Candy Crush's Salute to Lowered Expectations

My guess is that the fat doofus sitting next to you can totally relate to the feeling you get when you beat a level on Candy Crush, you pathetic, phone-addicted bag of skin.  It's probably a lot like getting to the next level on Cuphead or finally managing to eat an entire pie in one sitting- you are tempted to call your mom and tell her that you actually accomplished something, but you quickly change your mind and just tell your 4000 Facebook friends instead.

Meanwhile, you're still an overweight, directionless loser finding pleasure in beating a stupid, brain-numbing waste of time game on your bestest electronic friend.  And your significant other doesn't look like he needs more excuses to stay on his lazy fat ass either.  Maybe you both need to go outside and actually DO something that involves burning calories, getting some fresh air, etc?  You might accidentally accomplish something for realsies along the way.  You could give yourself BONUS points if that happens.

Candy Crush?  Oh, don't worry.  It will still be there when you start to feel short of breath and decide that the simple pleasures of a walk or other non-phone-related activity just don't cut it as they lack the instant gratification of bells and whistles and pretty colors, not to mention the image of a cartoon cat on a motorcycle OHMIGOD THAT IS SO EPIC LOL I HAVE TO POST HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS (just check the comments.  That is, if you want to lose your last shred of respect for humanity.)

Sorry to distract you from your zombie phone game, you losers.  Go tackle that next level!  Make yourself proud!

Tasting Room goes after your toughest First World Problem!

Ugh, the White Privilege just DRIPS from this callow one minute flat of pampered dreck, doesn't it?  The "problem" this guy has is finding Just the Right Wine without spending hours and hours going to shops and using trial by error- you know, like pretty much every person who has ever consumed wine has done for eons.  There MUST be a better way!  There are only SO many times I want to take the SUV to Whole Foods per week, and that number is six!

So now you disgusting rich pampered jackasses can get tiny bottles of liquor in the mail to sample in the comfort of your own private palatial estates until you figure out which one is juuuuuuuusssst riiighhht.  Then you can order whole bottles of wine suited exactly to your taste which of course will never ever change, nor will you ever feel the slightest bit adventurous ("adventurous" to these people IS trying a new wine, when it isn't taking the family caravan to the Catskills to walk around for a few minutes filming the kids frolick, or dumping the kids with the nanny and heading off to Sandals for the weekend.)

Have I made it clear how much I hate ads like this which appeal to maybe one-hundredth of one-percent of the people watching because the other 99.99 percent aren't desperately searching for ways to spend their excess money that doesn't involve a charity or college fund?  Burn in hell, Tasting Room.

Toyota Jan Presents: Stuff happening you might need a way to get to

There's stuff that happens during the summer, and having a car can help you get to that stuff.

Here's some of the stuff that happens during the summer- Mother's Day, which you may have thought happened on a Sunday in Spring, but Toyota Jan is here to clear that up for you- is an example of that stuff.  So is Memorial Day which, again, your faulty memory might have tricked you into thinking happened during the Spring, but nope, it's totally a summer thing.

There's also family reunions, but only for black people.  There's the beach and fishing and baseball games and the park if you're white.

There's all this stuff to do, and most of it isn't taking place in your front yard, so here's a vehicle with an internal combustion engine you can use to get you to the area where that stuff is happening.  Go check out your local Toyota dealer to purchase your very own travel machine thing to get you to places where stuff is happening but might be too far away for you to walk.  Do it now, while the prices on these wheeled people boxes is comparatively low, because Summer.

Drivetime's Insurance Commercials Don't Add Up

This is what Drivetime Insurance thinks a Mathematician looks like in the year 2018- a skinny old guy with long, gray hair and a wild look in his eyes using a chalkboard the size of a football field to do calculations.  Haha those people who do The Maths are so silly!  Such crazy old guys (no women of course, that's silly- women don't do maths!  That's why they can't manage a checkbook LOL!)  No laptops or projection screens for these crazy old men!  They'll be covered in chalk dust scratching out figures on green slate 200 years from now, just you wait and see, 'cause they're so weird with all their numbers and such!

Not sure what this has to do with insurance, but whatever.  Hey, Drivetime?  I personally know people who teach The Maths.  They actually use computers and projection screens now.  They also come in all colors and sexes, what a world we live in.  How about getting your brain out of the 1950s already?  Because this doesn't make me want to buy anything.  Certainly not insurance.  That's what your selling here, right? 

Is Root Insurance the Mark of the Beast?

A few years ago I bashed Progressive Insurance (and Flo) for promoting some kind of "safe driver" device that one could stick on their dashboard which would then record certain things concerning driving habits, which could then be used to determine how "safe" the particular drivers were and then determine how much those drivers should pay for car insurance.  My main gripe was that Progressive was pitching this Spy Box as a really cool way to get a discount by letting your insurance company into your car to watch how you drive.

Well, it seems that there's this new insurance company whose entire premise is based on watching its customers every move and only selling policies to people who convince it that those drivers will never need to actually collect on those policies.  It's a pretty slick idea, considering that there's only two reasons why people buy car insurance:

1.  To be covered in case of an accident, and
2.  Because state laws require it.

So if you want Root Insurance, you download the App, which then spies on you for a few weeks to make sure you live up to Root's extremely high standards.  If you "pass," you get to buy the insurance, which I assume is discounted because most people don't pass.  I'm also going to assume that if you get into an accident and file a claim, your insurance premiums are going to skyrocket or you'll be cancelled- after all, this insurance is for GOOD drivers and the whole point of this ad is to tell us that other insurance policies are awful because they cover less-than-perfect drivers (who at the moment don't need to be spied on by their own companies, though it's only a matter of time, isn't it?)

So go ahead and download the Root Insurance App and know that every move you make in your car will be judged by a company which has told you in advance that it only insures drivers who drive according to an extremely high standard and is ready to dump you overboard the first time you hit those brakes just a little too hard for it's tastes.  Don't even think about changing that radio channel or talking on the phone while driving, because you can bet that's a big no-no over at Root HQ.  Or you could just buy a policy from a company that doesn't insist on being a passenger on every drive.  Your choice, but this is just another reason why I don't miss owning a car. 

Prager U- offering a PhD in Hate

This episode- err, "class," is presented by Douglas Murray, the author of "The Strange Death of Europe," yet another hateful, stupid polemic which argues that Europe becoming more brown and less Christian = Europe Dying.  In other words, he's a great fit for Prager U, the blog that thinks it's a school which dispenses ignorant propaganda it thinks is education.

Murray "explains" to us "students" that some decades back waves of immigrants came into Europe from the Middle East- "most weren't expected to stay" (he doesn't tell us whose expectations he's quoting.)  I guess Murray believes that people of particular skin tones and beliefs also have particular areas of the world they've been assigned as Homelands, and that any dark person who travels to Europe really ought to be made aware that they are "just visiting" an alien world and are expected to return to their "proper home" in the very near future.

Despite the "expectations" of someone, "many stayed.  And why wouldn't they?"  Murray goes on to complain that the "visitors" didn't "go home" because Europe foolishly offered two things- a better economy than the one they could find in their native land, and (of course) a stronger social welfare system.  In other words, the migrants stayed because they found more opportunity in Europe, Oh The Horror.  Never mind that Murray just described why millions of Europeans fled to North America for centuries, that's Different Because Reasons.

The bottom line of this rancid, steaming, putrid pile of xenophobic cow pie is that Murray is attempting to hide his obvious racism behind a defense of "tradition" (Europe has "always" been Judeo-Christian-- actually for centuries just Christian with the Judeo junior partner being viciously discriminated against, but never mind that inconvenient truth) and equating Europe becoming more diverse to "committing suicide."  What a disgusting Neo-Nazi (I don't use the term "Alt-Right," because "Neo-Nazi" fits just fine, thank you.)  And what a great fit for Prager U, the blog where brain cells go to die.  I guess since people watch this junk voluntarily, it is itself a form of suicide, isn't it?

CENTRIC - the channel for Black Women? We sure about that?

I'm the least-qualified person on the planet to argue what black women want in a television channel, so I'm not going to criticize an ad which suggests that what black women want is a channel which celebrates black women who are mothers, jet-setters, go-getters, "bad-asses," or just stare at the screen like they are trying to make my head explode with their minds.  White women have had Lifetime for years- if there's a channel designed to appeal specifically to black women, that's just fine with me and the last thing any black woman needs is a white guy telling them that what they want is really stupid and shallow and brain cell-killing unconstructive, pointless drivel.  So I won't go there.

But here's where I will comment:  I was on the elliptical at the gym the other day scrolling through the channels looking for something to watch until I reached my mileage goal and naturally came across a showing of The Shawshank Redemption.  I say "naturally" because it's a little known fact of television science that The Shawshank Redemption is playing on at least one channel in the television universe every minute of every day, it's just a matter of finding the right one at any given moment.  Thing is, I found it on Centric.

Now, again, I am not qualified to know what black women want in a television channel.  But The Shawshank Redemption does not feature a single black actress.  It includes exactly one scene featuring a white woman who has no lines.  It includes exactly one black male actor who spends the film surrounded by white male actors.  It's one of the most male, most white films made in the past forty years.  But there it was, on Centric, the channel for black women.

Here's what I suspect- Judging from the previously-stated fact that The Shawshank Redemption is on tv all the time, it's a film that is practically in the public domain, available for nothing or next to nothing to any cable channel that wants to chop it up, inundate it with seemingly endless commercials (mostly for the channel) so it's run time extends to three and a half hours, and throw it on the air to save the money original material costs.  Doesn't matter what the target audience is or the niche the channel is allegedly trying to fill- The Shawshank Redemption is just fine for Comedy Central, UPN, USA Network*, the SciFi Channel, the History Channel, whatever- it's a cheap gap-filler.  But even as a white male, I can see it's especially jarring when it's used for Centric.  Cripes, what's next- you going to run episodes of The Big Bang Theory or Friends on the Network for Black Women?

*Well, ok, not USA Network.  They'll never run out of episodes of Law & Order.