Just for fun: Space Sticks and 70s weight loss gimmicks!

1.  The special effects at the beginning of this ad are AMAZING!  It's like they have a camera on the moon!  How did they do that??

2.  They don't tell you in the ad, but the only way to really wash these things down was with a cold glass of Tang.  Tang and Space Sticks for lunch= you're an astronaut, ready to build that colony on the moon before the 1980s are over!



And here's mom's version of Space Sticks.  Except that my mom bought them for ME because they were something I would actually eat if she packed them for my school lunch (sandwiches got traded away- I could never eat packed sandwiches when I was a kid for some reason.)  I'm not sure why eating them constituted "revenge" against cheesecake and other sweets, but whatever- remember, revenge is an edible plastic wafer best served cold!  You go girl! Sister Power!

(BTW, this woman must be in her late-sixties by now.  I wonder if she ever gave up the fake food and learned to keep her weight down through diet and exercise, or switched to that other "proven weight control device" popular in the 1970s, cigarettes?)

Green Dot Cards- proving once again that it's very expensive to be poor

(First, I'd like to point out that comments are blocked for this YouTube commercial.  After reading a number of reviews of Green Dot, I'm not the least surprised.)

Browsing through RipOffReport.com, I encountered page after page of complaints concerning this thing called "Green Dot Prepaid Cards."  The most common issue involved accessing money placed on the card by the customer.  My immediate response was "why would you exchange cash for a piece of plastic which may or may not give you access to the money you used to buy the piece of plastic?  Does this make sense to anyone, anywhere?"

Then I did a little more research and learned about the customer base for Green Dot cards (the common "I got mine at Dollar General" was my first clue.)  It seems that Green Dot provides a service for a "specific market"- the "underserved customer" (more alarm bells going off, as "underserved customer" means "poor"- rich customers are never, EVER underserved.  Check out tomorrow's post if you don't believe me.)

People who don't have credit cards or bank accounts- like the well-dressed, home-owning suburban white woman in this ad (uh huh, sure)- can easily transfer their cash to a prepaid (by them) plastic card which can then be used anywhere credit or debit cards (or cash) are accepted.  If this sounds like circular stupidity, wait there does seem to be a benefit- when you get paid, your paycheck can INSTANTLY be added to your Green Dot prepaid card balance, "just in time for the weekend," so you can get your money when YOU need it.  Because without a Green Dot card there's no such thing as "Direct Deposit," you know. 

Also with Green Dot you avoid "interest fees" (and "interest") and credit checks and the annoyances of dealing with a bank- you know, like FDIC protection and and actual people you can talk to in person instead of an India-based phone bank.  Sure when something goes wrong and you can't access your money you might find yourself in deep trouble dealing with people on the other side of the planet for whom English is a second language, and sure these cards come with their own monthly fees (averaging $4.95 per month)  but hey that's the cost of convenience, right?

It sure looks like Green Dot and other "prepaid" cards are just another example of how big corporations just love squeezing the people living on the margins, the people who can least afford to lose any part of their cash flow.  I wonder if they are partners with Rent A Center and Payday Lenders, making up a financial Axis of Evil.  I know I'm preaching to the choir and I sure as hell don't want to sound like Dave "Just pay cash, just spend less, just make more money" Ramsey here, but I bet most people who use these cards are perfectly welcome to open accounts at their local bank but have been talked into thinking that they can't by their equally disconnected friends and neighbors.  I'll settle for urging all of them to just pop in to one of those banks next Saturday morning and check out what they have to offer. 

Samsung's Upgrade Every Year Because You Can BS

When you buy a Samsung Galaxy for yourself and a friend, you can upgrade every year!

Every year? Yes, Every year! But just in case you need to be reminded- every year- from now until your worthless life comes to an end, don't worry, the Samsung Phone Monkey at your nearest mall is totally willing to do that.  At least, until he goes insane and lazers your fool head off.

Meanwhile....upgrade every year! Which means three things:

1.  Samsung is telling you in advance that the brand-new, totally tripped-out new phone it just sold you is going to be ancient technology twelve months from now, and if you want to continue to show well for your friends, you're going to want to "upgrade."  And don't worry, Samsung is just going to keep making "upgraded" phones, forever and ever and ever.....

2.  Every year, that landfill is going to leak more toxins from more "ancient" (more than a year old) phones and their lithium batteries (because if you're going to upgrade your phone, why would you want to keep last year's perfectly good but now totally uncool and pointless battery?)  Don't worry, the next generation will deal with the cleanup.  They'll also deal with the culture of disposability we've passed on Just Because.

3.  Despite that culture of disposability, in which nothing is valuable and everything can and should be replaced every single year, SOMEONE will be producing better and better tech for us to consume like greedy starving jagoffs who just want more more more.  SOMEONE will keep producing new shiny things for us to grab at and cuddle with and "need."  As long as that's profitable, it will keep happening.  So yes, we can expect holograms and AI and spacecraft - you just won't be producing it. You'll be too busy playing with your shiny new phone.  And trying to remember that friend you gave the original second one to.

Project Mc2- 'Cause girls can Science too, if you just dress it up right!

Oh, this is so clever!  Girls hate science (and math, and engineering, and all those other professions that are exclusive to guys) but they just adore pink and pretty things and they ESPECIALLY love jewelry!  So this is a really cool way to trick all those silly girls to put down the frilly dresses and Barbies and get involved in science without even realizing it!

My only real criticism is in the name of the product- it includes the word "science," which is totally going to scare off little girls.  I don't like the word "kit," either- that implies that there's some building going on, which might also imply mess, and those are male things.  I'd cut those parts out and replace them with "Awesome" or "Pretty" or "Sparkle" or "Princess" or something like that.  Wait, how about "Magic Princess Sparkle Jewelry Maker?"  "Maker" might make them think of cooking, which would naturally appeal to them, right?

Oh, and I'd be a little concerned about the jewelry being edible, too.  These girls look like they are going to be ten years old in the near future, so they have to start thinking about keeping their weight down so they can attract a mate.  It's not a great idea to encourage girls to eat as they approach their dating years.

How to waste your life properly, the Verizon Fios way!

We start with this woman celebrating the fact that she's got this awesome entertainment system which makes her house the absolute must-place-to-be for "binge watching."  We'll get back to that disgusting concept in a minute.

Some sort-of-humanoid creature who happened to be inhabiting her kitchen suddenly launches into a critique of her cable setup.  I think that this bizarre, misshapen, ugly thing- which may be a rat, or a ferret, or even a homo sapiens if he was born near a toxic waste dump- has decided that its goal in life is to set the middle-aged woman he's encountering straight on what makes a good electronic cocoon /zombie containment system.  My only response to this thing would be to squish it with a shoe or at least open the screen door and chase it outside.*

Ok, back to the whole "binge watching" thing.  I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me the attraction of "binge watching" if you don't have a severe illness or for some other reason have been rendered immobile and a good candidate for quarantine.  Otherwise, how freaking sad do you have to be to even WANT your house to be the place people camp out to watch hour after hour of brain-numbing, life-sucking television?

Even if I was confined to my house by illness, I'd much rather do some binge-reading than binge-watching.  It's cheaper and better for my brain, though it probably wouldn't win the approval of any warped little gnomes living in my kitchen.  And if I wasn't sick?  I'd rather be binge-hiking or binge-museum browsing or binge-talking-to-friends.  Binge-watching?  I guess that's great for losers with oatmeal between the ears who think they've got an infinite amount of time left on Earth.

Sound judgemental?  Good.

*Seriously, was this kid born a block from Chernobyl, or what?

Because you can't spell America without Can-Am. Sort of.

The description of this video focuses on the paint job on the all-terrain vehicle.  It celebrates the "Break-up Country Pattern" which I imagine is supposed to make it invisible to turkeys, deer, immigrants, black people and SJWs.  Technically, the design was chosen to "provide cover on our machines" (make it difficult for Hillary and the Socialist Bernie-crats to find when The Time Comes) and "relies on shadows to achieve added depth." 

Oh but wait, we aren't done yet.  These shadows painted on to "Can-Ams aggressively forward-thinking designs" (forward-thinking?  Sounds like a liberal plot to me) help their machines "to blend into whatever sort of nature you're in" (deserts, deep woods, burned-out urban areas created by the Inevitable Race War, etc.  You know, all that stuff.)

I guess the point is that when you drive one of these machines (after donning that "I'm a soldier" costume you used to wear only during your Saturday night Aryan Nation get-togethers or while playing Call of Duty in your mom's basement) after reflecting on how Manly and American and Not at all Gay Shut Up Where Did You Hear That you are while you go off to stalk whatever animal happens to be in season, you're going to feel much closer to the nature you're about to terminate.  And that's what being Free is all about.  That and guns and attending the Protestant Church of your choice and making damn sure people use the right bathrooms goddammit.

Don't forget the beer.  Prey has an annoying habit of taking it's time wandering into the area you've picked out to park your sorry ass and wait to kill it.

Two Boost Network ads in one blog post. You're Welcome.

In the English version of this commercial, the guy whining like a pathetic little brat about his cell phone coverage- which only allows him to stream video that stutters and has to reboot every few seconds, I guess- is super-upset that what would have seemed downright miraculous a decade ago is now oh so very lame.  The salespeople are naturally in total sympathy with the spoiled doofus and encourage him to switch to Boost so he can keep his eyes glued to the screen and for certain won't notice that truck bearing down on him until it's way too late.  I totally concur.



The guy in this ad beats his wife and kids regularly for infractions like not stacking the soup cans in the pantry properly and upsetting the crease on the sports page.  Fortunately for them, he's only a few months away from suffering a massive, fatal stroke when he's cut off in traffic on the way home from work.