This SPAM Commercial is another canary in the coal mine....

 

In case you didn't know, sales of SPAM rise whenever the economy is doing poorly.   They are economic indicators like the spread of Dollar Stores and Pawn Shops.  And when you see actual commercials for SPAM you know that Hormel has its finger on the pulse of the American psyche; we are in trouble, and we know we are in trouble.  Time to stock up on processed pig meat product that can sit on the shelf for years as we fight off roving bands of laid-off tech workers or zombies, or laid-off zombie tech workers.

In the meantime, "served with a side of friends" sounds uber-creepy to me.  Did the guys who came up with the ad campaign for Nutrific write this?

Earnin lets us know: We are in big, big trouble

 

After watching this ad, I feel kind of guilty for ragging on Klarna and AfterPay.  I mean, those are terrible "services" that just encourage people to overspend and pretend that they have more money than they actually have.  But Apps like Earnin aren't terrible.  They are downright scary.

I mean, come on.  If you find yourself getting excited about the opportunity to "get paid" (take out a payday loan, get a cash advance, however you want to call it) every day, your economic situation is so precarious that I really hope that's a comfy, roomy car you have because it's probably where you're going to be living in the near future.  Does Walmart still allow overnight parking?

I'm not trying to be mean here, but Oh My Dog are in trouble if you are in constant need of your paycheck days before it's due to hit your bank account.  I don't know if Earnin is better or worse than using a credit card as a bridge to that next payday, and I wonder if it- like Klarna and AfterPay- has as its target audience people who don't HAVE credit cards.  I don't even know how to find out.  I just know that this is really sad.  Unless of course the reason why you find yourself running short of funds is because you're addicted to Uber Eats and Starbucks in which case you can go to the devil in your own way and I have no pity on you.  

The Woman in this Safelite Auto Glass Commercial...

 

The way she reacts to a crack in her windshield makes me worry about how she might deal with a real crisis.  What would she do if her transmission broke down?  Or, beyond car problems which will always pop up, how about an illness in her family?  Being laid off from her job?  A partner saying goodbye and filing for separation or divorce?  Does she go postal and start shooting up the neighborhood?  Does she throw trash cans through plate glass windows?  Does she start a Tiktok account to share her trauma with the universe?

Simply put, I think it's pretty clear that this woman is not ready to Adult quite yet.  I don't want to be in the car behind her when her Check Engine light goes on if she gets this unhinged over a cracked windshield.  Heck, I don't want to be in the same neighborhood when she sees that the Oil Life is down to 20 percent or that the tire pressure is slightly below optimal.  This woman makes crystal look like Tungsten.  I'm legitimately worried about her.  

Call it the Chevy Equinox VS (Virtue-Signaler,) because really- where's the upside for these things?

 

"With a new Chevy Equinox EV, you can wake up every morning to a full charge."

And with a car with an internal combustion engine, you can wake up every morning with a full tank of gas as long as you got it filled the night before.  And you didn't have to have a charging station installed in your driveway (how much does THAT cost?) 

"With a new Chevy Equinox EV, you can get X amount of miles per charge."

And with a car with an internal combustion engine, you can get X amount of miles per tank.  And there's no searching for a gas station- they are still everywhere, and they'll continue to be everywhere.  And it will take literally seconds to get your car filled with petrol at any of those gas stations.  You won't need to consult Maps or Wayz or Whatever for the closest compatible charging station.  

"With a new Chevy Equinox EV, you can take....um....take your kids places."

Do I even have to bother?  You can do the exact same thing with a gas-powered automobile without any of the concern over having a charging station, finding a charging station, glitches that seem to pop up more and more often with EVs, etc. etc. ETC.

"The new Chevy Equinox.  It's an EV not built by a company owned by a Fascist Lunatic."

Ok, you got me there.

Burger King's version of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous is weird

 

 

"Eating like a King" at BK is like "shopping like a billionaire" at TEMU.  As if members of a royal family are going to be chowing down on greasy, nutrition-deficient, high-fat, high-sugar, overpriced crap at the American Sludge Factory not called "McDonald's."  But if you think that Jamie Foxx gets hyped over FanDuel, Shaq loves shopping at TEMU but appreciates the opportunity to stretch out his payments using Klarna, and Vivica Fox and Danica Patrick are super-pumped over the money they saved at CarShield, I guess you'll believe that King Charles is celebrating his successful cancer treatments with a $5 meal deal he picked up with his BK App and a quick run to the local drive-thru.  My eyes are rolling out of my head. 

Shaq picks up some more blood money, this time with a Buy Now, Pay Later "service"

 

Why the hell is Shaquille O'Neal pitching a Buy Now Pay Later service?  Did his contract with Gold Bond Medicated Lotion end?  Has The General Insurance stopped calling?  Is he really this addicted to quick money available to famous people willing to pitch ANYTHING?  Does he have too much "integrity" to whore for CarShield or Fake Medicare "add on" insurance?

All that being said- there are a lot of "Buy Now Pay Later is Ruining Finances" and "AfterPay, Klarna and other BNPL plans will destroy your life" stories out there.  As a proper curmudgeon, I have just one reply to that:  Claiming that Buy Now, Pay Later destroyed your finances is like saying that the bowl of candy in the breakroom destroyed your diet.   Nobody makes you click that option, you ridiculous, financially illiterate idiots.  

Remember when Mike Tyson wasn't a meme?

 

Heck, if you're a boomer, you probably even remember when "meme" wasn't a meme. 

But being a big professional boxing fan for more than forty years now (I actually got see a boxing card live about 25 years ago, that was a very cool experience) this boomer has no problem remembering when Mike Tyson was one of those athletes whose fame transcended the sport he participated in.  When he was every bit as recognizable as Manning, Mahomes, and Ohtani are today.  When you think about the current state of boxing- with circus acts like Jake Paul taking up as much or even more media space as any of the actual champions (I bet more people can recognize Paul, who has yet to fight an actual boxer who isn't a joke or elderly,* than can recognize Alexander Usyk, the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world,) it's pretty remarkable that there was a time when the face of the heavyweight champion was almost universally known and when films about a heavyweight champion regularly dominated the box office.  How times have changed.

And how the mighty have fallen.  In the mid-1980s, Mike Tyson was making fun, lighthearted commercials for Pepsi.  In the mid-2020s, he's pitching something called "Dr. Squatch" in commercials that can only be made weirder if you watch them without sound (which I did, on big screens at my gym.  I had no idea what I was looking at, except that Mike Tyson was acting like he's acted at least since Lennox Lewis made him look like a bald punching bag back at the dawn of this century- a clown, or a cartoon character, or both. 

*Paul's last joke opponent?  Mike Tyson.  Of course.