Oh, how adorable- the most original commercial ever. For the first time we see, in the same commercial:
1. Precocious kids who twist their faces into weird contortions as they bleat phrases they really have no business understanding but It's Funny Because It's Kids. I can't believe it took seventy years for someone to think of having kids say embarrassing things in front of a parent! Hys-TERICAL!
2. Eurotrash dweeb dad who serves up a great big plump, slow moving softball for those kids to knock right out of the park and then looks flummoxed when those kids....knock the slow moving softball right out of the park and freak out Eurotrash dad for the entertainment of the audience.
I mean, I'm just AMAZED that they managed to fit these two concepts into the SAME brief commercial. Well done, Toyota! I'm off to buy a Highlander because...um, wait a minute. Why is this ad supposed to make me buy a Highlander? It looks more like a commercial for birth control to me. I'm certainly convinced that I don't want anything like these kids.
Why bother to build a good product when you can just hire a British voice actor to narrate an artsy, overlong piece of utter nonsense which includes like "At Hyundai we build cars...year after year" like that's some kind of thought-provoking Deep Thought?
I didn't even get thirty seconds into this junk before realizing I had a gem for this blog without even really trying. This isn't putting lipstick on a pig. It's dumping a lipstick factory and about eight gallons of rouge on that pig before giving it a perfume bath and sticking it into a Louis Vuitton Dress. In the end, you've reaching for an Oscar for Best Short Film with an attempt to sell a FREAKING HYUNDAI. I mean, give me a break!
When you are judging yourself based on your smartphone's ability to fold compared to the phones of the people around you, you might as well just call it a day. Or at least rethink your priorities and try to figure out what went so very wrong in your life. But who am I kidding? You're far more likely to respond by dipping deeper into your credit card debt and getting yourself one of these Look At Me phones so you can "flex" with the best of them.
Because you are a very, very sad person who has no sense of value, and no sense of pride, and no sense that you've actually accomplished anything that makes you at all worthwhile or valuable or even notable in any way, shape or form. So if you want people to know you are alive, you'd better go out and spend a thousand dollars on a shiny piece of metal and plastic that can do something that might catch someone's eye and attract someone's interest- because there's nothing about you personally that is ever going to do that.
A sad person who will be mesmerized by this blur of images, and overwhelmed with lust at the thought of owning something that might make someone else momentarily envious of you. You've always wanted someone to me envious of you, and god knows there's nothing about who you are or what you do that is ever going to accomplish that. And after all, this phone- an overpriced bauble though it may be- is still significantly cheaper than an Audi or a Lexus or a BMW.
For some reason, this smirking little toad with the fake smile forever frozen on his stupid face can't convince Aaron Rodgers that he isn't getting some special "Rodgers Rate." The result seems to be that Rodgers is forever kissing up to an otherwise anonymous State Farm Insurance Choad- playing golf with him, going on car rides with him, eating lunch with him- in order to keep what he thinks is some "special rate" which by the way he really needs because money is tight when you're a franchise quarterback in the NFL.
And now Pat Mahomes- ready and waiting in the wings for the not-too-distant day when Rodgers simply cannot perform on the field anymore (probably three games into his new contract with whatever team he insists on being traded to this summer) to be Jake's Best Friend and Toady, thanking this grinning smarmy jackass every few seconds for his Special Mahomes Rate as he goes about his everyday life, getting haircuts, doing laundry, or just Hanging Around with Jake for No Reason Whatsoever Are We Aware that Mahomes has Actual Friends and a Family in the Real World. All so this terrible actor*/wannabee comedian can do everything possible to convince NFL millionaires that they are Nothing Special All State Farm Employees Hang Out With Their Customers 24/7.
But it seems to me that after last February, Pat Mahomes might put two and two together and figure out that hanging around with Jake might not be the best thing for a guy whose primary goal is to collect Super Bowl Rings. Aaron Rodgers has exactly one, while his list of playoff failures just keeps on growing. Pat Mahomes also has one ring- which is half the number of playoff losses he can count. I think the message is pretty damned clear: doing State Farm commercials might be good for your wallet, but it doesn't bode very well when it comes to winning Championships.
*the original Jake from State Farm was dumped because the company decided that more extensive use of the character required the hiring of an actual actor. So they hired....this guy. Uh huh. WTF-ever, State Farm.
The radio commercials for this service are so very grating- "as a small business owner, you have so many headaches!" And the "headaches" listed are "minimum wage requirements" (HORRORS! The EVIL GOVERNMENT requires you to pay what amounts to way, way below an actual living wage to your employees, and you need to hire a manager to deal with that!) and "wrongful termination lawsuits" (HORRORS! You went an innocently broke a contract and fired an employee, and now you've got to deal with the law! You need to hire a manager to deal with that!) and "Union disputes" (don't even get me started.) In short, these commercials make running a business sound like something a very, very charitable person With A Dream wants to do but is bound to be foiled by the aforementioned evil government and it's evil, business-owner-hating rules every time.
And hiring a compliance manager? The radio ad tells us "they're expensive- they cost Seventy Thousand Dollars a year." As if we are talking about a piece of equipment and not a human being. I'm sure what the commercial MEANT to say is that compliance managers CHARGE $70,000 per year for their WORK, but even this doesn't make any sense, because how is that a universal salary for compliance managers? Are you really telling me that a compliance manager in Mobile, Alabama makes the same salary as one in San Francisco? And again, it's so dehumanizing to refer to qualified professionals as if they are just another piece of tech the modern business needs to purchase off the shelf in order to avoid production issues.
Finally, that guy at the beginning- "I need this for my small business. But I can't afford it. But I can't afford not to have it..." Hey, buddy, I'll tell you what I tell every jackass who whines that they "can't afford" to pay a certain wage, "can't afford" to follow all those other rules (cleanliness, safety, tax record maintenance, etc:) If you can't pay for those things, you can't have a business. Sorry. Your desire to run a business doesn't require me or anyone else to reduce standards to make that business more profitable for you. It's not 1880 anymore, and that's a good thing. If you can't afford what it takes to keep your doors open, then just admit you aren't ready to run a business, close your doors, and go get a job, Mr. Small Business Owner.
(Oh and BTW, don't tell me that Bambee provides an HR manager who regularly "costs" $70,000 per year for $99 a month- like she's a rental- and that HR manager is going to be as devoted to YOUR business as one you personally hired- and paid a decent wage too- would be. That Bambee HR manager is either doing this in her spare time or your business will be one of the two dozen she's juggling every single day. I don't own a business, but I can do math.)
Know how you can avoid situations like this (situations in which you are severely restricted in your decorating, etc. choices on your own property?) Just don't live within an area of your lily white suburb which is controlled by a Housing Association. But if you want to pretend that you've "made it" in Capitalist America by having your own Estate consisting of a house that looks like all the other houses on the block and a postage stamp-sized piece of land (which is still mysteriously large enough to convince you that you need a riding mower to maintain,) this is part of the cost of that part of the American Dream. You are living under a microscope where your progress is being constantly scrutinized and graded by the neighbors who are on the same hamster wheel you are. Your every move, every choice of car, every new flower planted anywhere, every coat of paint applied or not applied, is being noted on an invisible scoresheet which is not only in the brain of that Housing Association Nazi, but each of your neighbors. Better keep up with the Joneses, because if you falter, everyone is going to notice.
And now that you know all this, do you still think you upgraded when you gave up that apartment downtown?
Here's another way to control high blood sugar: Stop eating sugar. Amazingly, this One Simple TrickTM has ALSO been connected to losing weight.
No number of grams of sugar is recommended as part of anybody's daily diet. Check out "daily recommended intake of carbs" and you'll find that carbohydrates in any form are not required for good health. And nobody is suffering from high blood sugar because they consume a serving or two of fruit per day (and if I'm wrong, fruit isn't necessary either for health, either. I can't eat sugar without suffering arthritis pain flares, but I eat berries every day because they have anti-inflammatory properties. So I get natural sugar, I help control my arthritis pain, and I don't have to worry about high blood sugar. Imagine that.
Sugar is ubiquitous in American culture. It's stuffed into red sauces and dairy products (just TRY to find flavored yogurt that is sugar free.) It's sprinkled on to French Fries to make them more addictive. If sugar was classified as a drug, it would be by far the most popular addictive drug in the United States and probably the world, even more popular than Caffeine (which I can stop using any time I want to, I just don't want to, so shut up you aren't my mother!) It's harder to avoid than any other addictive chemical on the market. But it can be done, and for your body's sake it SHOULD be done. Sugar is poison, and I'll take a prescription to Stop Ingesting Poison over a prescription for a drug with all these nasty possible side effects any day of the week and twice on Sundays, thanks very much anyway.
