It's not as easy as creating a Facebook Group, but in the long run it could be a lot more effective....

Feel sad because this woman "just got deployed" and won't be spending Christmas with her family?  Well, you could join a Facebook Support Page and share Thoughts and Prayers and then go out to collect piles of lights and decorations and even take down a tree (I think this is the "Do Not Attempt" part- because nobody should ever attempt to chop down a tree unless you're an Officially Licensed Tree Chopper-Downer, I guess) in order to create a fake "Christmas" scene both outside of the family's house AND INSIDE AS WELL ("how did this happen?"  As in, "how did this Holiday MiracleTM take place, and not "how did these people get into our house and do all this while we slept, and who gave them a key, and seriously what the actual hell is happening here I thought this was about YOU missing Christmas, not all about us?")  You could respond to a woman being deployed for the holidays by assuming that meant that her homefront-bound family was going to go without decorations and a tree because Dad can't do any of this stuff without the soldier of the family around (can someone explain this to me?  Did she always do all the decorations so it can't be done without her?  Seriously, someone help me out here.)

You could do all this stuff from the comfort of your keypad, and in the end you'll get a bunch of photos which will allow you to share the Awesomeness of your Great Big Heart with all your "friends" on Facebook and which will help you forget that your MLM lost another $1600 this year and, once again, you kinda sorta forgot to give any money to that food bank and soup kitchen in your own home town (but seriously, where's the glory in THAT?)

But while you're doing all that, how about voting for candidates who won't support the ridiculous knee-jerk over-extension of America's military?  After all, the United States is currently at war with absolutely no one.  Anyone even care why this woman was suddenly deployed at all, never mind just before Christmas? Where's the compelling interest being defended here?  Whose freedoms are being defended by this woman?  What Vital Strategic Interest is being served by having Mommy on the other side of the planet instead of with her children?

Anyone? Someone?

Fios + Holiday + Disney = A Sad Commercial, Right from the Start

1.  "One thing I love about Disney, its that everyone can be a princess."

WTF?  Why would anyone WANT to be a Disney princess?  Disney princesses are, with very few exceptions, Trophies to be on the screen to have dreamy eyes and look pretty while they wistfully imagine being saved by a Big Strong ManTM.  If you think that's something worth aspiring to, please don't have kids.  Especially daughters.  But no sons, either.  Don't have sons.  Don't have kids at all. 

2.  "My TV is pretty much always playing a Marvel movie..." expand your horizons.  You are an infantile rut.  I mean, at least you didn't say "DC Comics" movie, but obviously that wasn't going to happen because we all know who owns Marvel.  Still...you have a Peter Pan complex and you need to stop bragging about it and start getting therapy for it.

3.  "Star Wars is everything.  It's my life" says a little kid who is way too young to be making such "deep" observations about himself.  And his father is standing right there, listening to this.  Red Flag, dad.  Not something you should be chuckling at- especially if early whispers about The Rise of Skywalker are to be taken seriously.)  Especially since this kid isn't old enough to have seen anything but the last two abominations in the theater.  If THOSE films made Star Wars "everything" to him, well...I mean, they weren't the Prequels, but still....

(OMG I'm nine seconds into this thing...)

4.  Another adult is telling us how her favorite Disney Princess (we're back to that again?) is Pocahontas.  Ok fine, maybe you saw it when you were very young, and she's the first-ever Princess of Color and that appealed to you, never mind that it followed the same tired Magic Natives Talking to Trees and Animals bit we've seen in a dozen other (racist) films.

Anyway, I'm done. The Patriots are on, I've got a stack of tests I must return to students tomorrow, and I'm assuming that at any moment I'll be told that my report card comments aren't QUITE good enough and need a few minor revisions, shouldn't take more than a couple of hours...I'm out.

Coming this Fall to NBC: Domino's 911!

This is one of the most unintentionally hysterical commercials out there, and that's saying a lot.

I mean, look at what's going on here:  The manager of a Domino's Pizza franchise gets a text message that tells him a recently delivered box of bland dough and sugary sauce topped with limp pieces of meat was "not quite up to standards."  He takes this "very personally," and acts exactly as if he's in command of an Emergency Care Unit rushing to the scene of a road accident. 

"We're going to expedite this order!" another franchiser who would be on suicide watch if she stopped to think for just one moment what she was panicking about  announces to her staff of high school dropouts and college students struggling to keep food on the table while getting that degree.  Because no matter what else is going on in that "restaurant," nothing is going to take precedence over dealing with the immediate tragedy of some taste-deprived loser in the 'burbs not getting exactly what they ordered on their Crap in a Box pizza.

"It might be a missing dipping sauce, it could be a wrong topping or it arrives cold..." yes, the Crisis could be any number of First World Problems that is a minor inconvenience to the customer but must be treated like a Life or Death matter to Domino's because....well, because if it's not Life or Death, we might stop to think about it for a second and blow our brains out.

At the end of all this nonsense, we see delivery monkeys literally roaring through the streets in their vehicles before sprinting up steps to hand over pizzas like they are transplanted organs being rushed into surgery.  And then we get the response of the stupid fat hicks who can't believe that they are being treated like f--ng royalty by a company willing to whip its employees into a frenzy to gain a competitive edge over PapaJohns, Little Caesars, Pizza Hut, etc. etc. ETC. 

In the end, I really do think that this should be a network tv drama.  Let's see the pain and anguish that comes from a crew of pretty young people who, try as they might, continue to occasionally fail to include mushrooms on that order or- distracted perhaps by a love triangle involving a cashier- miss a street and end up delivering the pizza at room temperature, resulting in a panicked Race Against Time to replace it during (lets say) a torrential rainstorm.  Let's use plenty of handheld cameras so we get a real sense of the pressure involved in getting just the right cup of dipping sauce out of the fridge and getting into the box with the Free This Month Only bottle of soda included and to that house in Bumblef--k USA before some arbitrary deadline that I guess exists because re-heating isn't an option.  I'm so ready for this, Network Television.  You've got a built-in sponsor .  Go for it!

Apple's iPhone 11 Commercial reminds me of Lost Opportunities

In the winter of 1978, I was sledding on a hill near my house at night and went straight into a partially snow-covered barbed wire fence.  Part of the fence cut into my neck.  If I hadn't been wearing a heavy collar, I might have bled to death that night, at the age of 14.

In the fall of 1983, I lost control of my grandfather's Volkswagen Beetle and rolled it four times before crashing into a stone bridge.  No seat belts.  If I missed the bridge, I would have plunged into the creek, maybe being crushed by the collapsing chassis of Germany's Finest in Engineering.  That was the day after the Orioles won their last World Series.  I was 20.

In the summer of 1990, I almost drowned off the coast of New Jersey.  If I hadn't managed to find an emergency rescue rope stretched out into the ocean, I might not have been able to pull myself out of the water.  I might have drowned that day, at the age of 26.

What I'm saying is....several times in my life, I had the opportunity to permanently avoid being subjected to this commercial, and I blew it.  No one to blame but myself.

Awesome fun with As Seen on TV's "Tac Visor!"

First, let's all celebrate that the Tac Visor was "inspired" by the flight helmets used in AMERICAN fighter planes; if I'm going to buy something from a company which regularly uses an American Flag and an American Bald Eagle as its logos, I want to be sure that whatever that flimsy joke piece-of-crap item wasn't inspired by some flight helmet being used by some Commie flying missions over Syria or Vietnam or wherever!

Second, if I watch this ad without thinking too hard, it appears that the Tac Visor is actually a really cool super-thin HDTV you strap to your car's standard visor.  When you get sick of driving toward that nuclear blast, you can pull down the HDTV and watch a movie about a truck blaring its horn as it drives by.  I suspect that it's not a good idea to get too into that movie, though, because that seems to be the only scene available on the Tac Visor.  Maybe there are other scenes available just pay Extra Shipping and Handling?

Then I see the scene where we have a big truck surrounded by - chains, cables?  Seriously, what?- and facing a big white screen.  A woman is asked to look at the white screen, and she sees nothing.  Then the Tac Visor is pulled down and for once its not showing that scene with the big truck blowing its horn.  Instead, it's showing an advertisement for the Tac Visor.  Mind. Blown

So I guess if you are driving toward an H-bomb testing site and you have really bad timing, you should definitely get one of these Tac Visors so you can shield your eyes with part of a movie about a truck blaring its horn- maybe a digitally remastered version of  1971's  Duel, or something.  Seems like you'd be better off just avoiding that area, or maybe putting on a pair of sunglasses, than making yourself more distracted by watching TV while driving, but that's just me.

So Basset Hounds are Racist?

I am not a dog owner.  In fact, I'm not a pet owner at all.  And I will never understand the attraction of owning a pet.

But I know a lot of pet owners, including dog owners who own several dogs of different breeds.  As near as I can tell, they all get along with each other just fine.  Which is something I never thought about until I saw this ad, which suggests that basset hounds only run with their own- or, maybe, that other dogs are bigoted toward basset hounds and won't run with them?  I'm just trying to figure out who the ridiculous snobs are here.

My guess is that the bigoted jerk in the ad is the basset hound owner and, by extension, all basset hound owners.  This guy sees that there are no other basset hounds in the park so he goes to Facebook and either starts or joins a page dedicated to the interests of basset hound owners.  Before you know it, we've got a wonderfully exclusive, segregated party going on at the beach featuring a large number of basset hound owners and their dogs who I'm guessing are running around barking and making messes that their owners will let the tide take care of.   Can't be sure because comments are blocked for this video, something I find completely unsurprising because wow this is stupid.

Yet Another Perplexing Indeed Ad

1.  If this guy is regularly losing jobs ("they have to move again..") why does he keep buying houses instead of renting apartments?  How often have they had to move, anyway?  That little girl looks awfully frustrated and angry, like it's a regular thing.  So what's with the constant purchase of houses?  Maybe if they just rented a nice two-bedroom apartment, they'd have enough financial stability to stay in the same area during a prolonged period of unemployment for dad?

2.  Somehow both the dad and the little girl know that the chirping noise on dad's phone twenty feet away means that dad's going to be employed and they don't have to move after all?  How do either of them know what that chirp means?  How did the little girl even HEAR the chirp through the door?