Transfixed on one second of this McDonald's Hamburgler-is-back commercial....

 

It's at the 21 second mark.  In the background, we see the blurry image of a single person who has both hands on the table and is staring down at her tray.

What is going on there?  Is she experiencing an epiphany- "oh my god, I am sitting here all by myself at McDonald's,  about to eat greasy, salty junk again?  What has gone wrong with my life?"

"Why am I sitting here with this food?  Why didn't I do what I usually do- use the drive-thru, then pull over to a parking space, consume my bag of overpriced trash, and then have a good cry, like I usually do?"

Or is it ""wait, didn't I order a hamburger?  Why isn't it sitting in front of me.  Maybe I didn't order it.  I don't really remember.  I often don't remember things I did two minutes ago; it might have something to do with a steady diet of empty carbohydrates, salt and fat and not enough actual food.  Oh well- I'm not going to waddle up to the counter and order that hamburger now.  Not in front of these other people.  And I can't just drink my not-milkshake and eat my fried potatoes and then use the drive-thru on the way out; the girl who hands me my bag might recognize me.  I'll just finish up here and then hit one of the other three McDonald's I pass on the way home."  

Whatever it is, it's really sad.  This blurry woman in the background needs help.  The kind of help she won't get from a Health At Every Size "life coach/nutritionist" on Tiktok.  The kind of help she won't get by ignoring nutrition advice from an ACTUAL doctor.  Certainly not the kind of help she'll get from consuming warm trash from McDonald's.  I suggest she seek medical attention, including therapy, to find other ways to cope that don't include clogging her arteries or seeking to dull the pain with "comfort food" that leaves her depressed and addicted.  Good luck to her. 

Wendy's encourages us to start our days in the worst way possible

 

Because there's no better way to guarantee that you'll be exhausted, sluggish and hungry all day long than to start it with about a thousand calories' worth of fried potatoes, white starch and protein prepared in such a way as to completely eliminate the only somewhat beneficial ingredient of this breakfast.

I really hope that 2024 is the last year that Wendy's will be treating us to commercials featuring obviously mentally challenged weirdos whose entire personality is wrapped up in the fast "food" conglomerate their brains have been enslaved to.  I for one will not miss watching this sad group of exploited unfortunates gush about how amazing the chemicals they heat up for the "benefit" of their perpetually ill customers are at releasing dopamine as well as causing blood sugar spikes.  

And to that one guy who is fantasizing about the next time he gets to chow down on enough grease, salt and empty carbohydrates to choke a horse and clog a heart in no time flat- do you really need to crack that egg five inches from your face?  Is it really that fascinating?  If you have to do that, could you at least wear a mask?  Because if I saw you doing that in the back, it would absolutely confirm my decision to stick to my order of Just Black Coffee, please.*

*I haven't been inside a Wendy's for at least twenty years, so I don't even know if they have good coffee.  Some of these Obesity Delivery Centers have good coffee- like the one with golden arches.  Dunkin Donuts has good coffee, too.  And it won't kill you, like the fried garbage these people are forever gushing over. 

Still picking on SoFi- this guy has issues no bank can solve.

 

1.  Super-smart to do any kind of online banking while in public, using a public hotspot like the subway.  I get the idea that the reason this guy has debt issues in the first place is because of impulsive moves like this.

2.  This guy responds to "Welcome Points" by doing a dance through the train.  What are "Welcome Points?"  Who cares?   They sound so nice.  I get another idea- that this guy was sincerely flattered by the Love Bombing he got when he responded to an invitation to attend last Thursday's mass brainwashing session sermon at the local Kingdom Hall.  Not a whole lot going on in this guy's life, is there?

3.  When this guy finds out that he's accomplished absolutely nothing by moving his money from one bank to another, he'll probably respond by feeling betrayed by the Big Bad Banking Industry and consoling himself with an $8 latte at Starbucks.  Paid for with a credit card, of course. 

That time of year again- more fun with Liberty Tax

 

Here we get the heartwarming, totally relatable story of a woman who was already the owner/operator of two franchise locations of some business doing something and who was so successful at her career that she decided to wander into a just-opened Liberty Tax office and apply for a job during the busy tax season.*

She goes on to tell us that she really learned a lot during her time at Liberty Tax- not so much about preparing taxes, but about the business of selling the public on the idea of getting someone else to prepare its taxes.  She doesn't tell us so, but it involves lots of big blue banners promising rapid refunds and deep discounts if you accept the most expensive "service" - never mind that nobody in their right mind with any kind of complicated tax situation would hire a company that opens offices in abandoned stores or any other empty space on a month-to-month basis, 99 percent of said offices vanishing after April 15 of each year.  We also don't see anyone dressed in a Statue of Liberty costume waving a WE PREPARE TAXES REAL CHEAP FREE COOKIES FOR THE KIDS sign out front.  Nope- just a dignified-looking woman pressing buttons on a keyboard and smiling at the sucker who came in thinking that they were going to get their taxes done quickly and correctly and maybe get a free cookie on the side.

Eventually, this woman opened her own Liberty Tax franchise, which concludes her awesome story of success with Liberty Tax, I guess.  It also concludes this post, but don't worry, I'm not done with Liberty Tax quite yet.  There's plenty of snark left to be mined beyond this woman's story.  

*seriously, how successful was this woman's business if getting into Liberty Tax was a step up?  Come clean, lady- you were a "franchisee" in HerbaLife, right?  Or Amway?  Or DoTerra?  Was it Mary Kay?  You can tell me.  I won't share it with anyone beyond this blog- and very, very few people read this blog. 

Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul is the "grown up" solution, according to SoFi....

 

"My relationship with my credit cards wasn't good...."  

Translation:  "I kept using my credit cards recklessly.  For some reason, this was the fault of a bank that offered me unsecured loans at my own discretion, and little pieces of plastic in my wallet."

"I got into debt in college...."

Translation:  "I bought pizza and beer, but because I also happened to be enrolled in a four-year post-High School institution at the time, I am going to mention 'college' so that your brain thinks I was using the money for books or some other investment in my future.  This is all about me painting myself as a victim, after all."

"...and because of the high interest, no matter how much I paid, it followed me everywhere."

Translation:  "It was so unfair that every month I kept sending the minimum, despite having a substantial office job and a nice house in the suburbs, but the darn principal never went down.  And no matter where I went, I owed that money, which of course it did but Shut Up you're supposed to be feeling sorry for me by now."  

"between the high interest and fees, I felt trapped!"

Translation:  "Despite my college education, I couldn't grasp the concept of paying down my credit cards to avoid interest, or making payments on time to avoid fees.  It's easier to just complain like they are 'unfair' or something.  Relatable, too- there are a LOT of deadbeats honest Americans out there just like me, after all."

"...so I broke up with my credit card debt, and consolidated it into a low-rate personal loan from SoFi."

And here's the punchline to this unfunny joke:  This asshat with a nice job and a big house in the suburbs was being held down by his freely accrued debts, which totaled the life-crushing amount of....$4017.24.  That debt didn't stop him from buying that house.  It didn't stop him from doing ANYTHING.  He just found it annoying.  So he shifted it to an online bank which offered him a lower interest rate.  Which is fine in itself- if he's been paying on this debt for two decades (he said it started in college, and he looks like he's at least in his late-thirties now, and if he's younger than that and owns that house I hope a meteor is on its way ahead of schedule) and he still owes on it, he probably should have refinanced a long time ago.  But come on, SoFi- if you want your commercials to make even the slightest amount of sense in the real world, either add a few digits to this guy's debt (and put him in an apartment, not a damn house- I thought that his debt was "following him around"- why didn't it follow him to that bank's loan officer when he bought that house?  If it was "following him around," it sure didn't prevent him from taking on much more, substantial debt) or make him someone living in a studio apartment with two other people whose life would actually be changed by lower interest payments on a lousy four grand.  Because this- this makes NO sense. 

I don't understand SoFi commercials at all....

 

"Little to no interest...." um yeah, that's been the case since like the 1940s.  Low interest rates for savings accounts are the price we pay for the security of our deposits.  Maybe you'd like to go back to pre Glass-Steagall when banks paid six percent interest- because they were as risky as any other business.  Personally, I'm kind of glad that I only see runs on banks in the annual showing of It's A Wonderful Life. 

And I'm sorry, but if you find yourself complaining about bank "fees" and how they "take and take," the problem really isn't the bank- it's your lousy spending habits.  The only "fees" I know of are for new checks (stop using checks.  Checks are dumb.  Checks are relics of the 20th century.  You are slowing down the line at the grocery store and everyone hates you.  Stop using checks) and overdraft fees (yeah, if you write a bad check or spend more on your debit card than you have in the bank, you are going to get dinged for that.  It's better than taking a hit on your credit rating, stupid.)  

All the bank does nowadays is provide you security and easy, 24/7 access to your money, plus the ability to move it around- also 24/7- whenever you want without leaving the comfort of your couch.  A fee because you take out more than you have?  How dare they. 

And if you really think that a bank that you can only talk to through an App or an Indian-based call center is an improvement over that awful awful brick-and-mortar building that was mean enough to charge you a fee when you failed to keep your checkbook balanced, well, you've got problems that switching to that bank won't solve.  Good luck with those.  

Remember the fat-free chips frenzy? More fun from the archives of old commercials that didn't age well

 

No, you aren't watching a commercial produced by the Re-Elect Ronald Reagan campaign of 1984, though if you only watch the first minute and a half or so you'd be forgiven for thinking you were.   Instead, this is an ad for one of the most misbegotten products to come out of the first decade of the post Cold War world- a soybean-based oil that could be used to produce fat-free potato chips like Olean and Lay's Wow.

Remember those?  Well, if you were alive and in the United States in 1998, you probably at least tried them once or twice.  They were a very popular go-to for people conned into believing that scientists had stopped wasting time trying to cure cancer (or AIDS) and had done something truly valuable with their time- found a way to allow us to stuff ourselves with cheap, salty, crispy snacks to our - well, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to say "heart's content" here, so I'll more accurately type "to our dopamine center's content."  

Most of us thought the flavor was just "bleh" and went right back to eating good old vegetable oil-crisped chips, as G-d Intended.  But some people were so desperate to avoid eating right and exercise and above all Moderation that they ignored the off-putting taste and continued to chow down on these crimes against nature.  Maybe they thought  diet of Olean chips and Snackwell's cookies would give them Kathy Ireland's body- and back then, pretty much all of us wanted Kathy Ireland's body for one reason or another.  

Then we realized that this Frankenstein's Monster Oil was wrecking havoc on our gut microbiome and our digestion or, more likely, way too many of just didn't like the taste, and these fat-free chips vanished from the market.  

A quarter of a century later, the obesity epidemic that was in it's infancy in the late 1990s has become American's No. 1 health problem, because while Snackwell's themselves didn't pan out (they didn't taste very good) the concept that created them- replace fat with sugar to con people into thinking it's more healthy- is alive and well and actually stronger than ever in the American marketplace.  I imagine it's only a matter of time before another "miracle" oil is invented* that tricks millions of gullible, desperate Westerners into slapping down the money they don't have for fresh fruits and veggies, healthy fats and a gym membership for that magic pill.

*there actually is a fat-free frying oil already available out there.  It even predates olestra.  It's called hot air.