McDonald's - Not Made Of Lips And Assholes

I don't know if this is happening in the states, but McDonald's is running a series of television commercials (and maybe radio commercials - I don't know, I only listen to the BBC or podcasts like a proper nerd), which could very easily have the tagline "McDonald's - Not as gross as you think". They go like this: Hey did you hear that rumor about how our fries/chicken nuggets/hamburgers are grown by a mad scientist in a lab/made out of slime and boogers/dehydrated genetically modified turd juice? None of that is true! Our food is made out of food, like, real food, we swear. We can prove it: here's a picture of a guy in a field holding up a potato. See? Eat at McDonald's! Tell your friends!

McDonald's, this is probably not your best advertising idea. First of all, no one who is over the age of twelve and/or a paranoid conspiracy theorist who just knows your entire existence is just a government plot actually thinks chicken nuggets are made out of throbbing lumps of faceless, organless meat piles, no matter how much their eight year old nephew insists that's what he saw on his school field trip to an industrial chicken farm. That kid is a pathological liar, just like the rest of them. Second of all, people in general are gross and would continue to eat your swill even if they believed in such demonstrable nonsense. The problems I would like you to address in your advertising (if you insist, because I do genuinely think you'd be better off continuing to pretend that eating at McDonald's is how most happy marriages start or that spontaneous parties frequently break out there for no discernible reason) are these: Why do your hamburgers taste like burnt plastic, and how do you justify serving children a box of food for lunch that contains enough calories to last them two days? Yes, I know they have parents, but their parents might be morons, or just tired from having to haul their fat kid around all day. Besides which, "they failed worse" is rarely a winning argument. Seriously though, the problem is less that people think the way your food is made might be gross, and more that the taste of your food actually is fucking gross. Also? You're going to set off the conspiracy theorists who maybe haven't heard those rumors because if you're spending that much money to convince people those things aren't true, then they obviously are true and WHAT ELSE ARE YOU HIDING?

Just, you know, think about it. And quit giving little kids diabetes.

There, I Fixed It: The 50 Shades Trailer

Look, my review of the Fifty Shades movie trailer was a bit lacking, I know that. It didn't have any of my usual vitriol or creative swearing and it did not, I think, express my feelings about the trailer or the existence of a movie at all as clearly as it should have. I just couldn't find the right words to illustrate my total non-excitement about this film.

But then I had an epiphany. While watching it for the dozenth time trying to think of something clever to say about it, I realized: I don't have to say anything! I can show you how I feel! By re-shooting the entire trailer (nearly) shot for shot. Directed by StereoNinja, my new improved trailer stars ME! as Christian Grey doing my best impression of of a wealthy, sullen asshat, and someone wholly more appropriate playing the role of the dull and vacuous Anastasia Steele than any actress they did or could have cast in the movie. If you look closely (and fast) you can even catch a glimpse of some Inner Goddess tokens from the party game some of us played together last year posing as pasties in the scenes where Christian is shirtless because I am a woman and have boobs.

If you haven't watched the original trailer yet, or haven't watched it in a few weeks and need a refresher, you're going to want to do that first. Or I guess you can two screen it and watch them both at the same time. However you want to do it, really -  I'm not omniscient. Either way, I hope you'll enjoy watching it as much as I, StereoNinja and the rest of the cast (presumably) enjoyed filming it for you.

So anyway, with no further preamble, here it is - the new Fifty Shades of Grey movie trailer, which I have fixed:

Commercials That I Hate - UK Edition

I've been here long enough now to start hating television commercials, and rather than continuing to throw things at StereoNinja's perfectly innocent tv set, I thought I'd come complain about them here.

Watch Dogs - I don't know if they are running the same series of promos in the U.S. as they are in the UK for this new PS4 game (that everyone I know who games thinks is total crap). It's a game set in Chicago, and while the commercial shows a graphic Chicago that is well done enough for me to recognize, the voice over is completely nonsensical. It starts out with the phrase "I hacked the city to make it my weapon". Well I'm here to tell you that, no sir, you did not. You are implying a level of organization to the running of Chicago that I assure you doesn't exist. This statement is accompanied by a scene in which some guy pushes a button on his magical city-controlling remote which stops a CTA train at somewhere that isn't a real stop so he can get on. I fell out of my seat laughing because a) you don't need a magical remote for this, CTA trains stop in the middle of the tracks for no apparent reason ALL THE FUCKING TIME, he could just stand at basically any point along the tracks and at some point during the day the train would inexplicably stop near him; and b) I assure you there is no wireless controlling system on the CTA that you could "hack" into to stop the trains. If there were, I wouldn't be able to link to this video from just a few months back of a CTA blue line train pulling into the station at O'Hare airport at full fucking speed before jumping the tracks and hurtling up the escalator like it was about to miss its fucking flight. The CTA is still working on replacing old track, some of which was laid roughly 100 years ago. An upgrade to a centrally controlled hackable train operating system is something I expect to happen some time after we get flying cars. The voice over goes on to say "My enemies may run Chicago, but I control it." I'm sorry, who are your enemies, the Latin Kings? Tony Rezko? I'm not sure how hacking trains and street lights is supposed to help you defeat political corruption or a street gang that boasts Chicago police officers among their membership. But yeah, go ahead and hack that centrally controlled traffic light system that doesn't exist.

Canesten is a UK brand of creams, pills and pessaries for the treatment of yeast infections, or as it is quaintly called here, thrush. They sell these products individually but also in combination packs, much in the same way as American brands like Monistat. Unlike Monistat, however, their new commercials promoting their combi products are illogical and vaguely disturbing. You wouldn't wash your hair without using conditioner, they reason, so why would you use just one product to treat your crotch infection instead of two? I don't know, Canesten, two medicines are probably better than one, but not for the same reason that it's a good idea to condition your hair after you've washed it. There is a huge difference between using a pill and a cream to make your nether regions stop being on fucking fire as soon as possible, and wanting to be able to get a comb through your hair. These things are not even remotely related, or at least hopefully they aren't because if you're trying to use conditioner to get a yeast infection out of your hair I'm worried that you might have bigger problems.

Currys PC World - I don't know if you know this, but the World Cup is starting in about a week. I know it because pretty much anything that can be sold in the UK is being cross-promoted with it, which leads to me thinking I've bought the wrong Coke Zero every time I go to the shop because the yellow and green World Cup logo makes it look like Coke with lime. Currys PC World, purveyor of fine electronic products, has jumped on the bandwagon as well, reasoning that now would be the perfect time to buy that giant tv that dwarfs the rest of your living room and makes your friends think you're a pretentious asshole showoff because HOLY SHIT THE FOOTBALL IS ON, as if the Premiere League isn't on the air constantly. But whatever, that's a reasonable premise for a commercial. The problem is the tack they've decided to take with their sales pitch, which boasts not one but TWO of my most hated advertising tropes: all women obviously hate sports, and mens are stooopid amirite? Because why be offensive to just one gender when you can negatively stereotype nearly the entire population*? These are actually a series of basically identical commercials in which generic huband tries to trick generic wife into getting a new ginormous tv, ostensibly so she can watch some show that's totally for the womenfolk, like a gardening show or Downton Abbey, when in reality, super man type person wants it so he can watch the World Cup, but, you know, BIGGER. Unfortunately, since MANS ARE DUMM, he always screws up his pitch and half of the word "football" slips out by accident, which leaves wife type person with a shitty look on her face because ohmygod my husband is so dumb and also how dare he want to spend time watching a sport that 90% of the country is also watching nearly all of the time? Seriously, everyone knows that marriage is all about tricking your spouse into letting you buy shit they don't want and then them resenting you for it to an unreasonably disproportionate degree. OR, maybe you could have gone with something less tired, insulting and frankly obvious. Something like man comes home and finds wife planted in front of giant tv she didn't tell him she was buying, screaming at the football match like a lunatic and he shakes his head bemusedly and hands her a beer. Maybe something like that could sell some tvs? I don't know, I'm not omnicient, but it might be worth a try instead of the same boring and unrealistic gender stereotypes that everyone advertising to a household market has already (poorly) used. Seriously, fuck this commercial. In the ass. With a football.


*Those not subscribing to the presumed gender binary excluded, but only because they can't figure out an angle for selling you their crap.

Just Where The Hell I Have Been

I turned in both of my papers yesterday. It was much easier for me this time than it was the last time I had two papers due on the same day, less because I had done it before than because I cared about them differently than last time. I say "differently" because last term I had the weird experience of having one class that I thought was brilliant - I had strong opinions which were typically diametrically opposed to everyone else in the class and a massive crush on my teacher, and the other class that I spent every single moment of wishing "class" was something you could stab in the face. So when it was paper time, I was riled up and excited to write a paper on the UK's extreme pornography ban and why it is a load of complete and utter bullshit, and the other paper...well, I just gave no fuck whatsoever about that paper, so I just filled it with buzzwords like "discourse" and "paradigm" and my person favorite "lived experience" and turned it in. I had done the exact same thing on the annotated bibliography I'd had to write for the class earlier in the term and received a merit for it so I figured, you know, fuck it.

I now need to begin work on my dissertation, a task that would be much easier if I had ANY IDEA AT ALL what to write it on. My first instinct was, of course, Fifty Shades seeing as I am apparently one of the world's leading experts on how bad it sucks. But "Fifty Shades of Grey: No Seriously, What the Fuck?" is not an appropriate or even reasonably narrow topic and also the main piece of advice on picking a dissertation topic seems to be "pick something you like because you're going to eat, sleep and breathe that fucking subject for the next six months" and I think we've pretty well established that Fifty Shades of Grey is decidedly NOT something I like. I like being semi-internet famous for creative swearing and pushed to the top of reddit lists, but that is not likely to factor into dissertation research so much. So anyway, about three weeks from now I need to turn in a dissertation proposal roughly the length of a module essay on something to do with "gender" or "sexuality" and I have precisely ZERO thoughts on what that topic should be. SO I;ve got that going for me.

Now, since it's been so long, let me switch topics on you entirely and go back to complaining about my adopted country. Which I LOVE by the way - I know I complain about how homesick I am and how everything is too "not-America", but I do genuinely love it here (the sheep across the river had some lambs and I can hear them from my bedroom and the lambs run around all cute and small and then randomly jump up in the air for NO REASON and it is fantastic; in related nature news, the two gay ducks (we think they are gay because they are both boys and are never, ever more than about three feet from one another so they are obviously a couple) that hang out in our marina have taken to coming right up to the kitchen door begging from bread and one of them will eat it right out of your hand). Having said that, I would now like to complain bitterly about Easter and daytime television.

As Easter approached, I asked StereoNinja why the stores had put out all of the Easter basket stuff yet and was greeted with a blank stare followed by "what is an Easter basket?" Because Easter baskets are NOT A THING. You know what you get here? A chocolate egg. One. THAT IS IT. And unlike a chocolate bunny, that egg is hollow, my friends. It probably has less total chocolate volume than a regular candy bar. In Chicago I made StereoNinja buy real Easter baskets with real Easter basket stuff for his children because I found the situation so unacceptable. But wait, there's more! Even worse than that atrocity is the fact the coloring Easter eggs is ALSO NOT A THING. I just...I don't even...WHY DON'T YOU WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO HAVE ANY FUN, ENGLAND? So I bought the Paas color cups when we were in Chicago so as to show StereoNinja & Spawn (TM) what they were missing. And then immediately ran into another problem: all the eggs are brown. Finding a white chicken egg in this country is harder than finding a burrito. I eventually figured out that Whole Foods in Kensington was selling them, but not until AFTER they had already sold out. StereoNinja went and got some white duck eggs from somewhere, which I discovered don't really work as they are quite translucent and not nearly as permeable. Plus then you have a house full of duck eggs which I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with. So apart from the fantastic ham I made, Easter was a kind of a disaster.

Now then: being a full time graduate student and not having a job means that I spend a lot of time at home during the day with the television on in the background for some noise so I don't go crazy and I have to say, there is NOTHING ON TELEVISION DURING THE DAY. Seriously, nothing worth watching unless you count Top Gear reruns I've seen a thousand times. Mainly all there seems to be are episodes of Charmed and an Australian soap opera call Neighbours. Everyone else at home in the day must be bored too, because what I really wanted to complain about is the sheer volume of commercials for a. online casinos and b. predatory loan companies. It is pretty much ALL they advertise during the day, one right after another. I can't help feeling like these things are related, and that they are preying on the weak as I would assume a significant percentage of the daytime television audience is made up of people who are out of work. Frankly, I think that's pretty shitty and I'm not sure why that's being allowed but watching BDSM torture porn on the internet in your own home is is not.

Coming up: Things I did in Chicago, as soon as I can remember what those things are.

50 Shades Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

All right, all right, you guys. I'll get back to the reviews now. It had actually been so long since I read the three chapters I'm about to do that I had to go back and skim them all again to remember what my notes were about. I realized in doing so that just being extremely busy working on grad school applications and related moving issues wasn't the only problem I was having in sitting down to write this. I also just really don't even care. I don't think anything I write today is going to be funny because I don't care about the characters in the book. There's so much unending drama that it's ceased to be shocking in any way. She's made such a mockery of the BDSM lifestyle that I don't care to correct the errors anymore. Want to try out some kink? Then read these books and do the exact fucking opposite of every single sex scene she has ever written. That's my advice. Now, let's get this over with.

When we last saw our douchebags, Elliot had just proposed to Kate at the end of an entire chapter that was only written to foreshadow that scene. An ENTIRE CHAPTER of the book was just devoted to the antics of two characters we barely know and could not give one ounce of fuck about. And because the author thinks that suspense always involves dropping some half-assed bombshell at the end of a chapter (rather than, you know, writing a compelling fucking scene people actually want to read), that same shit continues at the beginning of THIS chapter as well. Here is the overly dramatic first paragraph of Chapter 14:

The attention of the entire restaurant is trained on Kate and Elliot, waiting with bated breath as one. The anticipation is unbearable. Silence stretches like a taut rubber band. The atmosphere is oppressive, apprehensive, and yet hopeful. (emphasis mine)

 Jesus Christ where to even start? There is more stupid happening in this paragraph than there are actual words in it. Really, James? The ENTIRE restaurant has stopped breathing because it is of paramount importance to every single person in the room whether this one total stranger will agree to marry this other total stranger? I find that unlikely. And even if they are that fucking interested, it's not because they are all so "hopeful", it's because at any given public proposal, at least a quarter of the people watching are hoping she'll shoot the guy down in front of everyone, because that is a much, MUCH more entertaining story. Also, could you please explain to me in some logical fashion how this situation can be both oppressive and hopeful at the same time? Because those things don't go together.

Anyshit, Kate says yes obviously and then there's drinking of the finest champagne, and then they all go clubbing at the most exclusive club in all of Aspen. I fail to see why she continues to tell us these things, I think by now we can all just assume everything is the best, most exclusive, most expensive thing imaginable unless we are told otherwise. The coat check guy looks at Ana while taking her coat and Christian gets jealous and then the hostess looks at Christian while escorting them to a table and Ana gets jealous. It is obvious that everyone wants to fuck up their marriage. The fact that both these people are paid to specifically make you feel welcome and want to stay there and spend your money can't possibly explain this sinister welcoming behavior. Christian orders water and tells Ana to drink it, which she immediately argues about because DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO. Mind you, so far today Ana has had two glasses of wine and a margarita at lunch, three glasses of wine and two glasses of champagne at dinner, and she is about to have a third glass of champagne right now. Also keep in mind they are in Aspen which means they are at altitude, and one of the things that happens at altitude is you get dehydrated much faster. She should have been drinking water all day to counteract that anyway - the alcohol is not going to do her any favors in that department. Ana has an unbelievably reliable habit of mistaking concern for being controlling and being controlling for genuine concern.

So then Ana goes off to dance, and we get the only scene in this whole section that managed to incite any rage in me. Ana is dancing, with her eyes closed for some fucking reason, when she feels a pair of hands on her hips, which she assumes is Christian coming to dance with her. Except that it's not. It's some complete fucking stranger. I need to pause a second to tell you that this exact sort of thing is a huge pet peeve of mine. If some drunk jackoff comes up to talk to me in a bar, I will stand there and listen to him make a fool of himself all night long. But the second that guy tries to touch me uninvited he is going to push a button with me and I am going to lose control and make a scene until someone comes to remove him from the establishment. This is, in fact, just about the only way to get me to shout at a complete stranger in public. Touching someone who hasn't expressed an interest in being touched is NEVER ok. So when this happens in the book and Ana immediately turns around and slaps him across the face, I stupidly think to myself "Yeah! Finally something that makes sense. Go Ana!" Once again, I have failed to grasp who I'm dealing with, because James IMMEDIATELY ruins this by having Ana hold up her hand to show him her rings and shouting at him "I'm married, you asshole!" Because for some reason, the fact that she is married is the ONLY THING SHE SEES WRONG with this guy's behavior. I am not kidding you. Christian immediately comes to her rescue and punches the guy, which I am fine with, but Ana immediately starts to second guess both of them. Maybe a total stranger violating her personal space in a way that makes her uncomfortable isn't that big of a deal. Maybe she shouldn't have hit him. But she knows why she did it, and rest assured it's not because she has a right to dance in a club without getting groped by total strangers against her will. It's because she knew it would upset Christian, and the thought of someone being able to upset her husband made her really angry. It's not about her - her own safety and control over her body doesn't matter at all. It's only wrong because Christian might wind up wif a bad widdle feewing. FUCK YOU. FUCK. YOU. YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO ALL WOMEN EVERYWHERE. I AM ASHAMED TO SHARE THE SAME GENITALS AS YOU. FUCK YOU SO HARD YOUR VAGINA EXPLODES LIKE A GRENADE. YOU DON'T DESERVE TO HAVE ONE.

Ugh. So the rest of the chapter is, everyone goes home, and Ana is drunk, and Christian takes off her make up for her which for Ana is the most astonishing thing that has ever happened in the history of mankind, and then they go to bed without fucking because the Dead Kennedys. Ana wakes up in the morning at the start of Chapter 15 and the first thing she notices is that allegedly her palm is still red from when she slapped that guy exactly one time EIGHT FUCKING HOURS AGO. She is going to continue to complain about how much her palm hurts through the whole chapter. Unless she's made of glass this is complete and utter bullshit. After that there are seven pages of entirely forgettable sex. Literally. I have forgotten every detail about it and only remembered that it happened at all when I went back and skimmed the chapter to find out what my notes meant. Everyone gets ready to go home, which is boring, and then they do go home which is boring, and then there is a series of unbelievably pointless emails that are only there to show the passage of time and which I will read aloud to you in my next video because they are truly, bafflingly, without any sort of plot advancement or even context and are not interesting AT ALL and will somebody, PLEASE, take this woman's writing instruments away from her FOR THE LOVE OF GOD? Apart from another fake bombshell moment, that is seriously every single thing that happens in Chapter 15. The sheer number of trees that were felled in order to print this chapter as many times as it's been printed to date is a tragedy in and of itself. Let us all have a moment of silence for those poor trees.







Thank you. So at the end of the chapter we find out that Leila has appeared at Ana's office building asking to see her. I'm including that information with the stuff from Chapter 16 because that's where it fucking belongs - it is COMPLETELY unrelated to anything that happened in the rest of Chapter 15. Chapter 16 consists entirely of Ana's conversation with Leila, and then Ana's subsequent conversation with Christian. It is somehow miraculously EVEN MORE DULL than the series of "maybe we should have spaghetti for dinner" level emails that dominated the last chapter.

I have just paused in writing this for the last 20 minutes and alternated between rubbing my face in frustration and staring despondently at my notes because it's just so stupid I don't even want to think about it, let alone summarize it.

Ok so here's what happens. Leila shows up and she's got another ex-sub of Christian's with her called Susi, who had better fucking appear again later because so far she has been completely irrelevant, other than for Ana to point out that she and Susi look alike, which we already know from having established that ALL Christian's subs looked like her TWO AND A HALF FUCKING BOOKS AGO. Leila has come to her because she wants to see Christian, but he is ignoring all her attempts. She claims this is because she wants to thank him for helping her and paying for her art school. I have absolutely no idea why she couldn't just write that in a fucking letter. Leila also tells Ana that she was in love with Christian which we also already know because half of the last book was devoted to exactly that. Then Christian shows up, as we all knew he would, including Leila, which was her entire scheme to get to see him in the first place. Christian fires Ana's bodyguard, threatens to cut off all of Leila's school funding and lets her leave with Susi. During all of that Ana's internal monologue is entirely about how can Christian be so mean to this poor girl and oh he shouldn't have fired the bodyguard, that was so unfair! By the way, in the whole rest of the book she hates that particular bodyguard and she is always jealous of everyone who has ever slept with her husband, so none of that makes any sense, and the only note I write in that whole section is "I can't believe how insane this is." Then Ana and Christian argue about the whole thing and Ana wants him to admit that he cares about Leila and Christian claims that he doesn't have a heart and OH MY GOD EVERY SINGLE WORD OF THIS IS SHIT WE ALREADY READ ABOUT ENTIRE BOOKS AGO. In keeping with that theme, we also have some more demonizing of BDSM - the part about how all his subs look like his mother because kinky sex can't just be about kinky sex, it has to be a pathological sickness about wanting to punish his own mother, and the other part about how Elena was a monster and a pedophile who almost ruined his life and now that he thinks about it, maybe he didn't enjoy any of that kinky sex and it left him severely damaged - I can't even get angry about this anymore, this woman's understanding of that culture is as well developed as Wile E. Coyote's understanding of basic physics. Then they argue about going home. Then they do go home. Then they have sex. Then they send some more worthless emails. Then E.L. James does that thing that she has now done in seven out of the last sixteen chapters, which is to end the chapter on a bombshell that is entirely unrelated to the rest of the chapter in a futile attempt to add drama and intrigue to her thoroughly plotless story. Ana's dad has been in a car accident. DUN DUN DUN/DRAMATIC VIOLINS/COMMERCIAL BREAK FULL OF VIAGRA  AND WEIGHT LOSS SUPPLEMENT ADS.

I am so bored right now. So bored.

UPDATE: I completely forgot to mention it before, but I am planning to live tweet my reading of a future chapter so you can see my reactions in real time. I'll let everyone know when I'll be doing it, so if you have the book you can follow along as I torture myself.

iNo.

I finally broke down and got an iPhone yesterday. This is the part where you all gasp incredulously and then yell "YOU ARE ONLY JUST NOW GETTING A SMART PHONE? THE HELL?" I know. I know.

The truth is I didn't really want a smart phone for a number of reasons. For one thing, I am already addicted to my iPad. ADDICTED YOU GUYS. And I have tremendous fear of becoming that person who never ever socializes at all even when out in public because OHMYGODTHEINTERNETSAREEVERYWHERE. Or the person that ruins every fucking bar room debate by immediately looking up the answer and ending the entire conversation. Those guys are assholes and I don't want to be one of those assholes. An even bigger reason is that iPhones tend to get stolen right out of people's hands. It happened to Mrs. Sizemore. A woman here in Chicago was even killed when an iPhone thief pushed her down the stairs at the Belmont Brown line station whilst escaping with someone else's iProperty. I didn't worry about using my phone on the train until today. No one was going to try to steal my flip phone. Now? Now I worry. There is also the much more stupid but nonetheless real reason where I am my father's daughter and oddly resistant to change at times. A phone doesn't need to be filled with apps and do 900 magical things, it needs to make and receive phone calls. That is what "phone" means. I may even have told a number of different people that I would get a smart phone when they pried the perfectly fine regular ass phone out my cold dead hand.

Still, the smart phone thing is long past reaching critical mass and when the bartender got one a couple of months ago I figured it was probably time for me to join the ranks of the Eternally Connected (for reference, two nights ago I patiently explained to him how to attach a photo in an email. For him to have a new thing before I have it is downright ludicrous). I was still reluctant. For help in overcoming this, I turned of course to the great and wise Fish, an early adopter of every technology ever and pretty much the only person whose advice I actually heed (sometimes), and asked him to convince me. "Do you like your iPad? Wish it were more portable? You have the ability to upgrade and you aren't? Why are you fucking this up?" was his typically withering response, so here I am one week later with an iPhone 4s.

I turned it on for the first time and was immediately not a fan. My mild OCD tendencies went into overdrive because the entire first screen was filled with icons. Like 20 icons, which is way too much for me to look at and I was overwhelmed and turned it right back off to catch my breath and regroup. And yes I know I can move and/or group them and have started doing so, but it requires a lot of work to figure out which applications I'm going to use in descending order of frequency and then group them accordingly and when I had a regular phone that only did phone things I didn't have to deal with this. But fine, that problem will be resolved eventually. Then last night while I was laying in bed awake at 3:30 am because my cat is an asshole, it dawned on me that I hadn't checked out Siri yet. (Oh by the way, that commercial with the idiot kid in the shitty band that wants Siri to call him rock god is fucking awful and makes me feel all damn-kids-get-off-my-lawn. Please, please let them stop airing that soon.) I decided to see what she was up to so I asked her "Siri, are you there?" and she replied with, "Wherever you go, that is where I will be." Which is a seriously creepy thing to say and now I am afraid of my iPhone because Siri is FUCKING STALKING ME, YO. I hope this gets better soon before it tarnishes Fish's thus far sterling record of advice giving.

Day 20 And I Illustrate A Few Commercials That Don't Suck

"Are there any commercials that you actually like?" asked BrownsFan the other day when I was complaining about the one where the guy gets a good deal on a messaging plan and new phones and his cuntrag of a wife responds by tell him she should have married someone else because apparently advertisers think that we think it's fucking hilarious when a perfectly nice guy is married to a verbally abusive cuntrag (it isn't. Stop doing this).

As a matter of fact, there are several, particularly the overwhelming majority of promos for anything on ESPN. The one I'm liking right now is the College Game Day Man Satchel promo, but honestly, except for the ones where they desperately try to convince me that NASCAR is interesting, they rarely mess things up (speaking of screw ups, did anyone else see Lee Corson say "Aw, fuck it" on live television yesterday? Because it. Was. Awesome.).

I also love, and have always loved, The Most Interesting Man in the World. There's not a bad one in the bunch. In fact, even when he says nothing at all, it is still some of the best advertising on television.

See? It can be done!

Day Seven And I've Started Complaining About Commercials Again

As I started writing this post, I had to look up what company this was actually a commercial for - I dislike it so much I forgot to make note of who was even doing the advertising, thus negating the point of spending money to advertise at all.

AT&T is introducing its new 4G LTE service and I honestly want to throw my television out the window every time this commercial comes on. It consists of two guys sitting in a parking lot, ostensibly tailgating, while barely looking up from their smart phones other than to tell tell their friends how far behind the curve they are by not being glued to phones themselves. They are the embodiment of all those things that I hate - the people who ruin every single damn conversation by whipping out their iPhone to get the information that will give them the last word, the hipsters that constantly tell you how much better they are than you because they've heard of something first, the fucking morons who are so afraid of being offline that they don't bother to interact with real people anymore at all. "That's so 12 seconds ago" is an actual line in this commercial, and it is repeated twice more with varying times of how late everyone else is on some trivial piece of information, none of which are over a minute. I want to take both of their phones and throw them on the ground, smash them to pieces with a bat and use the shards to stab these guys in the throat. SHUT THE FUCK UP. YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE AND I AM NEVER INVITING YOU TO TAILGATE AGAIN.

Even More Commericals I Hate

Today is not a good day. Yesterday wasn't so hot either. The good news? I watched a lot of television because of it, and in so doing, became aware of a whole new crop of commercials that I hate. Please enjoy my misplaced rage!

It's popcorn chicken time again at KFC! I love this. It is, in fact, the only time I ever voluntarily eat at KFC. This time around, though, their promotional material for this glorious event is suspect. The premise is not so bad - popcorn chicken is really small pieces of actual chicken, whereas nuggets as found in other fast food establishments is some sort of ground up and reconstituted mish-mash of bits. Therefore popcorn chicken is superior to chicken nuggets. Fine, I'm on board with that. What I'm not down with is their expression of this, i.e. "What part of the chicken is 'nugget'?" I don't know, asshole, what part of the chicken is "popcorn"? Popcorn ain't no body part I ever heard of. I agree that your chicken gets the blue ribbon in this contest of mediocrity, but you can't justify that by claiming the competition's chicken isn't a body part and then naming yours something that is ALSO not a body part. That's an easy mistake to fix - just leave your snarky comment out of the commercial and carry on explaining it without resorting to poorly executed sarcasm that makes no fucking sense. Now pass me the honey mustard and fuck off.

As long as we're doing fast food, let's go over the newest offering from Subway, shall we? The promotion they have going on right now is that all of their foot long subs are $5 throughout the month of October. Neat! Cheap shitty food! Loads of it! What shall we call this too-much-bread-barely-any-meat extravaganza? Oooo I know! How about Anytober? How about no, dickface? That is the worst portmanteau I have ever seen. You're replacing "Oc" with "Any"? That's not even the right number of syllables. Did you think real hard on this one, or did you just use the first stupid idea that popped into your head because it fits in with your already nauseating theme song? It's my favorite month of the year but from a television watching perspective I can't wait for it to be over so I don't have to see this commercial ever again. Anytober. Eat shit, Subway, you already serve it to your customers.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled, less rage inducing advertisements.

I've Got Your Dime Right Here

This is not a post about my cat. Having said that, my evil cat is a tortoiseshell, which if you know anything about torties goes a long way toward explaining why she is so evil. When she sits back on her haunches, her particular brindle pattern makes it look like she's wearing a pair of light brown trousers. This is what I was looking at during dinner this evening that triggered me to start singing to her "I love furry pants, so come on and sit back and lick your paws" to the tune of "I Love Rock and Roll". And that in turn caused me to realize why that song has always bothered me.

I turned to the bartender, who is somewhat older than I am, and asked "Hey, was there a time you can remember when songs played on the jukebox cost a dime? Because I only ever remember them being a quarter. So, like, did she say 'dime' in that song because they used to cost a dime or because 'quarter' had too many syllables?"

The bartender is pretty used to my bizarre conversational tangents by now and has learned it's better to just play along. "They've always been a quarter in my lifetime," he replied kindly while thinking in his head Oh Jesus, not again.


"That's what I thought. We need someone older that can be like 'Hey, back in the 50's a song on the jukebox cost a nickel!' or whatever, but I mean, if it's a right-number-of-syllables issue then 'nickel' doesn't work either. But that still wouldn't make sense because that song is from the 80's and you just said in the 80's songs were a quarter. She wouldn't remember songs costing a dime. So what the hell? That's false advertising! It costs TWO AND A HALF TIMES as much to love rock and roll as what she's telling people!"

The bartender chewed his steak thoughtfully for a moment to give me time to stew and then sagely changed the subject back to the cat in an effort to stop my brain from derailing entirely. It worked for about 10 minutes and then we had this exchange: "She was doing that thing today where she just keeps coming in the room to wake me up and then when she knows I'm awake she walks out of the room again."

"She's so shitty when she's mad."

"And then she went and got one of her bottle caps to bring it in my room and bat it around so I couldn't go back to sleep."

"See, the way it should work is, songs should cost different amounts based on their quality. Like, if you want to play a disco song on the jukebox that should cost a dollar and REAL songs should be a quarter. Or a dime! There should be a premium applied for subjecting the people around you to shitty music is my point."

There was a long pause while I waited for him to agree with my obviously brilliant plan, but all he said was "Wow, you're still on that. Oh well, I tried."

Chain Restaurants Simplified

After seeing a commercial for the Tilted Kilt that used the Dropkick Murphy's "Shipping Up To Boston" yesterday

The bartender (walking past me and grumbling): More stupid suburban bullshit.

Me: I went to the Tilted Kilt with Fish once. It's just a plaid Hooters.

More Hatiness

Still sick and really hopped up on whatever it is I'm taking. I've been acting like I'm on speed all day long, and have just overwhelmed the accountant with a conversation in the kitchen that included diagonal air vents, aliens, ethnic heritage, things that are green, the fact that all the Bourne movies taken together are one extremely long chase scene, the relative value of Los Angeles and a half a dozen other things that I've already forgotten. Which is not the point. In reality I probably would have been somewhat better off not coming to work. However, it is bar night tonight AND it is St. Pat's AND the NCAA tourney started this morning AND I'm still feeling hostile, so I want to go to Tai's tonight in my "Fuck You" etc. t-shirt and argue with people. But in my head there's an "If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?" kind of thing going on where I feel like if I think I'm too sick to go to work, I must then also be too sick to go to the bar. So I had to go to work. Which also isn't the point. The entire paragraph is to introduce the fact that I still feel like I did yesterday and offer that up as an explanation of why I am ranting about another commercial that I hate. Which I told you would probably happen. OK? Good.

There was one commercial I forgot to mention yesterday which I also hate right now, which is the latest offering from 5 Hour Energy. Apparently, they are trying to gain market share now by going after the morning wake up market in addition to the stay-up-all-night crowd and the man-that-was-a-long-day crowd by attacking coffee. Specifically, by pointing out how enormously difficult and taxing it is to brew it and have to add cream and sugar to it, or what a travesty it is to have to wait in line to buy it if you don't want to make it yourself. It is the classic ploy of creating a problem that doesn't actually exist and then providing a solution that nobody needs. Listen to me: making coffee is not that hard. It isn't. It just isn't. You don't want to wait in line at this Starbucks? NO PROBLEM. There's bound to be five other ones across the street. You make yours at home but you don't want to have to wait for it to brew? NO PROBLEM. Most coffee makers these days have timers set on them so you can program when you want it to start brewing and then when you get up there will be a fresh pot of coffee waiting for you as if by magic. It's so much work to stir in a little cream? Actually, I can't really help you here. If you can't handle the thought of having to put cream in your coffee there is no hope for you anyway. Fuck off and drink it black then. NO ONE IS CHALLENGED BY COFFEE*. And if you are sitting in your kitchen staring at the empty coffee pot thinking "You mean I have to turn on a machine and wait for it to brew and pour it into a cup and put things in it and lift the cup to my lips and take a sip and swallow this coffee all by myself? Why must I be made to suffer this gross injustice day in and day out?" then maybe you better re-evaluate your life and whether or not it should be allowed to continue because you are the most useless human being on the entire planet and an asshole on top of it. No, 5 hour energy needs to stick with what it's good at, which is sending college students to an early grave due to massive amounts of alternating stimulants and depressants.

*Generally. Strictly speaking, this is not always true. When I went to visit the comic the first time he asked me to make him a cup of coffee and I have to admit I was stymied by it at first. This is because in England they all drink instant coffee, not brewed coffee, and I was unfamiliar. "You just put a spoonful of crystals into the water and stir it," he explained. It seemed like it was almost too easy and I was worried that it might be a trap. But I tried it and it worked and nothing bad happened at all, if you don't count the comic drinking a really shitty cup of coffee. Which I don't because he is English and doesn't know any better.

Commercials I Hate

Right, listen. I'm running a fever and I hate having a fever with the hatiest of hates. So fair warning: this post will be nit-picky, overly critical and full of vitriol. This will also be your only warning, so heed it. I am hostile.

With brilliant commercials like the Old Spice Guy, The Most Interesting Man in the World, all the Jameson ones and of course the long running and fabulous SportsCenter promos, it is obvious that there is a lot of talent out there in the advertising world. Why is it then, that there are so many flat out fucking shitty commercials still being made? There's just no excuse for that.

For as good as the SportsCenter series has been for years, I saw an ESPN promo today that was completely off the mark. It was for NASCAR. Now, I get that you have to really talk up NASCAR if you want people to watch it because NASCAR is dumb. But I think it is taking things a bit far to tell people that watching a NASCAR race is exciting because "there's uncertainty around every turn". What? No there isn't. Have you even seen NASCAR? It's a bunch of greasy hilljacks (plus one bow-legged overly dramatic woman) driving in circles. There's nothing that is uncertain here. I assure you, the only thing that is going to happen around every turn is that they're all going to make a left. Well whoopidy-do, assholes. NASCAR still sucks. Fuck off.

Also, what is with the Xfinity commercials (for that matter, what is with the name "Xfinity"? That's not a word. It's not even a portmanteau. You suck.)? That bundle of wires crawling around is fucking creepy. Congratulations, you've somehow managed to make electrical components look gross. Right now Xfinity is promoting their baseball package. They went for the American heritage angle, which is ok, but they go and ruin it by telling you that baseball is "America's first space program". Sorry, I believe the organization you're looking for was called the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Hitting a baseball is not the same thing as going to space. No one has ever actually hit a baseball into space. If someone had we'd know about it because he'd have to be a fucking mutant. Baseball has nothing to do with space. Shut up.

Then there are the commercials for Windows Cloud. These are not all bad. The one in the airport makes sense - the flight is delayed, they're stuck there, might as well watch some television. I'll just overlook the fact that the show they chose to watch was called Celebrity Rehab because I'm magnanimous like that. It's pretty neat when you think about it. Who would have thought back in the 80's, when televisions were less of an appliance and more of a piece of furniture, and computers were ginormous and had no hard drives, that someday we'd be watching television on a computer small enough to carry around with you and that you wouldn't have to plug it into anything? No, the one I'm on about is the one with the mom who is editing the family photo. Again, no problem with that per se - I'm all for retouching your photos, no one wants to see Pam's stretch marks in Playboy. The problem I have is with the two lines she has at the end. I'll take each in turn:

1. "There! A photo I can share without ridicule." Are you serious? You just dressed your entire family in the exact same god-awful blue flannel shirt, you most certainly are going to get ridiculed. Here, I'll do it right now: you look like a bunch of fucking tools dressed like that. Are you high? You know your kids are going to get the shit beaten out of them at school if anyone ever sees this don't you? Actually, maybe that was the plan all along because the next line is
2. "Cloud gives me the family that nature never could." Wow. Thanks, June Cleaver. Way to make your husband and kids feel like failures. Seriously, how bad could they be? They did all dress up in that hideous fucking shirt that may yet get them killed in an effort to make you happy, I think that's pretty nice of them. I sure as hell wouldn't do it. Your impossible standards are going to leave you a lonely bitter woman after your kids cut you out of their lives (after years of therapy from how you fucked them up) and your husband leaves you for his secretary because at least she doesn't criticize every. single. thing. he. does. You seem like a bitch. I don't want to use any products that you use, Cloud is tainted now.

Like I said, fever. Stuck on the couch. I'm sure there will be more so stay turned.

I Hate You, Mentos

Remember the Mentos freshmaker commercials from the 90's? The ones that were so infectious the Foo Fighters parodied them in their video back when bands other than OK Go made videos? They were excellent. I would go so far as to say they were fresh and full of life even. I've always had a soft spot for Mentos because of their clever advertising. Until.

Have you guys seen it yet? Have you? Have you seen the new commercial where a fucking spider BEATS THE SHIT out of some dude who tries to squash him? Seriously, it's like they climbed into my brain, filmed my very worst nightmare and then deliberately ambushed me in my waking moments with it while I'm minding my own business watching TV. There are close ups. Close up on the spider crawling across the room. Close up on the battered spider reaching up and grabbing the guy by the finger and slamming him repeatedly into a wall with the super human strength I knew they'd been hiding all along. Malice! Vengeance! Purpose! Everything that fucking terrifies me about these demon spawn, on my television, and presented to me at completely unpredictable intervals. Which is the final insult: the premise of the commercial is that it's always better to know what's coming. Yes, Mentos, it is. It's always better to know that I can turn on my television and not be besieged by horrors. But no, now I can't trust my television anymore because I don't know when this commercial is going to come on.

FUCK YOU MENTOS. FUCK. YOU.

Next You'll be Telling Me Sandy Cheeks is a Crack Smoking Pole Dancer.

I like to think that I am not an alarmist, particularly where it comes to kids. I think it must suck for them to not be able to go roller skating without a helmet, elbow and knee pads, I'm not worried that they're all trying to kill themselves by swallowing Duplo blocks and I don't think the world is going to end if they accidentally hear someone say "damn" on tv.

But this?

This is just wrong on so many levels. First of all, The King in and of himself is creepy as all fuck. He is the bizarre love child of Guy Fawkes and a child rapist - he gives ME nightmares and I am (ostensibly) a grown woman. Then there's the dancing hos....are you serious? Stuffing a shoebox down their pants is not fooling anyone, Burger King. We all know you are selling sex to little kids. Congratulations, you have somehow managed to sexualize a beloved, mentally challenged, burger-flipping Porifera. And you, Sir Mix-a-lot. I suppose you really did need the exposure - I actually thought you were dead. It's comforting to know that 17 years after your one hit wonder, you continue to have absolutely no standards*. "Booty is booty"? Yeah right. Crap is crap, but you don't see me running around turning kids meals into disturbing fetish porn, do you?


*It was NOT comforting to look that up and realize that song came out 17 years ago. Thanks for that too, douchebags.

Viva Vibrator

You've all seen the Viagra commercials I assume? Bunch of middle-aged dudes sitting around with their guitars, jamming in someone's garage, singing a parody of "Viva Las Vegas"? In the newer one, they've doubled in number and moved into a recording studio, ostensibly to lay down tracks for "Viva Viagra". In all of them they are smiling smiles of great joyness. I ask you, who is the advertising genius who thought this up?

REAL MEN DON'T ACT LIKE THIS. And I don't mean that as in "No macho guy's guy would behave in such a manner", I mean it as in "Human males regardless of their relative masculinity or effeminateness don't sit around singing to each other about erectile dysfunction". It's just not something you discuss with an entire roomful of people. Nor is it something you write songs about. It is especially not something you record songs about. Regardless of the quality of instrumentation, no such song will ever be aired on Casey's Top 40, I promise.

And another thing, I would not sleep with any of those people. It's not because they need Viagra and it's not because of their age relative to mine. It is because sitting around merrily singing about Viagra makes them look like a bunch of goofball idiots, and goofball idiots are not attractive (think Tom Greene. See?). It's also likely to end any such budding musical career through cause and effect:

Sing asinine song about Viagra --->Look ridiculous--->Become completely unattractive--->No one will sleep with you--->No need for Viagra--->Nothing to sing about

Just a little feedback from someone in the secondary target group for this product.

Supermac and Ass

I was doing some emergency grocery shopping and I came across a new product: Kraft Supermac and Cheese. In Fairly Odd Parents and Spiderman shapes.

Supermac and Cheese is being billed by Kraft as a healthier alternative to their regular Mac and Cheese. It's got more calcium, more whole grains, and more vitamins and minerals. The box was colorful and promised me that kids love it, and since I'm maybe not so good with the healthy eating thing, I decided to buy a box and check it out for myself.

I decided to make it the other night. I was a little afraid that the pasta would be that whole grain brown color and taste like healthy, which is a flavor that I hate. While the water was boiling I opened the box and shook out a Timmy and a wand (shut up, I love that cartoon). They looked pretty normal so I ate one and found that it tasted just like regular pasta! I was happy.

I finished making my meal (because now that my mac and cheese has more vitamins and minerals, it now counts as a complete meal) and sat down on the couch with Kristen to watch Gilmore Girls. I put the first bite of cheesy goodness in my mouth.

Then my face scrunched up just like in those old "bitter beer face" commercials.

"Ass," I said out loud. "This tastes like ass."

Kristen stared at me blankly, partly because she likes the taste of her ass just fine judging by how much she licks it, and partly because she's a cat and blank stares are what they do.

Let me ask you all a question: what the hell ever happened to truth in advertising? Because Kraft has named their new product "Supermac and Cheese" and this implies to me that the "mac" part of the equasion is what has been made super. This is a big fat ass-tasting lie. They made the cheese super, and by super I mean awful. "Supermac and Cheese" is straight up bullshit. If they were telling the truth they'd have called it "Mac and Supercheese" which would have given me some warning that they'd fucked with my cheese so I would have been more prepared for the sweaty feet mixed with unwashed balls flavor they've created. Even Kristen hated it. I let her lick my spoon since clearly I wouldn't be needing it. She took two licks and walked away from me, and as I said before, this is an animal who thinks her ass is effing gourmet. There is no way kids are going to like this stuff.

Supermac my cheesy ass.