Summer Hiatus, Part III

One more extended vacation from this blog before heading back to school and the routine- this time I'll be spending a week at Hampton Beach NH, where we've been renting a house every late July/early August since the late-90s.  Very little by way of internet connectivity, so no chance of updating the blog until Saturday, August 5.

Please enjoy the archives while I spend a week taking long walks, swimming, playing paddle ball and having coffee and protein bars for breakfast and ice cream for dinner....and playing ancient video games at the arcade.  See you next Saturday!

Remember when Dell sold their laptops as educational tools?

Well, that's over.  Now Dell encourages kids to use their laptops to secretly play stupid video games instead of paying attention in class.

Oh, but maybe the hidden message here is that Peter Parker is already a science savant bored out of his mind in a way-too-easy High School science class, so he can totally ignore the lame teacher and play mind-numbing, time-sucking games and still ace every test?

And I'm not even going to get into the fact that the kid is supposed to be Peter Parker and he's playing a video game starring- his alter ego?  Seriously, what the hell?  Oh wait, I said I wasn't going to get into that.

Allstate: Being Passive-Aggressive/ Antisocial is funny now!

Pretty much every YouTube commentator/glue-sniffer adores this ad.  They all find it LOL OMIGD SO FREAKING FUNNY, thanking Allstate for "finally depicting a smart man in a commercial for a change," and begging the company for more commercials just like this EPIC BTW WHO IS THE MOM SHE IS SO HOT ad.

Personally?  I wonder why the hell this guy is ok with the job of carting around his idiot zombie family, or why no adult in any commercial featuring cell phones has any control at all over when they are used and when they are off.  (Great modeling there, btw, Mom.)  I wonder what would be so horrible about this guy saying "turn your phones off when you're in the car and talk to eachother like human beings.  Pretend we're a family or something."  But apparently that simply isn't done anymore.

Instead, we get an ad which would only be funny if the husband was saying something like "you idiots have no idea that I've cleaned out the bank account and am going to fake my own death so I can be with my mistress starting Friday night.  And maybe you won't even care until the phone bill comes and you realize how addicted you are to electronic stimulus.  I'd almost like to see that.  But not enough to stick around."

Now that would be a commercial worth gushing over.  This?  Not so much.

Explain this Southwest Commercial to me

In all of the other episodes in Southwest's apparently neverending "Wanna Get Away?" ad campaign (which I think rivals only Flo from Progressive in wearing out their welcome) we kind of get that someone has done something really stupid and would really, really like to be able to melt into the ground and vanish from sight rather than deal with the consequences of that really stupid thing.

But in this ad, the guy who shows up and identifies Fenwick has unwittingly saved the life of every person in his defeated group except one- Fenwick.  They should all be thrilled that they managed to be incredibly loyal and brave yet because of this one guy they will get to tell their grandchildren how incredibly loyal and brave they were.  The dope looking for his shield has saved an entire army from annihilation- only one guy, Fenwick, will be sacrificed.  Which is what Fenwick wanted anyway- shouldn't he be the very first to thank this guy?  I mean, what are we supposed to think- that if the guy with the shield hadn't shown up, they all would have been spared, and now they are all going to be executed?  Because I got the opposite message.

(After all, if after the battle between the slave army and the Romans in Spartacus someone had unwittingly identified Kirk Douglas as the guy Lawrence Olivier was looking for, Spartacus would have been satisfied, Crassus would have been satisfied, and the slave army would have been sad but spared.  Instead they all get crucified.  That's a happier ending?)

So what am I missing here?

Oh Bite Me, Mercedes Benz

So the people in this boring but affluent suburb are doing the usual boring but affluent things- playing catch, writing on the driveway with chalk, etc.- just minding their own business and enjoying life, when....

...they are interrupted by a parade of roaring ImpulseBuy LookAtMe StatusMobiles, which completely distract each and every one of them from the quiet little moments they were enjoying and compel them to stare with drooling mouths at the cars which for some reason are coming down their street at a speed at least 15-10 MPH over the posted speed limit (oh and this is apparently the only suburb in the United States without any speed bumps, anywhere, but never mind....)

I supposed that when these idiots have moved on, the kids and adults who live in this suburb will completely forget what they were doing and will continue to be consumed with Consumer Lust which will not be satisfied until a red Mercedes Benz is in the driveway.  I just hope that once that itch is scratched they are allowed to go back to doing those innocent but very unprofitable things they were enjoying before they were interrupted by Madison Avenue.  Down $60 K or so, it's back to playing catch and writing on the sidewalk, right?

Please?

Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans: Just a sign of the times, I guess...

Maybe it's because I was born after 1980, I don't know, but I'll agonize for ten minutes over which brand of freaking laundry detergent to buy and when I used to shop for cars I'd visit the dealership at LEAST twice before finally committing.  My travel agent knows that I'll be sending her at least half a dozen emails requesting information on as many different countries before I decide which, if any, I'm going to be visiting next summer- and then I'll start the long, ardous process of nailing down the right week I intend to go.

But apparently it's perfectly normal nowadays for young people to see a house they like, whip out their phones, and commit to a 30-year mortgage in about fifteen seconds flat.  Monthly payments? Insurance?  WTF-ever, I guess.  Checking out different banks to see who is offering the best deal?  We don't do that anymore, grampa.  We've got Smartphones now- which means we can make life-defining decisions by scrolling our finger across a screen.  We've got thirty years to think about it, starting later.  That house is available, we want it, what else is there to discuss?

A few years ago I snarked on a commercial which featured someone using a Smartphone to check out pets available at the local shelter, and picking one out based on how it looked on her screen.  I feel stupid for making fun of that person now.  The people in this ad are spending far less time researching mortgages and agreeing to spend $400,000 plus interest between now and mid-century than that pet-seeker did in finding a small mammal to take care of for a decade or so.  I thought "One-Click" adoption would come before instant mortgages.  Shows what I know.

Let us give thanks to the power grid....

This ad reminds me of those Educational Videos put out by Encyclopedia Brittanica or Centron back in the 1950s which were supposed to remind kids that Freedom isn't FreeTM and that all the wonderful things that make life in the lily-white suburbs worth living- cars, parks, schools for white people, and prefab housing for white people- not to mention cheap fruits and vegetables for white people harvested by brown people- come to us courtesy of American Capitalism, which is God-Given but must be defended with prayers, hard work, and the Military Industrial Complex.

Sure, when you flip that switch, you just "take for granted" that because you paid your electric bill, the lights will come on.  But being a spoiled rotten We Americans Have No Idea How Much Blood, Sweat and Tears Went Into Providing This Service culture, we need two minutes of "this is why you should shut up about the negatives attached to oil, natural gas and nuclear power because hey do you want power or not?"

Turns out that for me to have the power to run my laptop so I can post this blog, thousands upon thousands of people had to sacrifice millions of hours to build thousands of miles of pipelines and wiring and dozens of nuclear power plants, I had no idea and I feel so immensely selfish and will never again complain when there's a spill or meltdown and I'm sure as hell not going to ask where the waste goes EVER, because after all it's my fault it even exists because I turned on my laptop and I TAKE IT FOR GRANTED that power will be there.

While I'm at it, I sure as HELL am not going to ever grouse about my electric bill again, when you consider the army of people who toiled for decades to create the grid which even made the Miracle of Electrical Power possible, I should be thankful it's not a thousand times higher, and I should be AMAZED that despite the obvious superiority of the American Energy System (direct from Canada, but shut up) virtual saints are (unbelievably) working to make it EVEN BETTER OMIGOD WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS I'M NOT WORTHY!

Personally, I'd be proud to have a nuclear waste dump in my backyard.  Or fire coming out of my faucet.  I'd think I was doing at least SOMETHING to contribute to this Miracle of Endless Practically Free Energy All The Time and not just being a selfish ungrateful maggot like those hippies with their Commie solar panels and wind farms (I bet they are all atheists, too.)  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to flip my lights on and off while singing "God Bless America."  Oh, and thanks to you too, Canada.  I guess.