies on the dollar.  Which means you don't get to victimize the society you are supposed to be doing your share to support.  No sympathy here.

Don't Worry, Trump Supporters- you can still earn that Advanced Degree in Dumb

Go to Prager University (you can do it without even getting up from your couch, since its an online "college") and you can get a "degree" by taking classes which explain

1.  Why Socialism takes countries which are prosperous and happy and turns them into crime, disease and-poverty ridden hell holes, *

2.  Why Global Climate Change is a China-and-Al-Gore-inspired myth designed to bring down the Bible-endorsed Capitalist System that God Intended us to live under,

3.  Why Athiests murder people all the time because if you don't believe in God there is no reason to be Moral,**

And so much more, all brought to you by exactly the person you'd look for for all the answers to the questions about life you've ever had- a Right-Wing Radio Yakker.  Especially now that the wonderful school you thought you'd be graduating from got shut down by the Libtards just because its founder was elected President and had to settle so he could go about keeping his promise to Make America Great Again.

*The video I embedded is a painfully obstuse five minutes featuring a "Brazilian Journalist" explaining how his country was well on its way to becoming a paradise filled with happy, successful middle class families and zero crime until The Evil Socialists came to power and created a dystopia of murder, poverty and high taxes for The Most Productive by attempting to create a social safety net (which was silly because like the journalist says, life was awesome in Brazil, why would anyone need a social safety net?)

**It must be endlessly frustrating for Prager and his ilk that Athiests make up such a tiny percentage of people in prison for committing violent crimes.  How could this be, since non-believers have no concept of an Ultimate Judgement after death?  My guess is that their answer is Shut Up, That's Why.

McDonald's Isn't Helping

So these little girls are standing in a obnoxiously pink room obsessing over what their little dolls are going to be wearing today- and Mommy comes in to contribute "I've got just the shoes for that!"

In other words, McDonald's has its brain firmly planted in the 1950s, and no power on Earth is going to get it out of there.  I mean, really- "Barbie Fashionistas?"  "What color goes best with this Happy Meal box?"  Ugh, gross.  Way to be part of the problem, McDonald's!  What ideas you got coming down the pike for next month- "I Hate Math and Love Lipstick" themed meals just for little girls?

I want to meet a person who finds "Jimmy Cash" a convincing spokesperson

1.  I wonder how many poor rubes actually ran out to their cars to check the glove compartment and trunk because Jimmy Cash, the shouting, dancing green elf on television, told them that there was cash in their car.

2.  $50,000?  Um, if you can get a loan of $50,000 on your car, you've got other ways of getting money and don't need the ruinous, usury level interest rates provided by a Title Loan.  You can probably afford them, though.

3.  Let's be real.  99 percent of the people who are so strapped for cash that they'd be willing to hand their car titles over for collateral on a short-term loan which will certainly bankrupt them unless they have a large amount of cash coming to them inside of a few weeks own beaters worth less than a few thousand dollars.  They aren't going to be raising huge amounts of money on those beaters, sorry.

4.  The other 1 percent are dumb clucks who got suckered into buying cars they couldnt afford but which sure look good on the street outside the apartment complex.  Which means that "Jimmy Cash" knows his audience.  Sad.