We're all in this Together. So why don't more of you subscribe to my crappy blog, you haters!?

We all have a Responsibility to keep the engine of Capitalism humming along.  Every restaurant, car company, airline, and online streaming service is counting on us to keep contributing our hard-earned money to keeping them afloat during These Tough TimesTM.  We (corporations) can't get through this without You (customers.)

It's all about Community (corporations and customers.)  Businesses have always been there for Us, working hard 24/7 to convince the public to open wallets and empty them in exchange for Stuff.  Now it's time for Us to step up and help those Businesses by....um, well, continuing to open up our wallets and give them money in exchange for Stuff. 

We know that the proles- um, Community- don't have as much money as they did.  But that doesn't really matter, because the Market can't live without that money.  So just sacrifice a little more by....umm, buying.  It's good for you, it's even more good for Business, and it's what Americans do when America is in trouble because America.

Don't love your country?  Then stop consuming, you selfish awful traitors.  Let the terrorists win.  Love your country?  Well, it's kind of hard to tell when you haven't ordered from GrubHub for more than 12 hours.  Seeing is Believing.  Get that credit card out.  Capital One is THERE for you.  And when this is all over, Credit Repair will be there for you.  There's always someone there for you.  So relax.  And spend.  Don't worry- whatever you buy, we'll make more of it.  Like I said, we're always there for you.  And we'll always be there for you. 

(A profound and sincere thanks to the people who put together this wonderful compilation of twee garbage ads.  Just perfect.)

Not sure what to do with this Folger's Throwback

I hadn't heard the familiar Folger's jingle for years- maybe its not a universal throwback, but it is to me. 

Nothing else about this commercial is familiar, however.  As near as I can tell, this woman intended to surprise her husband in the shower, but her father-in-law was in there instead (with another guy who was in there fully, dressed, singing.  This got really weird, really fast.)   So I guess she forgot her father-in-law was visiting?  Or he regularly comes over to his house for a shower?  Or he lives with her and her husband now?  And brought someone to help him clean himself in the shower?

Considering that for the rest of the ad, the father-in-law walks around wearing a towel but still just as soapy as he was when discovered in the shower, I have to figure Father in Law Steve has been moved in for his own good, and isn't All There by any measure.  And that guy in the shower with him is an employee of some local home health agency who shows up every morning to make sure Steve gets out of bed and cleaned up.

Whatever, this poor woman has problems that are not going to be solved by crappy canned coffee.  If her Father in Law has moved in for the long term, she's going to have to start making some serious demands of her husband- like, good fresh, ground coffee that doesn't come in a can.  And maybe an addition to the house that includes a private bath off the master bedroom.  If Father in Law is just....there, we really need an explanation as to why he felt compelled to take a shower in her house, and why her interrupting that shower resulted in him apparently decided that he wasn't going to get rinsed off, let alone dressed, for the rest of the day.

Time for my annual rant against T Mobile...

...which I would be more than happy to forego as soon as T Mobile recognizes that Vermont is part of the Nation, and that if you're going to call yourself the Nationwide Leader in Nationwide Coverage, you really ought to provide a service that doesn't give me "No Network Connection" messages every time I try to make a call from the house I grew up in five miles outside of Barre (the third-largest city in the state.)

Not much left to say, actually.  T Mobile is horrible here and these "We can't stop talking about how incredibly amazing we are with our Nationwide Coverage" commercials are just insults added to an injury which repeats every summer.   For the third summer in a row, T Mobile:  Get your freaking act together in the rest of the United States.  Or STFU. 

Freshpet's Projection doesn't fly here

These things chew grass and will consume their own leavings if you turn your back on them.  Don't tell me they are deeply concerned about what's in their dog food, let alone things like expiration dates.  This has got nothing to do with pets, and everything to do with dog owners who want to virtue signal by buying the most unnecessarily expensive overpackaged crap possible for their miserable walnut-brained mammals.   Another great advertisement for Not Owning a Pet.

And I am NOT going to subject myself to the comments, which I'm sure are 99.9 percent cooing, oooing, awwing and endless "that one at this time stamp reminds me of MY 'children,' etc."  Life is too short for that crap.

Mercedes-Benz trains up the next generation of insufferable brats

Ok, so the little boy in this commercial is eager to go on his very first date (I guess) but there's a snowstorm, which for pretty much anyone else on the planet would mean the date is going to be postponed.*   Problem is, this kid isn't used to being disappointed.  He looks like an only child, he lives in the suburbs, and mom and dad own a Mercedes.  So he's all ready to go, grab the keys, dad.

Not only does dad drive the kid to the mall, but he seems determined to get there and then back home to the family McMansion as quickly as possible, because he's not driving especially slowly considering its kind of been implied that its not that safe to be driving. 

They arrive at the movie theater, which considering the empty parking lot sure looks closed because- well, the weather, after all.  But again, this is a rich kid with a rich family who gets what he wants, so they just park in the empty lot and go in.

There's one worker at the concession stand.  She's there just in case this kid and his dad ignored the obvious bad weather and drove out assuming everything would be perfectly fine.  Don't know how she got there, but I think it's safe to assume that she had a hard time of it as I'm pretty sure she doesn't own a Mercedes Benz.  But it's also safe to assume that she can't afford to just not come in to work even if the weather is bad if the theater owners want to stay open just in case some spoiled knothead insists on watching a movie during a blizzard.

There's no one in the theater- I guess he was supposed to meet his date in there, and not in the lobby, where he could buy her ticket and offer her popcorn and soda.  He decides that her father had a little more common sense and just told his daughter "sorry, but there will be lots of opportunities to organize a make-up date," for chrissakes.

Oh, but no- turns out that this little kid runs with his Own Kind, and asked out a Little Princess  whose father also owns a Mercedes Benz and who also doesn't know how to raise a sensible kid or doesn't think he has to because, after all, he's rich and owns a Mercedes Benz. 

I didn't watch the end of the commercial, so if it doesn't end with these entitled brats sitting by themselves in the theater eating popcorn and drinking soda watching a film being projected by one irritated worker drone while another mans the concession stand Just in Case Their Highnesses might want some candy at some point, you can let me know.

The Privilege!  It Burns!

 *When I was in college, my very first date with a girl I liked was supposed to be at Ronald Reagan's second inaugural parade.  It was cancelled due to inclement weather.  If I were an older version of these kids at that time, I guess I would have jumped into my own Mercedes-Benz, picked up that girl, and headed off Pennsylvania Avenue to sit in the stands while my parents demanded that the High School bands start entertaining us.  I mean, come on.  LIFE HAPPENS, KIDS.  But I guess if you own a Mercedes,  Life is just something that gets out of your way.

Lit Mobile's Charger Scam makes me happy for some reason

Maybe it's because the only ad I could find for this "solar powered lightning-fast phone charger" was disguised as a YouTube Review.  I could probably start a spin-off to this blog devoted to phony YouTube reviews.  The Evil Genius of creating fake reviews just makes my heart glow, especially when they are drowned by Actual Reviews exposing their fakery.  So much fun to watch.

Anyway, this Amazing Solar Powered Charger being sold for sixty percent off ($39.99) for a limited time only (it's a Spring Sale, and my calendar tells me that there's less than 48 hours left to Spring) is absolutely identical to something called the Innovative JD-T19 3 USB Ports Solar Charger 200000mh Wireless Power Bank Q1 Solar Panel Charger Power Bank (that's exactly what it's called) available at everybody's favorite source of mystery-box junk, Alibaba.  Except that at Alibaba, it costs $10.99.  And it might even show up in your mailbox someday. 

Ok, that's not fair- it's entirely possible that Lil Mobile will send you a charger in exchange for your $39.99, eventually.  It'll just be the same one you could have picked up for $10.99 at Alibaba.  Probably from the same warehouse in Guangzhou.  And then you'll have a light-up paperweight that would have been very expensive at $10.99.

Here's what gets me about these phony chargers and other electronics scams- everyone who owns a SmartPhone knows where they can get legitimate chargers for them, because Apple, Samsung etc sell chargers from their official sites.  Those companies have zero incentive for making it difficult for us to charge our phones, so why wouldn't we just assume that they'd be on the cutting edge of charging technology?  Why would we trust some unfamiliar company to provide us with the best chargers?  Makes no sense. 

And other than the debunking videos being fun to watch, I can't really explain why these commercials make me happy.  Maybe it's because most of the people who fall for these pitches are probably just stupid kids who can't keep their phones charged because they never stop using them.  Anything that throws a wrench into their nonstop jabbering, watching and texting is going to warm my cold dead heart just a little.

Copper Fit's stone soup

Let's be honest- just as it was only a matter of time before some company began to add copper- or the concept of copper, or just the name "copper"- to knee sleeves in order to sell them to the population of woo-ingesting idiots out there whose brains are in the 12th century and who think that copper is Magic, it was also pretty inevitable that the same company would remember that there's a larger population of not-so-very-stupid people out there who associate menthol with pain management and start adding THAT to their knee sleeves.  I'm just kind of amazed that it took this long.

Menthol was first isolated as a chemical in the late-18th century, and today is used in dozens of different products, probably coming closer to the old description of a Magical Cure-All than anything since the formation of the FDA.  It's used in cough drops, cough syrup, creams and inhalers to relieve cold symptoms.  It's found in antibacterials to relieve itching and swelling, and lip balms to prevent and treat chapping and cracking.  And, of course, it's used to reduce ("provide temporary relief from") muscle aches and pains.

To that last point, menthol is the main active ingredient in balms and other topical treatments made by multiple competing pharmaceutical companies, and for good reason:  It's cheap (though not quite as cheap as just adding the word "copper" to your product) and enjoys a positive reputation built from years of practical experience.  I doubt there's an adult in the United States who wasn't raised to just ASSUME that menthol does what the companies selling it to you say it does.  It would be like questioning the power of water to quench thirst.  Practically heresy.

So why would I snark Copper Fit for adding menthol to its knee sleeves?  To answer this question, I simply have to go back to the title of this particular blog post.  Copper Fit knee sleeves, by themselves, are pretty pointless, expensive little pieces of holistic nonsense which are sold with trumpeted claims of magic properties which "work" on people who are really susceptible to the placebo effect.  The commercials look great, these old people who could barely walk are now running, these very believable, sincere-looking people who look like my family members and friends swear they work, plus- unlike that off-the-shelf stuff- they have this cool logo and are Infused with the Properties of Copper.  If I put one on and am not running marathons five minutes later, I just Don't Believe Enough.  Adding menthol is a very interesting concession by Copper Fit- it's adding actual vegetables and spice to a soup we were told was great already.  Copper Fit might as well include a bottle of Tylenol and a jar of Biofreeze (only active ingredient: Menthol) and just raise the price of the sleeve a little.  Maybe throw in a warm-up stretching routine as a bonus, Just Pay Extra Shipping and Handling.  Don't worry, the great majority of the customer base for Copper Fit knee sleeves will continue to attribute any improvement to the Magic of Copper.