More preying on the elderly, courtesy of the Funeral Insurance Industry

"If you are 85 years of age or younger..." considering the channel I saw this on, the following pitch is directed to approximately 40% of the viewing audience.

It's a Senior Life Plan from the Senior Life Insurance Company, a company which I'm guessing sells insurance to Seniors.  I'm not sure of this, I'm just taking a stab in the dark based on the fact that the word "Seniors" is mentioned just under three hundred times in this stupid ad.

Specifically, it's another one of those ubiquitous ads for Funeral Insurance.  The "average funeral," you see, costs OVER $7500.   But the MOST government benefits pay is $255, which isn't even enough to cover the caterer for the wake for chrissakes!  I wonder if that "OVER $7500" number will be inflated before the ad is over, since I've seen commercials using the much scarier phrase "$30,000 OR MORE!"

"Leaving your loved ones to pay your debt..." first, what a sleazy way to reel in potential customers- "if you don't buy funeral insurance, it may mean No College For Your Grandkids or Someone Gets Evicted, even if none of that stuff happens Do You Really Want To Be Remembered As a Burden?"  Second, there's no "debt" unless someone goes through with the ridiculously overpriced Party Featuring You In a Box.  And if you don't leave money to cover it, why would anyone pay for an elaborate going away party for someone who has already gone away?

This Senior Life Plan for Seniors will pay up to $30,000 (I KNEW that phrase would show up!) for funeral expenses and "any other end of life expenses."  And we all know what "Up To" is worth, don't we?  It means they might come close to paying that amount if you buy none of the policies they're about to list as Available at an Unbelievably Low Price.

And like all of these ugly Expensive Insurance for the Easily Manipulated Elderly commercials, this one reminds the viewers to "ask about our Free Prescription Discount Card."  I don't know what part of that scam is all about, except that I'm 99 percent positive that it's either just another bit of bait on the hook that provides nothing of value not already provided by AARP or Medicare or it's a way of sticking a "small" extra fee to the cost of the "insurance."  I guess they ran out of those credit card-sized magnifying glasses and Magic Ear hearing aids?

Oh you have got to be kidding me, Chase!

The entitled little twat in this ad learned that a tree she and her then-boyfriend vandalized with a jacknife sixty years ago was about to be finished off and, having money to burn and not being aware of any charities or scholarship opportunities that might benefit from any of it, decided to blow the stack by purchasing the vandalized tree and having it shipped to her back yard.  Where she and her equally loathsome* significant other could look at it for a few more years.  I guess.

"My first thought was, 'I have to go get it!'"  Huh.  I'd have gone with "really?  That tree survived the gouging me and my thoughtless jackass lover gave it sixty years ago?  That's one hardy tree."

Anyway, she gets on the phone with her Chase Special Services For Disgustingly Stupid With Money Because They Can Be white people rep and tells him she needs god knows how much cash to buy the tree she tried to kill so long ago.  Other people might have to let the past be the past.  But she isn't Other People.  She's an almost unbelievably stupid, self-absorbed douchenozzle who is all about being "impulsive" as long as being "impulsive" means "doing something for Me."

I know this was supposed to be sweet and cloying and heartwarming and all that crap, Chase.  Happy F--ing Valentine's Day and thanks for putting a cherry on mine with this putrid steaming pile of excrement.  Just perfect.

*Unless he responds with a disgusted "you did WHAT?  You blew part of our retirement fund to transplant an f--ng TREE?  That's it, I'm filing papers to have your name taken off the accounts before you decide we need to buy the old Hershey Chocolate factory because we went there once, you bizarre loon."

I see my Home Chef every time I check out the mirror

These ads are like commercials for Home Makeover shows- the product is marketed exclusively toward Double Income households where neither adult wants to invest the energy into actually making dinner or the money into hiring help or going out to eat every single night.  In other words, for 99 percent of the people watching ads for "Home Chef," this is a world completely alien to anything we experience.

I sure as hell don't want to spend even five seconds watching Rebecca squeal with delight at how easy it is to unpack a huge cardboard box of food and paint-by-numbers recipes designed to make life just a little bit easier for people whose lives are pretty damned close to perfect already (except for all that prepping oh noes what a hassle maybe we should reconsider the hiring help plan.)  This is at least as bad as all those ads for Panera ("Real food for Real People with Big Bank Accounts.  You know, the only people who matter.")

Jared Jewelers meets Lowered Expectations and I guess we're supposed to find it charming.

This thing is, after all, three and a half minutes long.  Which means it's strictly for the Jared website and YouTube.  Well, MAYBE it shows up on one of those lame All Reruns All The Time channels you didn't even know your cable company provided because they are up there in the 500s, past HBO and Showtime.  Those channels have no problem with three and a half minute commercials.

Anyway, the whole time I watched this ad with it's weird imaging and music and camera angles and documentary-style narration, I kept waiting it to become a dark story of betrayal, secret families, money and murder.  Surely, I thought, the sweet balding old man would eventually bludgeon the sweet, lonely middle-aged woman and dump her body two miles off-shore after cleaning out her bank account.  I mean, there was no WAY this was actually going to be nothing but 210 seconds of a Jared Jewelry ad, right?

Man, was I wrong.  This thing actually ends with these people smiling and hugging and happy with eachother and the guy's choice of a ring.  He's not a serial killer or swindler or anything.  He's just an old guy who proposed to this woman and she said yes.  Even after watching the whole damn thing I can't tell you why it took three and a half minutes, but it did and because I watched, you don't have to.  You're welcome.

(By the way, if you want to know why this story is "one of a kind," you will have to watch it yourself.  Because I watched this once and found nothing special or unique about this "one of a kind" story.  If you see something special, feel free to let me know.  I'm done looking.)

This World of Warships thing keeps happening on my Internet

"What?  You haven't played World of Warships yet?  Why the hell not?"

That's how it opens, seriously.  I guess we're all done trying to sell games to kids.  Everyone who plays games nowadays is a thirtysomething male desperately trying to delay adulthood for a few more years.  Got it.

Check out the virtually infinite number of things you can do in this game.  You can sink the Yomoto.  You can "avenge the Titanic," which means blast an iceberg, which strikes me as really stupid but which I guess it's supposed to be funny but sure as hell doesn't make me want to play the game because once you've taken out the iceberg, what then? 

Oh right.  You can sink the Yomoto again.  The fact that this option is mentioned twice in a thirty-second ad which is supposed to be about the almost infinite things you can do in this game makes me suspicious about how vast the World of Warships universe actually is.  What makes me even more suspicious is the line "you can go to the beach...." Uh huh.  That sounds fun.  Take a warship to the beach.  And then do what? Blow up the beach?  Hey, is the Yomoto back yet?

Whatever, people.  I'll never understand the attraction of any of this.  I'm going to play round of Frogger before getting back to cleaning and recovering from my dentist appointment.  Later.

Oh yeah, and this commercial is for Esurance. Somehow.

Dad is a bumbling doofus who acts as if he never, ever spends any time with his son and had no intention of ever having a conversation with him except dammit the car has broken down and he's trapped with this kid.

Kid is incredibly uncomfortable being with his "father," who is only making things worse by doing what only cliche'd awkward loser dads on tv do- take accidental moments of forced intimacy to try to check that "have the sex talk with the boy" box on his Parent Bingo Card.  He clearly would rather be ANYWHERE ELSE but with his dad right now.  And I can only guess that there's no WiFi service wherever it is they broke down, otherwise none of this would be happening- both of these idiots would be on their phones, pretending the other does not exist.

Dad is "saved" from having "the talk" by the appearance of the tow truck.  Oh thank goodness, they were only seconds away from maybe having a meaningful conversation (though I doubt it.  Dad's an inappropriate ass with lousy timing, Kid has or is going to learn about puberty the way all boys do- through experience, and through their friends, NOT from their dads.)

Kid has let dad know that he doesn't want to have this conversation with Dad, EVER.  Dad would be wise not to share this almost-moment with Mom; she'd be totally justified in calling him a clueless moron for making such a half-assed attempt to be meaningful in any way to the kid he helped make.  Go back to being silent and stupid, Dad.  Kid and his friends have got this.  Mom doesn't expect you to rise above your mediocrity.  Just get the car fixed, drop the kid off, and get back to the office where you will be surrounded by people you can relate to.  Moron.

I hate so much about this Domino's ad

So this guy isn't at all concerned that his car has suffered severe damage- as long as his crap mass-produced box of bland bread and sugary tomato sauce is intact?  Ok, whatever.  The guy is a moron.  I get it.

Here's what I don't understand- how did this idiot get back to Pizza Hut to exchange his "ruined" (it was ruined before he left the "restaurant," but again, whatever) pizza?  Did he call an Uber and pay ten bucks to exchange a pizza which cost the same amount?  He certainly looks dumb enough.

Pizza Insurance?  For Domino's?  Really?  Heck, I think dropping this junk into the snow could only improve it.  Meanwhile, shouldn't this idiot be calling about that other insurance policy- the one that covers his car?