Chrome-Plated Awful

Or "the Future of Relationships, brought to you by Electronics."

Gee, I wonder what went wrong with their relationship?  It wasn't that they didn't have fun together- hell, they are going to amusement parks and ROME for chrissakes.  So we can cross that out.

Was it the stalking?  This guy seems to know where his girlfriend (excuse me, "travel buddy"- gag-) was at every moment of every date (and maybe when she wasn't on a date with him....hmm....) I can see that getting old, fast.  Like, right away.  I can even see the "hey I was just worried about you" bit not quite smoothing things over.

Was it the Being An Annoying, Hovering Dickwad?  This guy isn't satisfied poking his girl awake for no obvious reason- he has to catch himself doing it, and her reaction, on video which I'm going to just go ahead and assume he posted on YouTube fifteen seconds later.  I can see this being a sore point in any relationship- "hey, honey? Why didn't you just let me sleep?  Or if you needed to wake me up, why did you need to video it?  Did you think this was endearing?  Hint: It wasn't."

No, my guess is that it was the whole Total Lack of Communication thing.  The "conversation" these people have is made up entirely of texts, links and videos.  No talking.  None.  A few years ago, I would have criticized people for attempting to make up over the phone.  Now I see how truly naive I was back then- discussions that once required face to face communication moved to being perfectly appropriate over the phone, and now don't require any emotional risk at all.  Just text, cut and paste, link and stream your way to an understanding of What Went Wrong and What You'll Do To Fix It.

Not that she's any better- am I missing something, or does she actually consult a website to find pros and cons to taking him back?  Meh, nothing surprises me anymore.  Depresses me, yes.  Surprises me, no.

Call me back when you can use it to lift comics off the funny pages

You know, over the past twenty years or so I've gotten very used to these commercials for Pillsbury Non-Food-in-a-Can products.  I don't even blink when I see people at kitchen tables smiling appreciatively at mom when she sets down a basket of this awful junk as if she actually put in the time to make it from scratch- no, not even when we see two alleged adults argue over who gets the last greasy, fat-infused chemical--err, crescent roll- on the table.

It doesn't bug me one bit to watch people who seem to be reasonably prosperous demonstrating absolutely zero taste or common sense as they happily shovel this cheap poison down their cake holes.  Heck, these are probably the same people who just love it when mom dishes up the Kraft mac'n cheese and Hamburger Helper and Shake'n bake and Manwiches and canned ravioli.  Like I said, zero taste and less common sense.

But please, enough with these commercials showing me people playing with this particular non-food product called "Grands."  It's not a toy, is it? If the answer is "no," please, please stop it with the "look how fun it is to tear it apart" and wave it around before sticking it in your mouth" crap.

Or maybe I've been wrong all these years, and it IS a toy?  It would certainly do less harm if it was marketed as a bakeable form of Play-Doh or Silly Putty.  Just put a disclaimer on the can- "Do Not Ingest."

Spying on birds- who the hell do we think we are?

I can't be the only person who watched this commercial and just kept thinking over and over again "this is just so very wrong...."

For the convenience of douchenozzle humans, now we can trick birds into living their entire freaking lives for our entertainment?  And is this in any way good for the birds- don't they kind of need darkness on a regular schedule?  I don't own fish, but I know from talking to the very strange people who seem to like them that aquariums are supposed to include objects that allow the little things to hide from the prying eyes of their captors from time to time.  I've been told this is true of other animals, too- zookeepers don't force animals to spend every hour the place is open on display, and provide caves, holes etc. for the poor things to take a break from the gawking gaze of idiot The World Was Fashioned For Us homo sapiens.

Maybe birds are different but, geeesh....

It's bad enough that we often play Mad Scientist with nature, breeding dogs with hip problems because we like them to look Just So and after all, they exist for our pleasure and only our pleasure anyway, right?  But it's worse when we expect wild animals to eat, breathe, mate and die under the magnifying glass of our overbearing cluelessness and monstrous sense of entitlement.  To paraphrase Frank Zappa, "I'm not a bird, but there sure are times when I wish I could say I wasn't a human."

I don't see any "Misunderstanding" here, Apple

(Author's Note: If I totally misunderstood this little nugget of self-congratulatory rubbish from Apple, don't feel the need to point that out to me.  I like my interpretation as is....)

"My whole family thinks I'm a morose, whiny little techno-addled loner.  I mean, I guess I can't blame them- I'm constantly avoiding human interaction so I can spend time with my electronic buddy, and I make it very clear that I'd much rather watch something I just downloaded to my phone than to actually talk to any of them.  Whenever I am forced to attend a family function, I walk around with my chin in my chest and a 'I'm a sullen, misunderstood artist type' look on my face, and I don't try to hide the fact that I'm totally addicted to that glowing thing that might as well be surgically attached to my hand.  I have no sense of courtesy or respect or even gratitude because indulging in those emotions means I would have to stop being an isolated dickwad for a few minutes.  Hell, I'm not even going to wash my hair now and then, because that's just not who I am.

But I'll show them- over the past week, while they were thinking I was just doing my usual 'fuck off and leave me alone carbon-based life forms, you are the assholes who need therapy, not me' bit, I was actually making a video that the whole family could share. That ought to shut them up for a while, and heck maybe it will even get me an upgrade on this lame-ass phone they got me on my birthday, six months ago.

And now that this whole sharing thing is over, maybe they'll leave me alone  so I can back to posting pointless crap for my 369 friends on Facebook (367 of whom I've never met in person.)  First thing I'm going to do is make a video about how painful it was to devote so damn much time to my idiot family.  But we artists- we must suffer for our art, mustn't we?"

This makes the Talking Bass look like a wise home decor purchase

I spent more than a minute watching this and all the time, I thought for sure I was going to see an "ONLY KIDDING" disclaimer followed by a "tired of buying stupid junk that seemed like a good idea at 2 AM but now just clutters up your basement because there's no way you would actually give it to someone or admit that you even own one?" tagline.

But it never happened.  This is a real, purchasable item that you can buy for $10 plus shipping and handling (and, of course, you can get TWO for the price of ONE just pay extra shipping and handling) and it will be sent right to your door where you'll open it, look at it, figure out how the batteries go in it, make sure it works, and then look at it some more and wonder why on Earth you thought you would actually want this just because a group of really really bad actors on television were so delighted with it for a minute and a half during a commercial.

Oh wait, maybe it's because parrots are "America's most popular bird."  Yeah, but little plastic parrots aren't.  Maybe it's because actual parrots take a lot of work and expense?  Well, ok- but I don't want the hassle of a real animal living in my house either; that doesn't mean I want a plastic fake animal reacting to my movements by whistling at me instead.  Just because I don't want the mess and expense of a real parrot doesn't mean I want to be mocked by every friend who pops into my house and then leaves wondering if I've become a senile lunatic with absolutely no taste at all.

And it gets worse.  Some people would actually buy a CAGE for this thing?  Um, what the heck is the point of that?  Maybe it's like the parrot in the coal mine thing- if you visit grandma and she's lining the cage her Perfect Polly "lives" in, it's time to get grandma into an assisted living situation.

(BTW,  I don't normally look at the comments under the YouTube videos I embed for this blog, but some of the snark for this commercial is just priceless.  Here are my favorites:

"I'm ordering a PERFECT KITTY to eat it."

"Grandma still hasn't figured out Polly isn't really alive."

"You bought a fake bird a cage."

And best of all- "Meanwhile, on the Forever Alone Shopping Network...."

And what IS IT with the Lone Ranger music?  Who the heck thought THAT fit?)

Netflix: It's not just for helping you become part of your couch anymore

The only way this awful pile of dumb ends in a way which is at all satisfying to the viewer is for the guy here to get up and just move out on his disgustingly passive-aggressive girlfriend (who, by the way, apparently spent an enormous amount of time finding just the right clips to express what she feels but is unwilling to say.)

Of course, this doesn't happen- instead he goes along with this Worse Than The Silent Treatment Because at Least With the Silent Treatment You Can Just Think About That Not-Insane Woman You Used to Date- and even joins in with her sick not-communicative way of communicating.

She isn't even all that good-looking.  Why put up with this crap?

Oh and BTW, wasn't this already done two freaking years ago, with a married woman actually changing her Facebook status to "single" because over a fight and then forgiving her big dope of a husband (who, again, should just dump her pathetic butt) thirty seconds later when he scrolls to Just the Right Movie on their playlist?  So we are just recycling really awful ideas here?

This really puts those Godfather Marathons on Thanksgiving in perspective....

Because when it's time to gather 'round with the family to enjoy the warmth of the holiday season, what could be more fitting than 8-plus hours of child neglect, child endangerment, and people being burned, stabbed, impaled, concussed, blinded, and humiliated in a thousand other different ways....

I think I'd rather watch Clark Griswold nail his thumb to the roof (before falling off of it,)  get knocked unconscious by the attic door and almost kill his family with rock-stupid driving than spend five minutes with Look How Much Fun It Is To Almost Die Over and Over Again.  Hell, I'd rather watch an afternoon of Stream Clean commercials than even one of the Home Alone films.