Allstate will have to look elsewhere for forgiveness....

First- neither of these "parents" seem at all concerned about the condition of the car.  Is it really a "minor fender-bender?"  Not if they are going to be using "accident forgiveness" for it- you get that ONCE.  If it's just a "minor fender-bender," they are paying for it out of pocket and holding off on the accident forgiveness for a major accident.  If this kid is talking about accident forgiveness, it kind of implies that this was a serious, costly accident.  Which leads us to our second point.

Neither of these "parents" seem at all concerned about the condition of their kid, or if anyone else was involved in the accident, or if anyone was hurt.  Just don't give a damn.  "The car has been damaged in a non-specific but expensive way? You're grounded.  Now go away."  Ugh.

(Oh, and if you think you can stomache it, check out some of the YouTube comments.  This kid is such a good actor, this kid is so cute, the Dad in the commercial symbolizes everything wrong with American Males today, the Mom is a Rhymes-With-Witch, etc.  It's pretty sad.  Forget I suggested it- don't check out the YouTube comments.   Not worth it.)

Morgan Silver Dollar Hilarity, Part II

8.  "You can get these Morgans for the same price we charged three years ago!"  Well, isn't that nice- despite the fact that silver MIGHT skyrocket in value, they are offering these coins in 2012 at the same price they were offered at in 2009.

Wait a minute- let's go back to that convenient silver price chart you showed us at the 56-second mark.  You know, the one that showed silver jumping from $6 an ounce to $20 an ounce between January 2005 to March 2008.  The price tripled but you are willing to sell us silver coins for no increase in price?  That would sound like a great deal, except for two reasons.  First, you are selling these coins in 2012.  Why does your graph stop at March 2008?  Is it because the price of silver peaked in that month, leveled off, and then started to drop?  Just askin'.  Second- well, I'll save that second point for the end of this commentary.

9.  At the 1:18 mark, you tell us that "Several prominent silver brokers charge twenty or thirty dollars more for a similar silver dollar.  These minted silver dollars are heavy with .900 Pure Silver..."

Ok, STOP.  Now the dishonesty has become blatant for anyone willing to actually listen to this ad with their brain in the "ON" position.  I'm not going to ask for the names of the "prominent silver brokers" because that's not the real point.  The REAL deception is in two parts here- First, the brokers charge "twenty or thirty dollars more" for a silver dollar SIMILAR to the one being hawked here.  What does "similar" mean?  It doesn't mean the same- so though the narrator clearly wants you to think so, those other brokers are NOT selling the SAME coin being offered here at a higher price.  THEY ARE SELLING A DIFFERENT COIN.  Second, WHICH minted silver dollars are "heavy with .900 pure silver?"  Well, since you've already told us that the ones YOU are selling contain .77 pure silver (check the 44-second mark) we can only assume that you are talking about the coins offered by your competitors.  That explains why they cost more- though you don't want us to put that all together, do you?

This goes on for another twenty seconds, meaning that I could probably throw a Part III in here, but I'm not going to because I'd rather cut to the chase with this little nugget- just before the end, the narrator tells us that these coins are "rich in historic value." That might be the only shred of honesty in the entire ad, but the fact that the company peddling this crap spent 95 percent of the commercial trying to convince us that it was the SILVER IN THE COIN and NOT THE COIN ITSELF that was valuable prevents me from cutting them any slack here.  Maybe they watched an early version of this ad and realized that SOMEONE might do the math and figure out that what was being offered was .77 of an ounce of silver (selling at about $18 an ounce at the time of this ad) for $19.90 plus shipping and handling.  So they decided they'd better add something about "historical value" to make up for the fact that this is a really stupid way to purchase silver (actually, there isn't a smart way, but that's an argument for another time.)  I really think that they should have stuck with the "piece of history" bit but I guess they know their audience thinks that history began with World War II and ended with Ronald Reagan, so Hey It's Made of Silver the Metal that got more valuable Because China, or something.  People are so weird.

Having fun with a vintage Morgan Silver Coin Ad....

1.  "Just Located!"  What, again?  Seems like every few weeks a huge number of Morgan Silver Dollars are discovered in an attic, a sunken Confederate warship, or under the 50-yard line at Giants Stadium (they were looking for Jimmy Hoffa, found these Morgan Dollars instead!)  Seriously, how many times can they pull this same pitch?

2.  "The most sought-after coins in American history."  I'd like to see the raw data, please.  What's the second-most sought-after coin?  9/11 Commemoratives?  I hope so, 'cause I got five of those.  I wanted more, but there was a strict limit.

3.  "9:45 New York.  National Collector's Mint releases 3487 of the last surviving Morgan Dollars still in existence..." notice the trick in language- I bet a lot of hillbillies watching this ad heard "the last 3487 in existence" and thought "I'd better snatch some of them up, once they're gone, they're gone."  But because I have ears and critical thinking skills, I'm left with two questions- how many Morgan Dollars are actually still in existence, and how did you you come up with that number considering that we keep finding more?

4.  "Condition is important, and all the Morgan Silver Dollars released are guaranteed to be in Brilliant Uncirculated to Fine Condition."  More fun with language, kids! None of these coins are guaranteed to be Uncirculated, just "Uncirculated to Fine Condition."  Who judges what "Uncirculated" means?  Doesn't matter- all that's required is that the condition of your coin be "fine" for this ad to live up to this particular promise.  And what does "fine" mean?  Whatever this company wants it to mean. 

5.  "Over 320 million Morgan Dollars were melted during both World Wars....all were .77344 oz pure silver...." MORE fun with language, kids!  So the government melted lots of coins, and those coins had a lot of silver.  What does this have to do with the ad?  Well, nothing, since the product for sale isn't a melted coin.  How much silver is in the coins being offered today?  Seems like that would be a good piece of information....which we aren't going to get, because we think we just got it with this blurb about coins which don't exist anymore. 

6.  "When Silver hit $50 an ounce, China was a poor nation.  Now China is rich, and uses three times more silver!"  Ok, now it's time to play Correlation v. Causation- except that the ad doesn't come out and claim that silver has anything to do with China's wealth, does it?  So what's the point of this little nugget of not-history? I strongly suspect that it's just there to equate Silver=Rich in our little brains.  And it's followed quickly by....

7.  "Will this drive the price back up to $50 or even higher?"  Well, apparently not. When this ad was made, in 2012, the price of silver was just under $21 per ounce.  Today it's just over $17 per ounce.  So if we take this ad's math to be accurate, once upon a time silver was selling at $50 per ounce.  Then it dropped to $6 per ounce, then rose to almost $21, and now it's at $17 per ounce.  Yeah, sounds like something I want to bank my retirement on.

I'm only a minute into this 108-second ad, and I've got to get back to work.  I'll do a Part II next time. 

'Tis the Season for Audi to shove this crap in our faces, again

The only silver lining here is imagining all these privileged idiots with obvious blood pressure issues who clearly think that because they own expensive cars they are entitled to pretty much everything else- including convenient parking places- will eventually suffer massive strokes and die with blood oozing out of their noses as they lay aside their pretty cars.  Hopefully before they run anyone over driving 50 MPH through parking garages. 

Other than that, this ad is nothing but bad news for people who watch tv.  It's not yet Thanksgiving, and the Season of Awful is already underway.  Strap in, everyone.  This is going to hurt.

Coming Next: Coke Zero Sugar No Calorie #Getitilliteratejackasses?

Some people were excited to hear the news.  Some were skeptical. 

And then there was everyone else, who couldn't give a flying damn about any of this, especially since Diet Coke has been around for forty years and has always had about a calorie a can which is functionally the same as zero calories.  And that this is just Coke Zero renamed and repackaged.  This managed to excite some people and make others skeptical?  Really? Oh well, why the hell not- this is a country which elected a reality tv star/grifter President.  Anything's possible.

No celebrity endorsers holding the bottle "just right" so we can see the label.

The narrator is basically admitting that Coca Cola has absolutely nothing new to sell here.  It's just Coke Zero  in what looks like a retro Coke bottle, which I suspect is the really big selling point here.

So a commercial about nothing.  Thanks, Coke.

The perfect payment method for Androids

A few years ago I saw a commercial featuring an assembly line of consumers quickly using their credit cards to swipe and chip their way through purchases at some coffee shop.  The monotonous but speedy and efficient process was suddenly interrupted by some loser who LOL Can You Believe It actually attempted to fumble for cash No I'm Not Kidding That Stuff Is Still Out There And Even People Who Aren't Your Grampa Still Try To Use It Sometimes.

Flash forward to today, and we get obnoxious crap like this ad, in which we are informed that using your credit card to swipe or chip is LOL lame and soooo very 2016 and look at all the disgusting, stupid, hilarious things which happen when people reach for even THAT level of interaction.  In the few months that are left before every store is equipped with AmazonGo, we must use this scan option if we don't want our bratty kids rolling their eyes and bleating "dad....dad.....dad....." while the rest of the crowd behind us wonders why we insist on inserting pieces of plastic into card machines because we just figured out how to do that.

Not to mention that this Android Pay thing is happening despite the fact that a lot of stores haven't even gotten around to switching over to Chip technology yet.  I can see stores getting super-cynical about payment methods that are all the rage for a few months before being classified as ancient history and replaced with the REALLY EFFICIENT way of paying for stuff.  Maybe this is all about getting us ready for the "final" transition to cashier-less stores with no payment methods other than product detection on our phones (back to that AmazonGo thing again.) 

Ok, we get it.  Human interaction is disgusting and slow and sloppy and we really need to stop engaging in it- the only reason people did that for thousands of years is because they didn't have a choice.  We do.  So we should listen to the commercials and the kid bleating "dad....dad....dad...." and stop trying to have a society here.  Society sucks anyway- after all, "social" implies "other human beings," and why on Earth would we EVER want to share the shopping experience with other human beings? 

I'd still rather watch this than the prequels

I thought I was completely jaded about product placement, and as far as I'm concerned the last Star Wars film was released in 1983,* but this still managed to tick me off by scraping the bottom of the barrell, getting all the way through it, and then tunneling through the muck underneath until it suffocated from lack of oxygen.  If I cared about the crap that passes as Star Wars these days, I'd be angrier, but as it is I really can't go beyond ticked off.  And it's not because Lucas started making sci-fi fantasy movies again in the late 90s.  It's more because Lucas had to molest my childhood with "Special Editions" which demonstrated that he didn't even understand his own films.  Oh, and midichlorians.

I'd call it shameless, but that would require explaining to the people who made this ad what the word "Shame" means, because they clearly don't know.  All they know is that there's money to be made and there's a sci-fi fantasy movie to be released next month and it will make a billion dollars because it's got this iconic label on it that means something to millions of people my age or thereabouts.  Oh, and they couldn't give a flying damn about our childhoods.

*There's this thing called the Star Wars trilogy.  It includes three films, and they are called Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.  There's no such film as A New Hope and they certainly aren't episodes.  It ends with the empire being destroyed and the Republic being restored.  And yes, I mean ends.  Because the other stuff that's come along which uses the label "Star Wars" has nothing to do with Star Wars and everything to do with Capitalism.