Dear Liberty Mutual....

Could make one- just one- commercial in which the doofus who has the expensive accident is a woman?  You know, to kind of break the rut you're in, with one freaking ad after another featuring a woman complaining because her idiot male husband/boyfriend/brother/son did something stupid with the car and ended up costing her money because he was too stupid to use Liberty Mutual for his insurance?

Please?  Just one?  I mean, I know you're trying to create some kind of balance after decades of unfunny "women drivers" bits, but two wrongs really don't make a right.  So knock off the ads with sheepish, Ashamed Men and The Women Who Tolerate Them, please?  Please?

Hey, "Liberal." You aren't helping with this self-indulgent crap

Seriously, I find it very hard to believe that this commercial isn't snark written by a Trump supporter.

I didn't watch the entire thing- I could barely get past the whiny "I walk and walk and sometimes it rains" bit (yeah, welcome to the real world, doofus.  You sound like those people who dismiss solar panels with "but sometimes it's night or it's cloudy.")  Even worse was the totally offhand "I can take the train but it's an hour each way, and that's when it DOESN'T hit a person..." Holy crap, you're on a train that regularly hits people and all you can think is "Oooooh, this is really going to slow down my commute what a bummer?"  Seriously?  How fricking cold-blooded can you get, stupid self-centered jagoff?

I really don't care what she says beyond this, though I know she goes into what is supposed to be an ironic "we need double-decker highways tee hee hee I 'm just saying this because I know all the liberals I'm going to meet on the street (all of whom own cars) are going to respond hey the last thing we need is a bigger carbon footprint tee hee hee" and I'm guessing that it ends with a pitch for more mass transit.  I'm hoping that it also includes a little about walkable communties, but judging from that earlier "I walk and walk and sometimes it rains" bit, I kind of doubt it.

So someone else can watch this whole thing and tell me what the magic solution to too much traffic and too much carbon and too much reliance on fossil fuels and earthquake-creating water-contaminating natural gas is, since it's not walkable communities (which by the way are also the solution to a lot of our health problems.) But never mind.  I'm done.

Audi People. They're Just Better Than You

That homemade friendship bracelet thing is just fine for most people- I mean, it's the thought that counts.  At least, that's what people with no money say.

But we Audi people- well, for us, it's all about Quality.  So you give me this little friendship bracelet thing that you thought was pretty special and hoped meant that we would remain friends even as we went our separate ways for eleven months.  You hoped that this little bracelet thing would help me forget that you don't even have the latest iPhone and your parents don't drive an Audi or even a Lexus.

I think bigger than you.  Even though you aren't anywhere near good enough to actually MEET my parents- so I'm going to say goodbye right here and run to the car and not introduce you or anything like that- I'd like you to have this carved piece of wood with much better bracelets inside, to remind you that I'm so way out of your league it's not even funny.

So, see you next summer.  Hope things turn around for your parents before then, so we can continue to be friends!

Let's just be honest about this Verizon Commercial, shall we?

There is absolutely no reason for the fat doofus who is supposed to be live-streaming this couple's ridiculous pretentious rooftop wedding*  to admit that he's lost connectivity.  He should just continue to hold his phone up and pretend to live stream the obnoxiously showy thing for the benefit of the laughably clueless couple who actually think anyone would be watching anyway, because....

Nobody is watching anyway.  The people who said "oh I'm sorry, I can't be there to share your amazingly happy day oh how wonderful if you can live stream it" are off doing something else, living their lives, secretly thrilled to death that thanks to the miracle of live streaming they now have an excuse to avoid going places they don't want to go- like the roof of this building to watch you two pretend to be fricking royalty or something- because Hey, We Can Be There In Spirit By Watching the Live Stream....

So if the fat doofus just pretends to live stream this mess, the Happy Couple will never know.  Because NOBODY is EVER going to say "hey, I tried to watch but the live stream didn't work" unless they also add "MY phone screwed up, sorry."  NOBODY is EVER going to realize that fat doofus didn't live stream the stupid wedding because NOBODY IS ACTUALLY TRYING TO WATCH THIS WEDDING ON THEIR PHONES. 

Now enjoy the rest of the ceremony, you self-important twats.  And keep living in your fantasy world where the no-shows or non-invitees give a flying damn.  Next time do what people with a tiny amount of foresight and something more than sawdust for brains do- hire a photographer with a video camera and a tripod (the only thing I want to watch less than a marriage ceremony is a marriage ceremony captured by a cell phone held with one hand by a guy in the front row) and then put the whole damn thing on Facebook.  Where nobody will watch it.

*unless you are Reed Richards marrying Sue Storm, there is no way you can justify a rooftop wedding.  Reed can do it because he's marrying Jessica Alba.  You aren't marrying Jessica Alba.  So don't even try the rooftop wedding.

Grand Canyon Not Included

As near as I can tell, this is the "college experience" according to Grand Canyon University -

1.  Watching basketball games on your tablet.

2.  Walking around a playground with children.

3.  Standing in the most cliche'd classroom/daycare center ever seen on television enthusiastically pointing at enthusiastic children who are hilariously raising their hands to answer the question you asked, to demonstrate to you that they were hanging on every word, being such enthusiastic learners and all. 

4.  Sitting on the couch simultaneously using your laptop and talking on your Smartphone- because that's what "multitasking" looks like today, I guess.  Wow, what a go-getter you are. 

I mean, come on, gag me.  

Summer Hiatus, Part I

2016 was the last year of Louisville's ten-year contract with Educational Testing Service to host the US History Advanced Placement test grading, an event I've taken part in since 2008.  Tampa, a city I've never visited, will do the honors for the next ten years.  So this is where I'll be June 2-9.

I don't know how much of this I'll get to see during my stay in the "Lightning Capital of the World" (that doesn't sound very promising...) but I'm sure I'll enjoy a little of the "longest sidewalk in the world" as I take urban hikes while not grading,  I hope I get a chance to check out the beaches too, and visit the aquarium if it isn't too far from the convention center where I'll be working.  The Tampa Yankees minor league team is in town so I'll do my best to get to a game.  Oh, and I'll grade as many essays as I can when not seeing the sights and having fun.

Anyway, I won't be posting again until June 10.  Please enjoy the archives, and see you when I get back!

My apologies to M&M Mars

A few days ago, I picked on M&M Mars for producing a god-awful commercial tying their candy with the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie.  I don't take back anything I said; it was a very stupid attempt at cross-promotion which came across as lazy and insulting and made me retroactively hate both the candy and the original movie.  All of that stands.

But compared to this schlock, the candy ad was high art.  I mean, I know Dairy Queen ("DQ" this, seriously) is pretty much expected to produce the most insipid, barrell-scraping stupid commercials which don't feature beer or Real People, Not Actors.  But this is even lower than their usual standards.  We've got the thirtysomething white people in jobs held in real life by teenagers and college students, first of all.  But then we've got one of those employees getting a thrill repeatedly wiping off a lifesized carboard cutout of one of the actors....um, wtf-ever, Dairy Queen.  Anything to distract us from the Artificial Cold Junk In An Only Slightly Less Digestable Cup, I guess.

Oh, and just try to take one of these things into the theater with you when you try to obey the commercial's command to see Guardians of the Galaxy II.  If I were you, I'd just smuggle in a bag of M&Ms.  And go see a better movie while I'm at it.