Flex Paste: a very, very dangerous product to be selling during a pandemic!

I'm going to come out and admit it right now- if I knew I was going to be stuck at home for the next few months (that is, I knew I wasn't going to be going to Vermont next month for the summer but instead would be in my apartment in Maryland,) I am pretty sure that this product would cause a major alteration to my life.

I'm pretty sure that as soon as I ordered four or five pails of Flex Paste, I'd head off to the Dollar Store and buy several putty knives, a few bags of plastic greenery, and a few boxes of cheap Chinese toys.  Then I'd walk around the neighborhood looking for a card table someone has put out on the street FOR FREE and carry that home, too.  And I'd pile all these goodies into my little spare room, and wait.

When my pails of Flex Paste showed up, oh man would I go to town building my very own Devil's Tower on top of that card table in my little spare room.  I'd spend hours getting the contours just right before decorating it with my fake moss and little green army men or dinosaurs or whatever cheap Chinese toys I grabbed at the Dollar Store.  I'm sure I'd have to order more Flex Paste because it would never be Quite Right.

Meanwhile, I wouldn't notice that I'd grown a beard, was getting super-pale, had 300 unanswered messages in my voice mailbox and hadn't hosted a Zoom Class for weeks and didn't notice the semester had ended.  And that I was wearing the same clothes I had on when the pails of Flex Paste appeared at my doorstop.

And who could blame me?  I don't know if this stuff really seals holes in the wall or fixes roofs or you could build an entire waterproof boat with it, and I don't really care, because why would anyone use this for those purposes when you've got nothing but time on your hands, you have to stay indoors anyway, and there are iconic mountains to recreate in your little spare room?

Alas, I will be gone in a few weeks so I can't really do this stuff justice until this fall, when we get the second deadly wave of COVID-19 because millions of people decided that they were done wearing masks and not going out and that if they just refused to let a deadly virus push them around, they could will it to just Go Away.  So I'm guessing I'll be holding off my order until late October or so, and this will be my winter passion project/obsession.  I just have to remember to make my Flex Paste mountain large enough to be a base for my vintage King Arthur's Castle from West Germany.  And to order more toilet paper between outbreaks.

CopperWear Mask: What took so long?

 

             
 This has got to be brilliant snark, right?

I mean, this is too easy.  Someone made this just for me to comment on- or to test the gullibility of the American public, which at this point is like testing the ability of ants to tear apart a cupcake on a hot summer's day.

But just in case....let's take a look at the "claims" made by the makers of the CopperWear Mask:

"Disposable masks are now a limited commodity.  That's because you usually have to use a new one every day."

Hate to be a pedant, but actually we usually never have to wear one at all.  We are wearing masks now because of a pandemic.  When it passes, we won't be wearing masks so much anymore.  Unless, of course, our jaw muscles get sore.  Because We All Know how awesome copper is at healing sore muscles....

But here's a Reusable mask with "the properties of copper."  Other than being....ummm....copper-colored, what exactly ARE those properties, anyway?  And even if this ad is specifically aimed at the mouth-breathers who believe that copper has "properties" that are valuable for health reasons, I hope they at least note that the commercial doesn't even claim that these masks CONTAIN copper, just "the properties" of copper.  Whatever those are.

Oh wait, copper thread is "woven into the fabric" using "fiber matrix technology."  I'm guessing that means by using the technology we call a Modern Automated Sewing Machine because...wow.

"The best news is that these masks are available now."  Not that they work to prevent illness, just that they are available.  And look, they can be shipped directly to your door, and placed right there, in front of your door-- just like everything else you order.  And you can use it while you are working on your computer, alone in an office, which either means that not only are you a stupid, frightened sheep and an easy mark for scammers like this, but you also don't know how viruses are transmitted.  You really don't need to wear a mask while typing on a computer all by yourself, dear.

"It covers you nose, mouth and face!"  And now we're all done talking about copper (done before we even got started, in fact, because at no point in this two minutes of Dumb are we told what "properties of copper" are supposed to be important here.)  We've moved on to it being washable/reusable (like plenty of other masks out there) and it's woven (like every cloth mask out there.)  "It can create separation"- will it?  No claims made here, either.  It just CAN.

Plus, it's got the properties of copper.  Not sure we've mentioned that in the last eight seconds.

It's super-comfortable, so you can wear it all day as you stand in front of the most obvious green screens ever.

The rest of this ad is just a repeat of scenes of people dramatically dropping those incredibly expensive (and probably unavailable now anyway) disposable masks into trash cans and then taking their reusable, washable copper-property masks out of dryers, so the only reason to watch the second minute is to get the outrageous price- $29.99 plus shipping and handling.  For a piece of cloth with the undefined properties of copper (I figured it out- the properties it shares with products which claim to contain copper is the inflated expense.)

And here's the punchline, from the ad description on Spotify:  "the mask is said to be infused with the properties of copper and is machine washable."  Talk about an ingenious use of the English language:  not only is there no claim that the mask contains copper, but it's not even claimed that it for sure contains the properties of copper.  It's not even claimed outright that it's MACHINE WASHABLE- it's just "said to be."

Again, this has got to be snark.  Right?  RIGHT?

Get your own Spot the Robot Dog Today!

Look for these improvements to be included in the private-purchase version of Spot the Robot Dog:

1.  It will automatically run up to strangers and knock them down.  Owners will be able to record a message to be played when (not if) this happens which announces "he's just being friendly, he loves people."

2.  It will leave "presents" consisting primarily of oil clumps and just enough digestible fiber to attract insects all over your lawn. 

3.  It will bark repeatedly at falling leaves, passing cars, and basically everything else.  It will respond to your "hush" with up to thirty seconds of silence before repeating its "bark at everything" loop.

4.  It will run around the dinner table at family gatherings barking at a special High Volume to remind you exactly where it is at all times.  The "hush" feature is automatically turned off during these times.

5.  Planned obsolescence is built right in, to provide you with the Full Experience of being a pet owner.  Expect to spent at least $1000 per year on replacement parts.

The very best thing about your Spot the Robot Dog is that when it finally does break down for good, you can just throw it in the trunk alongside your dead lawn mower and bring it to the recycling center for disposal.  No messy vet fees or sad backyard funerals!

Geico shows us how much the world has changed....

...because as we all know, before we became a nation of Stay at Home-ers and Work Online-ers, nobody was "sharing" anything like Adorable Babies doing Adorable Things, Even More Adorable Pets doing even more Adorable Things.  None of us would have even considered making video clips of us doing anything in the privacy of our own homes and sharing them on YouTube.  What a world COVID-19 has created.  Truly revolutionary.

Ok, enough snark.  If we could be honest with ourselves for a few minutes, we could just admit that every single one of these "because we're stuck at home" video clips could predate the current pandemic by years.  We've been a really stupid, self-absorbed, bored-out-of-our-minds nation for quite some time now. 

And while we're at it, the idea that the virus has turned us into a nation of binge-watchers addicted to Netflix, Hulu etc. is also a pathetic joke.  All COVID-19 has done is given us an excuse to keep doing what a whole lot of us were doing already- sitting on our couches, watching hour after hour of nonsense, occasionally rising to accept the food delivery or grab another soda or beer from the fridge or taking a quick break to post a video on YouTube letting the world know that we're still here, and we're still stupid. 

The conceit that the pandemic is keeping us from doing what we "really want to do" is really the height of self-delusion.  What we "really want to do" is stay home, watch tv, and "stay connected" through phones and our laptops because actual in-person interaction was already becoming passe at LEAST a decade ago.  Want proof?  Just wait till this thing is over- there will be a spike in movie theater attendance, visits to parks, restaurants, beaches and gyms, and then....most of us will just go back to what we were doing before, which as it turned out was engaging in intensive training for life in a bomb shelter.

MakeSpace Commercials should come with Parental Guidance Suggested warnings

Eventually, the woman in this ad got sick of watching the guy in this ad systematically destroy everything they worked so hard to achieve, with immaculate planning, one step at a time, and hired a professional moving and storing company for Reasons.

I mean, look at the two scenes we're given here.  In the first, she's carrying out her very carefully planned removal of the body of a noisy neighbor in the middle of the night, and all she needs is just a little help from her dim bulb male accomplice to get the corpse down the back staircase in a coffin purchased with cash from a thrift shop in another state, slip it into their Subaru Hatchback, and drive an hour to a state park closed due to COVID-19 so they can slide the box into the deserted lake (after weighing it down, of course.)

The guy completely messes up his ONE CONTRIBUTION to the master plan, NATURALLY.

In an attempt to make up for his ridiculous bungling, the guy offers to dig up all the corpses in the back yard, stuff them into the cardboard boxes they've been saving up from the four-times-daily-Amazon purchases which have been arriving since the Stay at Home order was initiated, and find a canyon nearby to dump and burn them.  What he didn't tell her was that he was going to try to transfer all 23 victims all at once, leading to an hysterical accident on the way to the canyon as the boxes overburdened with bodies and odor-killing baking soda fell off and spilled into the street.  This guy can't do ANYTHING right.

I guess these two messes were cleaned up, because we then move to an unrelated scene where they've gone to visit their empty box collection at the nearby U-Store It and the guy decides he wants to go swimming in the boxes for some reason.  I don't know, it's really weird.

In the end, the woman here realizes that if she keeps asking her husband to try to do stuff he'll probably end up dying too early- that is, before that massive insurance policy she talked him into buying matures- so she decides they should do all of their moving and storage by using this professional MakeSpace service.  It's a rather odd way to end what was to this point a really graphic, horrifying commercial, but ok.

Nobody asked for this, Progressive. Nobody.

Yes, this is very topical.  Everyone's doing this these days.  Nobody likes doing it, and everyone hopes that it's over sooner rather than later.

That being said, nobody misses any of these Progressive Insurance spokeschoads.  Especially Flo.  Nobody is going through Flo withdrawals; that is, no one is REALLY going through Flo withdrawals, though if you scroll down the comments you'll see that there are people out there willing to pretend to love these ads for nickels. 

BTW, Zoom meetings are generally carried out to make it easier for actual teams of workers to remain in communication during the Age of Social Isolation.  None of this is demonstrated during this Progressive Ad- it's just the usual cadre of idiots blathering nonsense about nothing.  Maybe Progressive wants to give us a Taste of Normalcy, since this is all we expect from Progressive commercials even when we aren't in the middle of a pandemic.

The Geico Gecko is wearing a mask during a commercial in 3.....2......1.......

I have three questions for Chuck Woolery as well (or More fun from the United States Money Reserve of non-Money)

1.  "What's the United States Money Reserve, and why did it intentionally choose a name designed to con the soft-headed into believing that it's an official branch of the US Government?" (Connected question:  Why is the fact that it's NOT connected to the US Government presented in a font impossible to read unless one has a tv screen the size of a football field?)

2.  "The current price of gold is just over $1750 per ounce.  Why would anyone pay $189 for one-tenth of an ounce of gold (plus shipping and handling) from the company you're pimping for?  Because it looks pretty?  Because it looks like a coin (but isn't?) 

3.  "What are you doing in this ad?  Joe Namath beat you out for the gig pimping non-Medicare old age 'insurance?'  Decide that you weren't doing anything with your soul so you might as well sell it to the highest bidder?  What?"