McDonald's cheeseburger ads leave me almost speechless. Almost.

The most horrible thing about these horrible, horrible ads is that they all feature actual actors, yet when tasked to do nothing more than signify pleasure in eating a cheeseburger all they can do is grimace and squirm and act as if eating that burger is an act of pure torture.  Leaving us, the viewer, tortured in turn.

I mean, look at this.  What is happening to Gabrielle Union in this ad?  Is she struggling to keep the burger down?  Is she tearing up?  Is she in severe need of a bathroom break and mentally begging the director to yell "cut" so she can make a b-line for the little girl's room? Is she sitting on a sharp rock?  Nothing about her facial expression is delivering the message "gee, she sure looks like she's loving that cheeseburger."

Anyone shocked that comments are blocked for these ads?  Not me.  I can only imagine that McDonald's produced them, showed them to a few focus groups, and responded to the feedback with "oh what the hell, we made these things and paid for them, let's just slap them on tv, don't know why we even make commercials for a place everyone already goes to anyway, but we've got this budget and we have to show something for it, so...."

Meanwhile, someone get Ms Union some freaking acting lessons.  The stand-in at any High School spring production could do a better job showing joy for thirty seconds than this "actress."  Just terrible.

Botox Treatments: When you don't know what you got till it's gone

The guy in this ad is a rich, successful architect with a big house and a beautiful child.  He has his health, as evidenced by the fact that we see him jogging through the woods.  Looks to me like he's got it all.

Oh, but he also has "moderate to severe" crow's feet and frown lines to go along with the gray in his beard,* and there's this young guy at the office he feels threatened by, so he's going to go through botox treatments which carry the risk of these symptoms:  Difficulty breathing, swallowing, eye problems, muscle weakness, all of which could be signs of a life-threatening condition.  Side effects may include "rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness."

Oh, there's more you may have missed because it was partially drowned out by the punchy music:  treatments may cause some kind of pain I could not catch no matter how many times I listened, plus "eyelid drooping" and "eyelid swelling."

"The details make the difference, the man makes them matter" is the glorious punchline.  I have another one: what kind of cretin would be willing to make his little girl an orphan in exchange for a few more years of looking like a slightly younger Eurotrash version of his true self?  Hey, buddy- that little kid who loves and depends on you?  She doesn't notice your crow's feet.  She might notice all those horrible side effects you are risking because you can't deal with getting older.  Something to think about:  This isn't all about you.  Not anymore.  Not since you had that kid.  Dicktard.

*A simple hair coloring to take the gray out of the beard seems to be the last thing this guy considers- first, botox injections that might destroy his health, THEN Just for Men haircolor.  Yeah, this makes total sense.

Bullymake Box? BarkBox? Give me a break.

Look, I know that there are people out there who like dogs, even "love" them, for reasons I will never, ever understand and probably don't even want to.  And I appreciate that if those people care deeply for the little mammals they share a home with and take walks with and pick up the filth of and allow to monopolize the sidewalk and are constantly telling pedestrians like me things like "he's just being friendly" and "don't worry he doesn't bite" etc. etc. want to make sure that little mammal that does wonderful things like eat and walk and lie around and drop feces everywhere is as healthy as possible for as long as possible.

And I'm not going to go into a long lecture about how this barkbox or bitebox or whatever the hell this is is just another nail in the coffin for brick-and-mortar stores, because that's a lost cause and lazy point-and-clickers clearly don't give a damn that with every click they are helping to undermine the economy.  That kid who hoped to work at a pet supply store this summer?  Sorry, kid.  Go to Plan B (and I hope Plan B wasn't working at Staples.)

But seriously, if I ever found myself talking about ANYTHING in the giddy, lobotomized squeal that this narrator uses in explaining how this "service" provides endless boxes of fricking chew toys to pollute your house and neighborhood with, I'm willing to be put away and for my family to visit me every other weekend.  Because for cripes sakes people, they're dogs!

In the uncut version of this Zillow ad, Daddy shows his son where he buried the Jehovah's Witnesses

So the scruffy Gen-Xer in this ad obsesses over his boyhood home while his wife regularly asks if it happens to be on sale- either this family is never going to buy a house unless this particular one goes on sale, or they are so damned rich they can just jump on this house the moment it goes on the market and move there.  Literally ten seconds after the damn thing finally does get listed- for $450,000, convincing me this palatial estate must be in the middle of nowhere, tough luck kid- the couple is totally into buying it.

Turns out the guy buried a time capsule on the property- a time capsule consisting of some knick knacks and including what's probably a very valuable set of baseball cards and a photo of himself and his father.  This stuff was put into a dented box and not wrapped in plastic but it's not ruined by water or anything Because Television.  Personally I think that the ad would have ended much better if when he opened the box it contained nothing but a lump of moldy paper that used to be rare baseball cards and an irreplaceable photo, but that's because I'm a jerk.

"Told you I grew up here" says the Dad, which is kind of weird unless this was a bone of contention with Son.  It sure wasn't a problem for Mom, who was perfectly willing- even eager- to move to an old house in the middle of Iowa because Dad Wants This House.  Maybe Son just wanted to stay in his old neighborhood, which was actually a neighborhood with neighbors that weren't corn stalks, and refused to believe that he was really being forced to uproot and move to Nowhere, Nebraska Population 0 Until You Show Up because Dad wanted to relive his childhood?

This is all super-heartwarming according to the YouTube gluesniffers, who are tearing up when they aren't asking what the twee music in the background is.  I suspect that they are like 99 percent of thumbs-up YouTube commenters, which is to say, paid whores for the company being advertised.  I sure hope so, anyway.  Because if you really get a lump in your throat from this banal, manipulative nonsense you are beyond sad.

Harvoni Ad: "Let's Go" dazzle the public into buying our product

This ad for Harvoni, which I guess is supposed to be a treatment for Hepatitis, is a good example of how all drug commercials function.  So I'm going to pick on it, even though I could have used any of a hundred commercials for any of a hundred medications to make the same point.

Like all big pharma ads, this one includes smiling people moving in slow motion, doing something that has absolutely nothing to do with their condition but which is supposed to illustrate the simple joy of living or provide a metaphor for hope or life or promise or some such poetic treacle.  We see a crowd of zombies who look like they just walked out of the Kingdom Hall walking across a field before watching lanterns float into the night sky. 

There's zero context- why are they doing this?  Do people do this?  I thought this was a Japanese thing- do these people look Japanese?  Is the drug turning them Japanese I really don't think so?

Meanwhile, the dramatic music swells just in time to at least partially drown out the list of potentially fatal side effects casually being read out by the narrator.  And this is why you never hear ads for powerful, dangerous drugs on the radio- it's because the radio is an auditory medium.  There's no way to distract you from hearing about all those awful side effects.  Notice also that the side effects are never listed on the screen- the only words we ever see are the name of the drug and pointless, distracting lines like "I Let Go" and "I Am Cured" which are being spoken anyway.  Oh,  and a brief claim as to the drug's success record.  Seems like the side effects are kind of more important than all that- but the makers of these ads don't want you to note the side effects. Look at the glowing lanterns and smiling people!  Can't do this on the radio.

These ads are all masterpieces of glitz and showy distraction which never have anything do with the actual drug and everything to do with trying to convince your brain that using the drug will lead to a higher level of satisfaction with your life.  In other words, commercials for powerful, chemical-altering drugs have exactly the same message as ads for cars, phones, fast food and detergent.  Scary, no?

Sexist Crud from Groupon

Let's imagine that this ad features a thirtysomething guy sitting by his pool telling us that he's "totally on" with his much younger, and clearly disinterested, "pool girl" before barking at her to acknowledge his presence.  Yeah, that would so not cause problems today. 

What is it with this meme featuring women lusting after the pool boy?  That bit is so old it's got moss on it, besides being totally retrograde these days.  Not to mention that it doesn't advance the cause of selling this service one inch.  So what the hell did I just watch?

(Oh and BTW I guess I'm supposed to know who this woman is, and I'm very, very proud that I don't.) 

Prager U continues to get everything wrong

The pretentiously titled "Prager U" channel- which is, again, not a University but rather a forum for right-wing radio hack Dennis Prager's narrow-minded viewpoints and those of his friends- is at it again, this time trying to explain to us that even if we aren't sure if there is a god we should just believe anyway because beliefs have benefits that non-belief does not.

Today's guest choad starts by asserting that "if god exists, then the universe didn't just evolve by chance, but by deliberate design."  There are at LEAST two fallacies in that one sentence.  First, even if there IS a god, you need to prove that it "deliberately designed" the universe.  Proof that a god exists wouldn't prove anything about it's works or it's intentions.  Second- and related- is that buzzword "evolve."  I'm guessing this idiot is about to be Clueless Idiot #234897 on the internet to confuse Evolution with Abiogenesis. Let's see.

"There's an artist behind this incredible work of art, this big and beautiful world."  Oh, I'm not sure I can do this after all, not if you're going to jump right from a binary argument to the Argument from Analogy.  This planet is a "work of art," and all art must have an artist, therefore god? This world is "big and beautiful?" Big compared to what?  Beautiful compared to what?  This guy is going to use the phrase "fine-tuned" to describe a universe in which life as we know it can exist almost nowhere, isn't he?

Never mind, this guy goes completely off the rails in the very next paragraph and it's clear that his actual argument is the Argument from Emotion.  We're "living in a story" and the story must "have a happy ending, eventually...maybe not in our lifetime, but it must, for as surely as god exists.." which you haven't proven, "Professor," but to be fair you made it very clear early on that you had not intention of even attempting to prove it, just to convince us that belief was beneficial without proof.

He then goes into the Argument of Evil problem- evil exists because god allows it to exist, because of Free Will, which is a gift to all of us except Adam and Eve of course who were punished along with all of their decendents, forever, for exercising it never mind that they did not have knowledge of good and evil before making that "choice."  "God will reconcile all injustices in the end"- that would be the god you haven't proven exists, let alone gives a damn what's going on, and as we're only a minute in to this four minute video I'm sure you're going to be explaining very soon why god doesn't stop child rapists, cancer, hurricanes, etc BEFORE they happen rather than allowing all of this suffering and then "setting things right" in some distant future?

I'm a minute in.  One. Minute. In.  And this guy has already buried his audience with baseless assertions and empty promises.  My original plan was to tackle this one in four or five parts, but I just can't see myself going back to it just to get to the inevitable "if god doesn't exist there is no ultimate justice and that would be unfair therefore you should believe god exists so you don't get the sads about injustice" claptrap.  So I'm just going to leave it here.  You got ten minutes of my time, Prager U.  Can you sign my drop sheet please?