What Colonial Penn Life Insurance keeps "forgetting" to bring up....

(Or "Benefits?'  Why are you talking about 'Benefits?' Sure you're going to die, but not for a long long time! Boy are you morbid!")

"I can't get life insurance, I'm too old!"

"Not true!  With Colonial Penn Life Insurance, you can get life insurance without a physical examination, regardless of age!"

"Well, I still can't afford it."

"Not true!  With Colonial Penn Life Insurance, you can pay as little as little as ten dollars a month!"

"Well, the rates will go up as I get older, so I still can't afford it."

"Not true!  The rates are locked in for life!  And as I said, you can pay as little as ten dollars a month!"

"Well, I'm not in great health.  No one is going to sell me life insurance with my health record."

"Are you deaf?  There's no physical examination.  I seriously just said that.  Quick, sign here before you can't remember your name!"

"Ok sounds great- oh by the way, what benefits are paid when I die?"

"We'll send you a super-convenient booklet where you can list your beneficiaries and last requests to your family, absolutely free!  Sign here!"

"Um, yeah ok- but again, what benefits are paid when I die?"

"Benefits are limited for the first three years.  It's that second dotted line.  Where I'm pointing."

"Limited to what?  And after three years?  I mean, if I pay premiums..."

"Which are locked and and can NEVER go up and your policy can NEVER be cancelled!"

"Yeah....if I pay the premiums and I die in say, four years, how much do my beneficiaries get?"

"Oh look, we're out of time.  See you in the next commercial for Colonial Penn Life! Tell your friends they can't be turned down and their premiums will never increase!"

The weird message of Credit Karma ads

If your credit score is low, you live in a tiny apartment, drive a beater, and your life is generally hell on Earth.

But if you get your credit score up, everything magically gets better- you move into a much nicer apartment or even get a house, you trade up for a car that shows better for your neighbors, maybe you even take up mountain biking because that's a rich millenial's hobby.

I get that what Credit Karma is trying to tell you is that a low credit score keeps you from getting low interest rates on expensive stuff which- unless you are really stupid- keeps you from getting expensive stuff.  This is a message that sells well to people who don't have a lot of money and are unwilling to live like they do.  It probably completely flummoxes the people with poor credit who head over to Rent A Center to fill their homes with big-screen tvs, sofas and game systems before signing up for ruinous car payments for a vehicle worth twice their annual salaries.  Because those people aren't limited by their low credit scores- or rather, they don't realize they are or are determined to pretend that they aren't.

Still, there's a very definite "get your credit score up so you can get deeper into debt" vibe that runs through all of these ads because at no time are viewers told exactly HOW to get those credit scores up.  We just see people enjoying the benefits of a higher credit score.  Maybe it's because cutting back on spending, paying all your bills on time for years, and making more money aren't quite as attractive as just moving your finger across a screen, magically moving your credit score up 200 points, and instantly reaping the rewards in the form of a bigger house, nicer car and cool weekend hobby- all of which are going to cost you money and make it even more important that you pay your bills on time.

A few questions about Domino's "Pizza Insurance"

1.  So the infinite number of times this guy demonstrates his total inability to successfully carry home a pizza will never faze Domino's at all, huh?  They'll just keep handing him pizzas until the end of time as long as he returns the damaged ones?  Really?

2.  What is with this guy that he is totally incapable of looking both ways before crossing the street or- let's just cut to the chase- doing basically anything more complicated than walking and carrying a pizza?  How does this guy hold down a job?  He's the reason the cliche' "can't walk and chew gum at the same time" was invented.  He literally IS incapable of performing simple tasks the average 8-year old could carry out in his sleep.

3.  The most unintentionally hilarious- yet instructive- part of this ad comes at the end, when our favorite clueless doofus throws his pizza at the frisbee players.....and they throw it right back.  They don't want that cruddy excuse for a pizza either.  They don't want to deal with your garbage, they just want their plastic disc back, and they treat that "pizza" with all the respect it deserves.  Along with treating this total idiot with all the respect HE deserves.

CarMax tries too hard

In another commercial, this same guy makes a total ass of himself working up the courage to ask if CarMax will buy his car even if he doesn't want to buy another one.  Not sure why this is so tough- I mean, if you're over the age of ten and have any social skills at all, or have ever been in a store or interacted with salespeople in any way, but there it is.  But I couldn't find it, so instead here's another featuring what I guess is a tag team of spokeschoads determined to treat it's potential customers like brain-damaged children:



"Acronyms are fun."  Oh, are they now?  When did that happen?  And is behaving like bizarre set of idiots for the "entertainment" of the television audience also fun?  What about selling your car at Carmax?  Is that fun?

Actually, I can answer that last question, because I sold my car at Carmax almost six years ago.  No, it was not fun, but I never imagined it would be and did not demand that it was.  I wanted it to be easy, and it was easy.  That's all I asked for.  It was enough for me, and I'd think it would be enough for anyone.  I sold my car, and I didn't buy another one.  Before I arranged an appointment I went online and did some very deep research to see if this was possible, and I found it after looking very carefully at the homepage at Carmax.com which stated "We'll Buy Your Car Even if You Don't Buy Ours."  You know, the same statement made in all the ads.  I actually would have felt very, very stupid if I had gone there and asked if they could pretty pretty please make me an offer on my car and not force me to buy one of theirs in the bargain. 

Oh, and the people who handled their purchase of my car didn't try to engage me in juvenile banter or try to convince me that I'd be having such an awesome time I ought to be losing control of my bowels and possession of my dignity.  They just told me what they'd give me for my car, I agreed, and about half an hour later I was out of there with my check.  And my dignity.  Unlike this creep who shows up again and again at Carmax to ask pretty much the same question to the same guy so he can get the same answer repeated in the form of a forced joke which is never funny.

"Daddy, What's 'Netscape?'"

And when you get done telling your daughter about Netscape, you can tell her about how you used to Ask Jeeves when you had a question for the World Wide Interwebs because you couldn't find the answer in Grampa's Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Speaking of Grampa, he can join the conversation and tell your daughter what "Dialup" was and how people used to plug their desktop computers into phone jacks in order to access the internet.  Don't forget to tell her what desktop computers and phone jacks are while you're at it.

Full disclosure:  I can remember using Netscape in 1994 to check the results from South Africa's first real democratic election- I'd "dialup," go take a shower, brush my teeth, and come back to find the page almost completely loaded.  What a time to be alive!

Happy Independence Day, Everyone!..

Seriously, it's hard to imagine any company more perfectly capturing the spirit of what it means to be an American than the good people at Black Rifle Coffee Company (even the NAME screams "America."  You can have my coffee when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands!)

I mean, look at all of these examples of Real American Values at work.  Super-patriotic flag-embossed clothing.  Tats.  Sunglasses.  Facial Hair.  Wreckless use of fireworks.  Massive meat consumption.  Heck, we even see the wreckless use of a chainsaw to cut a watermelon- most otherwise Patriotic companies miss that little detail.

Anyway, I know that this is all in good fun and not to be taken seriously in any way, so please don't flame me for dumping on an Onion-level commercial because I've got a stick up my butt and I can't recognize satire.  I can, and did.  I just thought this was too great not to include in my blog, which By The Way reached the One Million Views threshold earlier this week (only took ten and a half years!)

So happy Independence Day, everyone, with a special shout-out to my neighbors spending their holiday in Occupied Washington DC-- enjoy the fly-overs, tanks rolling through the streets, and the other Fascist imagery more familiar to those lucky duckies in North Korea, all for the glorification of His Orangeness in the White House....and keep that crying baby balloon flying to let foreign visitors know we haven't all bought in to the idea of celebrating the disaster brought to us courtesy of Russia and the Electoral College....

Nostalgia Time: the McDonald's BeefSteak Sandwich, etc.

For a few months in 1978-79 I worked at McDonald's- it was my first real job making my very own pocket money that came from a total stranger on a perforated check with taxes deducted and not from a relative.  I was 33.

Only kidding about being 33- I was actually 15.  I hated the job and was stressed when I had to make hamburgers- I could never get the bun-toasting machine to work right and ended up crushing the buns almost every time.  I much prefered clean-up duty to food prep, and I would have rather spent eight hours hauling trash than thirty minutes flipping thin pucks of meat, squirting them with mustard and ketchup and placing pickles on them before folding them in paper....I can still remember doing that and it still makes my stomach tense up.  Nervous all the time.

Anyway, that's a long introduction for this vintage commercial featuing perhaps the very best food item McDonald's ever produced- the BeefSteak Sandwich.  This awesome juicy deliciousness was introduced while I was at McDonald's and when I lost my taste for everything else that restaurant sold for maybe five years I just could not get enough of these things.  I remember enjoying every bite and being sad when it was gone.  If could have afforded it (I don't remember how much they cost, but these sandwiches were expensive, and this was pre-Dollar Menu, so everything at McDonald's in 1979 actually cost more than it does today) I would have happily gobbled down 2 or 3 at one sitting.

I quit McDonald's after those few months and went back to being broke but the BeefSteak Sandwich went away shortly thereafter, so what did I need money for anyway?  Well, I'm glad you asked- in 1982 I went to Washington DC for college and discovered what is CERTAINLY the best BREAKFAST sandwich ever created by a fast food chain, and maybe the best breakfast sandwich ever created by ANY restaurant:  the Hardee's Steak and Egg Biscuit.  Oh. My. God.  I LIVED for these things- my Freshman year I'd regularly eat two of them in one sitting (probably 1000 calories, but I was 18 years old, no problem) with a big cup of black coffee.....just awesome.

Naturally, today I live in a world where even if I wanted to (and I probably would) I can't start my day with a Hardee's Steak and Egg Biscuit OR continue it with a McDonald's BeefSteak Sandwich.  In other words, a world that both hates me AND cares about my health.  I'm not grateful, World.  Not one bit.