The Ultimate in Manipulative Tripe from Volkswagen

(A Little Trivia: This song was the one my graduating class picked for departing ceremonies when it was time to leave Spaulding High School in June, 1982.  The ONLY reason we wanted chose this song was so that we could sing the "I get high with a little help from my friends" part, which we were forbidden to do but did anyway.)

All of the self-indulgent wankers in this ad really wanted to be at that Civil Rights/Out of Vietnam rally, but there was this cool outdoor rock concert on a farm in Upstate New York so hey, priorities.

And when the music stopped, all the males in this ad went on to become hedge fund managers or government employees with massive pensions.  A few of them went into teaching public school in New York and took a retirement bailout offer from the state at the age of 55.  They've spent the last 25 years touring Europe every fifteen minutes.

The female flower children in this ad went on to earn their MRS degree and now all live in the suburbs of Washington DC or Baltimore or NYC where they raised their 2.5 kids and did all the white bread conformist crap they cursed their parents for doing but justified it by shopping at organic farmers markets and Whole Foods.

Every single person in this ad did extremely well by discarding the "values" of their youth for the siren song of Capitalism and totally sold out way before they reached the age of 30.  If they saw someone stuck in the mud today, they might whip out their phones and call AAA, but only after tweeting the oh-so-hilarious situation to all their friends and posting it to YouTube first.

So when they were young they enjoyed free love, cheap and safe marijuana, practically-free college, a soaring stock market and all the benefits a strong labor movement had to offer.  Now they sit in their pretentious Tudor suburban palaces dreaming of the Lexus they hope their significant other picks up for them in this year's December to Remember promotion.  They all put Bernie Sanders yard signs up last fall and then voted for Trump.  And none of them ever, EVER gave a flying damn about anyone but themselves, I don't care WHAT the song says.

BTW, one of the YouTube commentators who clearly is no more than thirty years old posted that he really wants a VW van now.  I suggested that he could simulate the experience of owning a vintage VW van by tearing out the back seats and removing the seat belts and heating system of an SUV.  To make the experience even more genuine I might have added that he should rig the engine so that it fails to turn over at least fifty percent of the time when the key is turned.  No one who has ever owned one of those rusty, unreliable, uncomfortable and unsafe crapbuckets would fantasize about possessing one now, except to use as target practice.  With these over-indulged losers packed inside.

And again- to Amazon and Industry in general, NOTHING is sacred. NOTHING.

I challenge anyone and everyone to read the original lyrics to this Supertramp song and explain to me how any of it has to do with buying stuff online and sending it to the other side of the planet, in the process destroying the brick-and-mortar economy while reducing everything about the holidays to the amount of cash you manage to spend.

And again, the only thing more depressing here than the actual commercial are the comments that follow.  I think everyone on the planet is either a paid troll for industry or seriously deranged.  Either way, it's awfully sad.

(Hey, remember when you had to wait till Friday morning after Thanksgiving to start spending yourself into debt because TV Told You Too?  Well, those dark days are OVER.  Black Friday has already begun online!  Stop reading this!  Get out your credit card and start surfing and shopping!  Go Go Go Now Now Now!)

Another Very Relatable Lexus Holiday Ad

I guess the "bit" this year is that Lexus is going to show us a parade of spoiled rotten little brats having orgasms over luxury cars before transforming into spoiled rotten big brats having orgasms over luxury cars.  This is the second one I've seen in the last twenty-four hours, and once again the only message I really get out of them is that I can't wait for this season to be over so we can say goodbye to this horrible dreck for another year.

The "adult" in this ad is kneeling before his new diety- an extremely expensive, totally unnecessary LookAtMeMobile. He's letting his family know that the big, beautiful house and the massive bank account and the trophy wife and trophy kids are great and all but this car makes all that shrink into insignificance because that life, while a fantasy to 99.999 percent of the world's population, was seriously lacking before this car showed up.

So congratulations, you nasty little piece of crap.  Your practically-perfect life just got even better.  Absolutely heartwarming.  Know what else would be heartwarming?  A massive gasline break leading to a fireball which turns you and your scummy family into boiling liquid.  Your hearts would be warmed for several seconds before they ceased to exist.  My heart would be warmed for much, much longer.  I know what I'm asking for this Christmas.  I don't have a zillion dollars in the bank, so it's not one of these cars.

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.