I hope Amazon is Skynet. It would serve us right

Here's another thorougly depressing commercial featuring a piece of technology which went from nonexistent to Absolutely Essential How Did We Ever Live Without this in about fourteen minutes following it's release.

I mean, look at what's going on here- remember how you used to make To Do Lists and then cross off each item as it was completed?  Well, that's way too cumbersome for busy 21st century people like these, now you just tell Alexa to cross it off for you.  Remember how you didn't know how to spell words and had to ask a fellow human or consult a dictionary?  Now you just ask Alexa, there you go.  Hell, you just figured out how to send text messages- and now you don't have to anymore, because Alexa (all you had to was figure out how to add all your future ex-friends to Alexa's saved data, but I'm sure that was super easy anyway- nobody in this ad looks or acts like a rocket scientist, after all....)

And thank goodness for Alexa for times like this, because it sure used to be super-awkward to have to call people on the day of a birthday party they were invited to and ask them to bring....candles.  Seriously, that happens in this ad.  Because Alexa isn't yet capable of producing candles out of thin air for these mouth-breathing, helpless dimwits.  Next year.

(Oh and you didn't have to ask Alexa to ask anyone to bring wine, lady.  It's a kid's birthday party.  The other adults are going to bring wine.  Lots of it.  They weren't planning on bringing candles- because who the hell forgets candles?- but they were bringing wine.)

Anyway, Alexa never gets shut down for the entire day of prepping for some stupid kid's stupid birthday party, and it's a good thing because it's pretty clear that the adults in this ad couldn't find the oven or the front door without it's assistance.   I can't believe that this helplessness-encouraging brain replacement device was produced by the same company that gave us the Kindle at the dawn of this millenium.  Oh but they turned that into a television in about fifteen minutes, so maybe I can.

I can clear this up, Stephen A Smith and Taco Bell!

(Oh and all the non-celebrities, cartoon characters, non-celebrities acting like cartoon characters etc. in this commercial- I'm here to help you ALL out too!)

See, what this is is Taco Bell's latest idea for selling cheap, greasy, fat-laden garbage to people with no money or taste buds.  This time it's a package of fried egg and cheese that fits into your hand (wow, how original.)  Eat enough of them, and someday your doctor will show you your EKG scan and you'll mutter "what the...." before he explains to you that your eating habits have shortened your life by many, many years so he's going to have to insist on full payment on the spot, as he can't be at all sure you aren't going to drop dead on your way home from the office.

Glad to be of service.  No charge.

Why Amazon Go is, in fact, the Mark of the Beast

No, I am not being hyperbolic here.  I hate hyperbole.  I've said many times that I view hyperbolic people as worse than Stalin.  But in fact when preparing to post on this particular ad I considered these alternative titles:

Because you need to justify spending hundreds of dollars a year on "updated" SmartPhones

Because we can't stop "improving" technology until everyone on Earth has lost their job- which will in turn solve all the other problems related to shopping, won't it?

Because you want to limit your social interaction as much as possible but aren't quite ready- or organized enough- to do all your shopping online yet.

Because you need another way to set yourself apart from the Lower Classes who still use stores staffed by actual people.

And settled on something which came close to "this is the end of civilization."  It's over.  You've already lost your ability to speak to people face to face or even over the phone, and must now express yourself using emojis and #HitAndRunAlmostSentences.  You already can't walk and chew gum at the same time without getting Google to explain to you, in step by step instrutions downloaded to that phone, exactly how to go about doing that.  Five minutes after chip technology replaced Swiping (which replaced those carbon-paper receipt machines five minutes before that, and which replaced cash and checks five minutes before that) you're ready to be convinced that holding your phone over a scanner for three seconds is So Very Yesterday and An Enormous Time-Wasting Hassle Surely We Can Make Things Go Faster Oh Yay Amazon Go!

Civilization.  It was fun while it lasted.  Remember people?  In the end, I guess we decided that their negatives outweighed their positives, so they just aren't part of our lives anymore.  Whatever.  It's a beautiful, sunny autumn day, so it's time to check out Netflix.

Hanes' Smellfie ad just murdered my soul*

Ok, let's just go with the idea that there's something called "the Smellfies," and it involves emitting foul body odor at very inconvenient times, like when you show up for a date or are at a wedding or actually pretty much any time you are in public.

You COULD just take regular showers, use deodorant, and make sure you are wearing clean clothes and not just whatever you found piled up at the foot of your bed this morning.  You COULD do that.  But that's a really low-tech, 20th century solution, something your parents might have done.  It's practically 2018, so....

What you should do now to "Stop the Smellfies" is invest in Hanes High-Tech BO-inhibiting undergarments.  Sure, it costs more than their regular t-shirts and underwear, but if you wear that stuff you have to go back to bathing regularly and using deodorant, like your parents did.  You want to be like your parents?  You want to keep clean? 

Didn't think so.  Buy this stuff, and continue to revel in being a dirty, sweaty slob who lost your ability to practice basic hygiene around the same time you lost your ability to carry on an actual conversation that didn't involve emojis.   The world you're stinking the hell out of?  You're welcome to it.  And if you're on the fence about being a customer for Advanced Tech Anti-Stink underclothes?  Just take a freaking shower, hippie!

*Silver lining:  The Youtube commenters hate this ad almost as much as I do.  That's got to count for something.

Subaru's latest Love ad just ramps up the stupid....

The TV version of this thing mercifully cuts the pain down to about thirty seconds.  The internet version is a painfully drawn-out, hammer-to-the-brain-smarmy minute and a half of your life you will never get back.  Hey, I didn't tell you to watch it.

The punchline isn't grampa's "I Love Thoreau" bumper sticker (holy crap, we GET IT Subaru.  We didn't need that hammer to the brain!) It's the grandson asking if grampa felt compelled to lie to grandma and tell her that he was going fishing instead of surfing.  Because I guess grandma has no problem with fishing but would dissaprove of surfing because....reasons?  Maybe Subaru thinks that Thoreau fans are best known for lying to their wives?

Why can't this guy tell his wife he wants to go surfing with his grandson?  And what does a pointless lie about it have to do with "love" again?  And while we're at it, what does any of this mess have to do with Subarus?  I mean, WTF?

Yowie, this is stupid!

The thought of this pale, fat, stupid little kid eating enough cheap chocolate to collect all those stupid plastic animals makes me want to call Child Protective Services on his parents.  It also makes me want to hurt everybody.

And the punchline is that his "mission" to spend all that money to purchase and consume that cheap plastic-that-tastes-kind-of-like-chocolate isn't over just because he's managed to complete his collection, because hey look here's ANOTHER set to collect.  Strap on your African Safari hat and grab mom's purse, Stupid Fat Kid!  It's back to the store---err, jungle---for another encounter with the cashier---err, tribal chieftain....or something.....

I can remember when commercials didn't whip me up into a psychotic rage on a daily basis.  I miss those days.  I really do.  But what am I going to do when I live in a world where people are encouraged to buy Easter Bunny-quality chocolate so they can get a stupid plastic toy you used to be able to get out of gumball machines for a nickle and can still buy by the bag at the Dollar Store for 99 cents?  I mean, what the hell is going on here?  Are you people completely f--ing insane, or what?

Domino's Soft Sell + Hard Sell = No Sale

I couldn't care less how much you love your stores, Dominos franchise owners.  Don't care how you got the money to start them up, don't care if they "mean everything to you," and sure as hell don't care that when the order came down from the people who REALLY own the stores to remodel, you were just fine with that.

So now that you've failed to win me over with your Tales of American Entrepreneurship....

I couldn't care less that Domino's sludge factories look more modern now, or include plexiglass partitions to allow stupid gawky kids to stare at the pizza-building monkeys who must really feel like they are in a cage, and wasn't working here for minimum wage humiliating enough without being on display like this?

And I'm sure you think that watching people smash windows and knock down walls in slow motion to some crappy rap song (I don't care how many YouTube commentors desperately "need" the song, btw) is super entertaining and all that, but it's not going to distract us from the simple fact that for all of the Spirit of the Small Businessman, the Glossy New Decor, or the Really Cool Destruction that went into making Domino's Lowest Common Denominator Pizza Distributors look different, this is just an attempt to put a whole lot of lipstick on a really, really ugly pig.  Because in the end, this is still just Domino's.  Adding giant pans of pasta isn't getting me through that door.  Improving the look isn't getting me through that door.  The only thing that could get me through that door is decent food- and I notice you aren't talking about making radical improvements to THAT anywhere in these ads.

So I'll continue to pass on the bland, flabby carbs and sugar, sorry.  Hope you own the rights to that music, though.  There are a lot of idiots on Youtube who apparently are willing to pay for it.