eBay's soul-sucking salute to nonstop consumption*

Don't celebrate Christmas like everyone else, because you aren't like everyone else.  You're a pampered, white, rich American brat for whom three days for shipping seem like a crushing burden and is the reason why you spend $99 a year on Amazon Prime.

Oh, but this is an ad for eBay, that worldwide garage sale Weird Al Yankovic rightfully parodied more than a decade ago.  Ok, so if you buy your Christmas presents on eBay you certainly aren't like everyone else.  You aren't even like most spoiled brat American white people who live to have stuff show up on their doorstep in ugly brown boxes pretty much every day.  You are a different level of impulse, Live-For-Today shopper who has totally bought in to the Need It Right Now Gimmeee Gimmeee GIMMMMEEEEE philosophy that comes as a pre-loaded App on your Smartphone.

And no, I'm not apologizing to the jackass Youtube commenter who desperately needed to know what music accompanies this disgusting salute to instant gratification.  I really do want you to go die in a fire.  Because I hate you and the rest of your "I need to know what every piece of music I ever hear on any commercial right now plz plz plz" ilk.  You'll never contribute anything to anyone's life.  You are dumb as dirt and more vapid than I ever thought possible.  You won't be missed.  So go find that fire. Bet you can find one nearby using your Smartphone.  Maybe you can even get it delivered.

*wouldn't it be cool if this kind of behavior actually GAVE you consumption? 

Clarins Hysterical Word Salad....errr, Serum

In thirty-one seconds of narration and silly visuals accented by a zombie-pale woman who worries about wrinkles despite the fact that she's never been in the sun in her life, we learn that this bottle of pricey goo is

Two Serums in One!  (Wow!  That's twice as good as just ONE serum!  Where do I buy this stuff for the girl in my life who is starting to look her age, which is my age, which sucks?)

With 21 Potent Plant Abstracts! (That sounds so impressive!  So, what are these plants?  What do you mean, Shut Up That's Why?)

Hydric and Lipidic Systems!  (I don't know what those are, but if I admit that I'll look stupid, so This Is Impressive Too!)

And here's the hilarious punchline:  "After seven days, Instant Radiance!"  Ok, stop.  That doesn't even make any sense.  Seven days isn't "instant."  Does the narrator mean that there's no gradual improvement during those seven days, but the effects of the two serums with hydric and lipidic systems from 21 plant abstracts suddenly show up "instantly" on Day Seven?  Will it hurt?  Will it be scary?

Oh, and everyone in this Budweiser ad needs to die horribly. Right now.

If I thought that even one in ten of the people posting how much they love this ad were sincere and not paid whores for Budweiser, I don't think I could go on.  There is simply no way that more than a few dozen people on the entire planet think that this crap is even remotely funny, let alone Comedy Gold worthy of being imitated in real life.

As for being "Superbowl Worthy," I can totally buy that, since I think the Superbowl is the toxic waste dump of bad ad ideas.  There, I said it.

Grammarly- when you kind of want to sound like you, but not really because you're an illiterate idiot

"The Future" being one owned and controlled by idiots who don't read or write because Hey TV Was On Every Time I Planned To Do That Stuff.

"Does this sound like me?"  Well, no- it sounds like a literate person, and we know you aren't that.  As soon as the people who read this notice that it's not filled with grammatical errors, they are going to know you didn't write it.  And because they know what Grammarly is and get most of their information from Alexa and Siri and can't get to the local Starbucks without consulting turn-by-turn directions on their iPhones, they probably won't care either.

Oh, but this guy is going to be the "VP of Analytics."  Whatever the hell that is.  All I know about that job is that doing it doesn't require any actual English skills, because this worthless choad has already survived the interview and the rest of the hiring process and is now just momentarily flummoxed because for at least one day he has to pretend to know just a little bit about the language he allegedly grew up speaking (but never writing unless absolutely forced to, which wasn't often because Sports and TV. 

Two ways to "celebrate" prohibition, according to Budweiser

As near as I can figure:

First, you celebrate prohibition by drinking non-alcoholic "beer" because Reasons.  The only people who think this sounds intelligent probably add germs to milk to remind them of the good old days before Louis Pasteur came around and ruined everything.  Or they use chamberpots because it was so much cooler back when you had to fling your personal filth out the window instead of all this lame plumbing stuff.

Then, you wash that horrible taste of not-beer out of your mouth with "1933 Repeal Reserve."  If you are remarkably stupid- and the fact that you were just drinking non-alcoholic beer and are now drinking Budweiser in ANY form suggests that you are- you might just be able to con yourself into believing that this stuff is from the vaults of the Budweiser brewery.  It was just sitting there for 95 years, waiting for you to enjoy it for a limited time.  Uh-huh. 

Deleted Clip:  you then wash THAT horrible taste out of your mouth by consuming real beer. 

State Farm turns over a new leaf

Maybe it was visited by three ghosts on the night of August 10, 2017?

I mean, there has to be some reason why the State Farm Insurance Company, which was founded in 1922, waited ninety-five years before suddenly deciding that "starting today," it was going to work with Americans who are facing financial difficulties, publishing that declaration on YouTube on August 11, 2017.

What was so special about that day?  Why not the previous week? Not enough Americans having a hard time making ends meet then?  For that matter, why not during the Great Depression?  Seems like State Farm would have had no problem finding a whole lot of people having a tough time making ends meet back then, too. 

Maybe I shouldn't be too hard on State Farm.  The company has a total net value of a quarter of a trillion dollars and an annual revenue stream of about $87 billion. I have quite a bit less than that and I have a hard time deciding exactly how and where to spend my money- it must be at least TWICE as hard for a gigantic insurance company to make decisions like that.  Still, did it really have to take ninety-five years for State Farm to wake up one day and decide "hey, you know what we should do?  Help people make good financial decisions and secure their futures for retirement and college and stuff."

Maybe this is just something corporate behemoths do when they've spent nearly a century becoming obscenely rich by taking premiums and not paying off policies except when absolutely required to by law and with as much foot-shuffling and delaying as humanly possible.  I don't know- again, I don't have a lot of experience handling quite as much money as State Farm deals with regularly. 

Maybe State Farm noticed that Steve Jobs behaved like a disgustingly, insanely greedy pig-human hybrid who insisted on moving his manufacturing base to Asia so he could build a personal fortune of $10 billion instead of the $5 billion he might have had by staying in North America and paying the people who put together his electronic toys a living wage....and then died of cancer at the age of 56 anyway.  Kind of a nice reminder that there just might be more to existence than watching your vault of money burst at the seams. 

Or maybe this is just a bit of cloying soft-sell from another "Company that Cares."  If that's the case, I'd still like to know why, when I was hit by a drunk driver fifteen years ago, State Farm couldn't give me my $500 deductible back because it was unable to extract it from the drunk who had no assets.  Oh right, I forgot.  That was before August 11, 2017.  They weren't in to giving a damn back then.

Too Much Minimalism in this New Balance Ad!

If you don't blink, and if you watch very closely, you actually can catch a glimpse of shoes in this advertisement for New Balance walking shoes.

No matter how hard you look, you won't see anything which suggests that the shoes are attractive, or comfortable, or durable, or has any of the qualities the typical consumer looks for in a walking shoe (I hope.)

You will, however, get a pretty good window in the lives of two people who are the only residents of an urban area whose paths intersect once as they wander about the desolate cityscape.  I can only guess that the look on the girls' face as she passes the guy is one of annoyance- "we've got thirty blocks to ourselves- and you can't find somewhere else to walk?  You have to cross into MY zone?"

"New Balance:  They're Shoes you wear on your feet.  So you can go outside."  Hey look at me, I'm Darrin Stevens!