US Postal Service, delivering the....ummm...."future"

Thank goodness for the US Postal Service, delivering that latest pointless piece of Must-Have electronic junk to your mailbox in the blink of an eye!

Yes, thanks to USPS, you'll be wearing or looking into or talking at yet another blinky glowing bit of plastic and lights long before buyer's remorse can even begin to set in; you won't even have a chance to have second thoughts concerning whether you actually needed or could even use that flashy showy box you strap to your head or set on the counter or wrap around your wrist before it shows up at your door ready to be used for a few days before it's forgotten, replaced by that ugly, gnawing sense that you just wasted more money you really couldn't afford to throw away on a product you thought might make your life significantly better than it was before you saw the ad for the latest Everyone Has This Why Don't You gadget.

USPS:  Because Impulse Buying should be followed as quickly as possible by Impulse Having.  In the immortal words of Jeb Bush, Please Clap.

Febreze Presents: A Day in the Life of a Trophy Wife

What's a woman 20 years younger than her husband who was purchased for the sole purpose of passing the guy's genes on to the next generation (and showing well at parties) to do when Daddy-to-more-than-just-those-children is in his office all day?  Well, here's the answer: sit quietly in that McMansion he provided as his end of the deal (he rescues you from real life, gives you that cage/house and financial security you've been taught to believe is unattainable or just Too Darn Hard to achieve on your own, plus a new last name in the bargain) and sniff the air as the evidence that you fulfilled YOUR end of the deal plays quietly in front of you.  Why are you and your kids indoors on a beautiful, sunny day?  Why are you sitting there with that blank, zombie look on your face?  Only a Trophy Wife knows for sure!

Which is why only Trophy Wives can totally understand these Febreze commercials; only they experience the shame of having fellow Trophy Wives show up at the door and notice smells you've become immune to (like you've become immune to any sense of individuality, self-respect, or reason for being beyond serving the Lord and Master you sold yourself to all those years ago.)  Spray Febreze everywhere to cover up those smells, at least until the cleaning crew comes in and actually takes care of the real problem that doesn't involve the fact that you are just another ornament in someone else's house. 

Then go back to sitting on that couch, with that vacant look on your face, sniffing the air and trying hard- but not too hard- to remember when you thought that you were an actual person and that there just might be more to life than this. 

(I'll be at the beach from tonight until Saturday, so no posts at least until then- please enjoy the archives during my break!)

An ear-bleeding Green Dot Card commercial I watched so you won't have to!

"Break free!  Break free!  Break free from big banks with actual brick-and-mortar buildings, set rates, and actual people you can talk to if you have a problem!  Break free and put your money on these infamous pieces of plastic (check out Ripoffreport.com for the horror stories of lost funds, blocked funds, endless games of Phone Menu with a computer, etc.) that may or may not have the money you thought you loaded on to them when it comes time to purchase something!"

"Speaking of which, Green Dot cards can now be used to load your tax refund (from Liberty Tax, no doubt) and regular Social Security payments (you just WANT to be poor, don't you?)  Break away from that Direct Deposit to Big Banks and Credit Unions scam that the Sheeple use because they don't know any better.  Stupid sheeple!"

"Break Away from the inconvenience of easily-transferable-for-produce cash!  Break away from credit cards with built-in, federally mandated safeguards!  Break away from anything resembling good money management and basic common sense and put your trust in these cards available at your nearest Dollar General because THAT tells you the quality of service you should expect!"

What's happening in this Subaru ad? You make the call!

Throughout yet another smarmy, "your car makes your life possible" Subaru ad, I kept changing my mind about what I was seeing:

First, I thought "ok, this is a family that is out camping....in the middle of the desert.  They've got their cooler, they've got their kids, they brought their dog for some stupid reason (to provide food for the coyotes, perhaps?) and they are just dumping all this junk right next to their car because the car must remain in the shot at all times.  Eventually we'll see these people hiking and looking around and realizing that they are in the middle of the desert and this is going to be fun for maybe five minutes and then that little kid will start crying and it will be time to pack all that stuff back up again.

Then, I thought no, they are taking way too much stuff out of that car for this to be a simple camping trip.  Wait, they brought a Toddler Cage with them?  And those tables and balloons- ok, this is a family reunion being set up- in the middle of the desert?  Um, that doesn't sound very smart.  First thing I'd be asking is "where are the facilities?" 

Then I got darker.  These people have been evicted from their home. They are homeless.  They are in the desert because they've run out of options. 

Finally, I decided that no, this is just another of those stupid Subaru Takes You Through The Years commercials that plays on the idea that the car in the ad is so super-reliable you are going to own it for years and years and it's going to see some amazing things along with you, never mind that it's just a machine that will someday be a greasy cube in a junk pile and until then will just be something you use to get from Point A to Point B.  You are not supposed to think of your Subaru like that- it's more like a member of the family, like that dog who I suspect is either dead or very nearly so at the end of this ad which I did not watch all the way through because I got tired of Subaru's latest attempt to emotionally manipulate me into buying it's latest version of the StandardFamilyMobile.

Subaru triggers my gag reflex, again.

So the scruffy idiot and his obsessed-with-her-pregnancy life partner are driving around to all these cool places because Lunatic Pregnant Woman wants to "share" them with her fetus which is just sitting there in the pitch dark with absolutely no clue what is going on?

Apparently.  This woman feels compelled to go to the ocean, the forest, the desert, all kind of places where she can pose with a knowing, whistful look on her face as if by being pregnant she's performed some extraordinary universe-saving miracle and not something accomplished by roughly several billion life forms every single day for the past billion or so years.  HER pregnancy, you see, is so magical, so inspiring, so Very Very Important (really?  With THAT guy?)  that it must be shared with nature right now, not after it's reached it's conclusion and the sentient little mammal finally pops out and starts to consume the oxygen being produced by those trees on its own.

This woman is not just sharing all this with that fetus she's carrying around.  She's sharing all this with US.  With the entire PLANET.  And I really do think that she expects us to appreciate the enormity of her pregnancy as much as she does.  We are all supposed to see this as a momentous turning point not just in HER life, but ours, too.  Meanwhile the scruffy guy is just....there.   Waiting to be told to get back in the car and drive Amazing Earth Mother to another location for her to genuflect on the awesomeness of her pregnancy - and touch her stomach again, of course.

All of this has something to do with a 2018 Subaru which I guess these people are still driving a decade later when the fetus has become a child and Mom and Driver take her "back" to all those places they went while she was still in her sac just minding her own business.  The "adults" here will tell their Precious Miracle that this is her "second" visit to the ocean, forest, etc while Precious Miracle first looks confused, then asks When the Hell are Mom and Dad ditch their ancient old Subaru and buy something that shows better to her friends at school, and when is Mom going to take that stupid glazed-eyes look off her face already Seriously Are You High?

It took five seconds for Apple to convince people that actual passwords are a hassle. What took so long?

Or "Passwords, Smashwords."

Seriously, how far have we gone off the rails that anyone would think that this is a good idea- wait, not just a good idea, but amazingly beneficial technology that we should line up at the Apple store to purchase ASAP? 

Originally, cellphones didn't require passwords to "unlock" access to those phones because they were only used to make calls.  Kind of helpful in an emergency if you can use someone else's phone.  Sure, you could get encryption for your phone but why would you want that, it's not like your phone provided you instant access to bank accounts and other sensitive material.

Then, one day, we woke up and our phones were the little vaults that held all kinds of personal information, including very sensitive banking info like access to our hard-earned money.  Well then, passwords became kind of a neccessity.  If phones were going to be the key to our savings, checkings, mortgage and investment accounts, they were going to have to be super-secure. 

And now that we're living in the Age of Openness, where "privacy" is a silly, outdated idea and everything we do is done in the spotlight, where more and more of my students tell me every year that they couldn't care less if the government listens in on phone conversations or reads their emails because "I've got nothing to hide," we get this:  Phones you can unlock simply by looking at them. 

Nobody sees any potential problems with this, huh?  Everyone thinks that this tech was designed to make our lives easier- heck, even more "secure" (like maybe the old guy in this ad is still into security because he grew up in a world where Personal Information was still a thing,) right?  Nobody thinks that this is going to lead to endless cases of fraud- how long before you can just agree to purchase something by looking at a website, won't that be just another Super Convenient Timesaver?  Just like having an Alexa listening on everything you say, what wouldn't be great about a phone which instantly opens the moment you glance at it? 

And all because it's too much of a pain to touch four numbers on a screen.  Uh huh. s

Dish TV's creepy "The One" Commercial

Yes, Dish TV offers thousands upon thousands of On Demand movies and television shows.  So many, in fact, that technically you could just sit on that couch and watch the television of your choice for the rest of your life and never have to repeat any of those shows. 

But Dish TV recognizes that it's not about being able to watch 4000 hours of On-Demand movies and TV shows, because who has time to do that (here's where we pretend that you want to do something other than watch On Demand TV and that television is not the Be All and End All to your life, it's not like you watch it on your phone whether you are by yourself or with someone after all?)  It's about watching "the One" show or movie that has a very special place in your heart because you're so stupid and sad that watching a show or a movie was a major turning point in your life.

And it gets even sadder with this couple, because first of all, the guy is sitting there on his couch looking for all the world like he's about to pick a movie to watch when his significant other walks into the room and instantly picks up the remote.  Wanted to watch something, buddy?  Well, too damned bad- She's walked in, and She will pick the show you are going to watch. 

Then, she sees that he picked Say Anything, and she freezes and gets all paralyzed with warm nostalgia over everyone's favorite John Cusack vehicle, the heartwarming story of a young stalker winning over the object of his affection and taking advantage of the fact that her father goes to jail for embezzlement to steer her away from her dreams of an Ivy League education.  In particular we have the heartstring-pulling scene where, fearing rejection, Cusack's character (Lloyd) stands outside his True Love's house with a boombox blaring the song that was playing in the background when they first had sex.  And then at the conclusion when, in true 80s-film fashion, we celebrate Lloyd's decision to "escort" his Meant to Be True Love Conquers All girlfriend to England to continue her education (and so that he can better continue his stalking.)

Yep, good fun all around, and available On Demand from Dish Network, and disturbingly significant to this couple.  For a moment I thought that the guy, by picking out this film, was reminding his Significant Other that no matter what she did or where she went, he would be there, with his boombox, demanding attention, just like Lloyd from Their Film.  She responds with a look of defeat and resignation and sits down on Their couch in Their house to enjoy His- sorry, "their" film. Again.