Kirkland Signature will feed and clothe you

Today I'm wearing a pair of jeans I bought at Costco. They fit pretty well and they fine on me, but I can't help; but be a little skeptical about them. They're not made by Levi's or The Gap or anybody who only makes clothes. Instead, they're made by Kirkland Signature, a company that apparently will make any noun in bulk and then sell it to you.

Kirkland Signature doesn't advertise, and it's a good thing they don't. I don't know how you'd say one item is particularly good when you make a thousand different things that have nothing to do with that first one.

'Kirkland Signature Jeans: If you thought our frozen burritos were good, wait until you try on our pants!'

They could put a coupon in the back pocket that says, '$20 off any Kirkland Signature brand Jet Ski with purchase of Kirkland Signature rocking horse and Kirkland Signature egg timer.'

(work.)

Bud Light spends too much on advertising again

Yesterday I was watching the Super Bowl ads on Youtube and holy shit, Bud Light paid a lot of money to remind people that they can still buy shitty beer.

In at least six commercials, people treated Bud Light like it was liquid gold mixed with the cure for sadness. In one commercial a guy gets his friend to play paper rock scissors for the last Bud Light, but instead he throws a rock at his face and takes the shitty beer. Another guy got an auctioneer to ruin a guy's wedding so he could drink shitty beer sooner.

What I learned from these commercials is that apparently a lot of people are poor and can't just go to the store and buy their own cheap, shitty beer, and instead have to hurt their friends to get it for free.

Sometimes TV makes me sad.

(work, and frozen boogers.)

If a friend of mine hit a guy with a rock so he could drink some bad beer, I'd have to pull him aside.

"Hey buddy, are things going ok at work? You just hit that guy with a rock for a Bud Light. That's worth maybe, maybe two dollars. You still have a job, right?"
And he'd start holding back tears and say, "Bud Light makes the pain go away."

Come to think of it, though, I think every character in a Bud Light commercial must be unemployed, because that's the only way someone could love shitty beer so much. Think about that next time you're watching one of the seventy-two Bud Light commercials currently airing on TV right now.

Your child is a germ monster

This morning I saw a commercial that started off with a woman saying, 'You love your kids, but sometimes they can carry germs.' Then her son came home from school and suddenly his body was covered in multicolored germs. Then he touched a phone and the phone got germs, too. Then his little sister walked toward the infected phone and I yelled, 'No, Sis, don't do it!' at my TV.

Thankfully they showed a can of Lysol and said, 'But Lysol kills germs!' and then the mom sprayed Lysol on the phone and the germs went away. The commercial ended with something like, 'Buy Lysol because your kid is a fucking monster,' but I wasn't happy. The monster's still out there.

Why don't you spray your kid with the Lysol, lady? He's got germs on him and clearly he isn't bathing, so why not spray him down with your magic can of Lysol? Get it on his clothes, in his hair, and most importantly, in his eyes. That little shit's going to infect your whole house if you don't stop him, so blind him with Lysol and throw him outside, and whatever you do, don't let him back in.

He might have germs on him.

(work.)

Must-See TV, eh?

Tonight NBC said there was a Must-See episode of ER on tonight. I don't think that's a fair description of something. 'Must-See.' They're not even giving you an option, are they?

I can agree that sometimes heart medication is Must-Take and water is Must-Drink, but something being Must-See? I can't get behind that marketing campaign. I think we can get by without watching ER, at least until the doctors in that show start prescribing insulin.

I couldn't use that kind of language in other parts of my life. I couldn't walk up to my girlfriend and say, 'Hey, have you heard? NBC said my johnson is Must-Feel. Tonight at 10pm (9pm Central).'

(bed.)

Chewing tobacco: It's that good

Today I saw an ad for Grizzly Chewing Tobacco. It was just a picture of chewing tobacco with the words 'IT'S THAT GOOD,' under the Grizzly logo.

The problem is they aren't telling you what 'that' refers to. If they had a picture of a guy selling his house to buy some chewing tobacco, it's that good.

If there was another ad where a woman renounced her Mormon faith for Grizzly Bear Chewing Tobacco and then went to hell for its fresh taste, then yes, it's that good.

And finally:
A man rushes into a burning building, then seconds later emerges out a second story window clutching a newborn baby. He lands safely with a smooth tuck and roll action and the crowd of onlookers cheers for this anonymous hero.

Then he rips the baby's head off to reveal that its neck is filled with delicious Grizzly Bear Chewing Tobacco. A woman screams.

It's that good.

(turkey.)

Anybody else have ad ideas for the fine folks at Grizzly Chewing Tobacco?

(Bonus: Proof that this stupid tag line really exists)

Learn about the computer

The other day I saw a commercial that said, 'Learn about the computer.' Yes, 'the computer.' Like it's just one entity, floating overhead, watching you. And now some no-name school can teach you all about it! Go drive the car to our school and learn about the computer today!

I could tell this commercial was made by and for the computer illiterate. Certain phrases are a dead giveaway that you suck at technology.

Right now at work some dudes are repairing our walls. They'll walk by and see me checking my email on my lunch break and say something like, 'These people are computer wizzes.' That's something a mom says about the guy who installs Microsoft Office on her computer at work. 'Wow! Surely you are a wizard, or 'wiz' for short. How do you work this 'mouse' thing you keep talking about? And do I have to feed it?'

(Fixing the all-seeing computer in the sky.)

To be fair, I'm sure these people are much better at doing certain things than me. I don't know my car from a washing machine on wheels, and I churn butter like a n00b.

Super permanent markers, Eccentric Day

Sharpie makes the 'permanent' marker, and I think calling it that is bold. What's even bolder is the fact that they have a 'super permanent' marker. I don't know how you explain that.

'Our old marker lasted forever, but this one even moreso.'

Sharpie Super Permanent marker: 'No, really, we mean it this time.'

I'm in Kalamazoo today, drinking beers at Bell's Brewery in a monk costume. This will be happening all day, so there's a good chance I'll be drunk for the next 12 to 16 hours.

(the drunkening.)

Paying for cheat codes, insulting the consumer

Best Buy is selling a book called Codes & Cheats Summer 2006 Edition. In it, one can find the hottest tricks and codes to help you beat games that you are too crappy to beat yourself.

Now, I don't know if Best Buy knows, this but pretty much every cheat code ever created can be found on the internet. The idea of spending 7 dollars on free information is so preposterous, the book may as well be called I Suck at the Internet and at Beating Video Games Myself 2006. They would have used that name, but for some reason insulting the consumer doesn't sell products.

A prime example of this concept can be found in the failed cereal marketing campaign, 'Eat Wheaties, you dog fuckers!'

(work.)

Combined with the previous "You'll have an orgasm" campaign, the "insult the consumer" campaign gives us things like: "You make me sick, even if you're being sexually fulfilled by this awesome product" and "Cream your pants, asshole."

Note that the meaning of "Cream your pants, asshole" changes drastically when read as a headline.

Wild Out Wednesdays at Charley's

One of my biggest problems with Good Time Charley's is they seem to have no concept of what people want when they go out on the town.

One ad for their crappy upstairs dance club features a woman with an afro squatting and holding a large green squirt gun with the words 'WILD OUT WEDNESDAYS!' written across her. If I saw a woman with an afro and a squirt gun, I'd probably think she was on drugs, because she would look like an asshole.

'Hey, Charley's is now stocking its clubs with afro whores wacked out on all sorts of drugs! Just kidding, but LADIES GET IN FREE! Wooooo!'

That's the kind of message you put out when you put assholes in your advertisements. You want to attract me to your club? How about 'Free bathtub of beer for goofy white men! Henrys get unlimited oral sex!" Then we'd see, Charley's. Then we'd see.

(work.)

When Charley's isn't luring you in with hoes and Super Soakers, they also put up signs that say, "THE HOT SPOT JUST GOT HOTTER! FREE WIRELESS INTERNET!"

Wireless internet is so fucking hot.

I would have preferred they got something other than "FREE WIRELESS INTERNET!" Maybe "MORE ATTENTIVE WAITSTAFF!" or "CHAIRS!"

Love, a microwave, and three to five minutes

Marie Callender's fettucine alfredo takes me back to a time when my grandmother would take the freshest ingredients and tenderly make a delicious pasta dinner using only love, a microwave, and three to five minutes (depending on the microwave).

(Rock.)

What bothers me most about Marie Callender's Frozen "Meals" isn't that they're unhealthy. Oh no, frozen meals are notorious for causing heart attacks before they're fully digested. The packaging Marie Callender (personally) uses, however, is wildly inappropriate. Banquet's simple red packaging says "Here's food. Eat food." Hungry Man meals, which don't even try to be healthy, may as well be called "Fat Guy Dinners." Marie Callender, on the other hand, takes a different approach:

Marie Callender's home-cooked foods:
A grandmother made it. You love your grandmother,
DON'T YOU?

Don't lie to me about where my crappy food came from. If you make your food with machines in a factory, then don't talk about how the food's made. Don't come up with a charming story of an old lady who loves fresh ingredients. If you want to provide a cute "how your food was made" story on the box, just say "A robot made this." Or better yet, "A robot grandmother made this with her metal hands."

I'd buy frozen food that featured a robot grandmother, especially if the back of the box had a picture of her shooting laser beams out of her eyes while she fought a zombie Elvis in a post apocalyptic New York City.

Every meal she made with her robot hands

From a package of Marie Callender's 51g-of-fat fettucine alfredo (plus nuggets of truth):

Marie Callender was like a lot of grandmas (with morbidly obese grandkids). She put her love ('fat') and care ('sodium') into every meal she made (with her robot hands), using only the finest ingredients (off the assembly line) and her own special touches (a $3 price tag). Today, at Marie Callender's (windowless factory), each homestyle meal (to be covered in plastic and reheated in a microwave) is still made the same way (as all other food made in a factory). So, sit down (on the floor of your dorm room) . . . eat (alone) . . . enjoy (getting diarrhea)!

(bed.)

My hatred for Marie Callender's tricky advertising inspired me enough to sit in front of the computer and transcribe the writing on the back of a box of frozen pasta and then insert my own snarky comments. That's dedication. And sad. Mostly sad.

Magnified to uncomfortable proportions

I use vtext.com to send text messages to my girlfriend because punching letters into a phone makes me feel like an asshole.

Those familiar with vtext.com will know that in the lower right-hand part of the page there's an image of a woman having way too much fun at a text messaging website. Using the right click -> zoom trick with Flash, I was able to make the website look much creepier.


(as always, click for a larger view)

Her joy is MAGNIFIED to UNCOMFORTABLE PROPORTIONS.

(Turning in rent checks, Heidelberging it up.)

I think if you want people to think your product is going to make their lives better, stop showing them smiling and laughing while using it. Just show them having loud orgasms. An example:

A man pours a glass of orange juice. He drinks the orange juice. then spits it out and yelps, clutching the breakfast table. He falls to the ground, shaking as a large stain forms on his pajama pants.
A deep voice says, "Tropicana: You'll have an orgasm."

This works for other stuff, too.

A woman is stepping into a shoe when she falls on her side and starts screaming with pleasure.
"Shoes: Wear them, and you'll have orgasms."

One more, then I'm done.

A man looks up and says, "Hey, is that a red balloo- OH GOD I JUST CAME IN MY PANTS."
"Balloons: They'll give you an org-AAAGH I JUST THOUGHT OF ONE AND MESSED MYSELF."

That balloon commercial is based on a true story.

Jamster's ringtone zombie king

AIM's buddy list window, by default, has an obnoxious flash ad at the top. Sometimes the ads are for a new movie, but most of the time (at least for me) the buddy list ads are for Jamster ringtones.

Right now there's a Jamster ringtone ad in my buddy list window featuring Notorious B.I.G. Only the coloring is off, so he's red and grey, and the picture's small, so he's expressionless.

It's like a Biggie Smalls zombie has come back from the dead to sell me ringtones from my buddy list window. And to make matters worse, the ad is in Flash, so I can zoom in on his face. The result is chilling.

And he's wearing a crown, so I guess he's the ringtone zombie king. Great advertising, Jamster.

(bed.)

Rednecks, white girls, and identity theft

Have you seen those identity theft protection commercials? It's good to see that people are still trying to make money by scaring my mom.

Those commercials feature an everyday American giving a testimonial about some stuff they bought, only their voice is the opposite of what you'd expect. Classy old ladies? Redneck voices. Black man? Whitest white girl voice possible. The goal is for people to see these commercials and think, 'Oh my God, those rednecks and white girl stole an identity. Better buy things.'

Well, America, I have news for you:
Rednecks don't steal identities. Most don't even have computers. Don't fear them because of identity theft. Fear them because of Deliverance.

And I have helped so many white girls fix their goddamn computers that the odds of one of them hacking into your mainframe and virusing your identity (their words, not mine) are somewhere between zero and itself.

(Bed.)

You're safe, America. At least until a terrorist with bird flu gets you.

If you want to be afraid of someone on the internet, fear the geeky white guys and foreigners overseas that are actually capable of stealing your identity. Or, more importantly, fear the people tricking you into buying protection from people who know less about computers than you do.

Boner-inspired philanthropy

A while back a magazine on campus covered Hurricane Katrina. It said the usual 'Wow, this sucks' type of stuff. However, this jumped out at me and punched me in the face:

The person on the cover happened to be a really hot chick. The first thing you see on this magazine isn't the front headline or the price tag, but the sexy lady posing on the front. So you think 'hell, that's cool' and pick it up.

Then you look at the rest of the cover and you see the headline is something like, 'THIS GIRL HAS NOTHING LEFT' and you're like, 'aw, shit, I'm a bad person.'

Is that the angle this magazine was going for? 'We're covering a natural disaster. Let's find the sexiest survivor and put her on the cover. The best way to get people to read about national tragedy is through the human boner.'
'Start scouring the wreckage, photographers! We want women who are sad, but not so sad you don't want to fuck 'em!'

(Bed.)

I didn't have room to say this, but the next thing you think after reading the cover is, 'She can stay at my place. Nudge, nudge.'

And that's fine for you to joke about while on the other side of a magazine, but if you were to say that to her face, she'd probably want her homeless-and-less-sexy family to stay at your place, too. What began as a slight erection ended with you hosting Katrina survivors on your futon. Thanks, Magazine Whose Name I Forgot But I Swear Really Exists.

Trick women into banging lawn mannequins

You know how in that old Axe commercial the lady would spray the man-dummy with Axe body spray and then seconds later she pressed her body up to the dummy because the Axe made her horny? I can only assume that after the cameras stopped rolling, she had sex with that dummy.

So my plan is to put a dummy in my front lawn, then douse it in Axe. Soon women will start having sex with it, and I can throw a big net over them and drag them down the street, offering one to each of my single friends.

I'd do this because I'm a nice enough guy to trick women into banging lawn mannequins just so my single friends can have deodorant-inspired sexual intercourse with strangers.

Commercials are stupid. I'm going to a lab meeting.

(Showering gives you ridiculous thoughts.)

Saturday afternoon, a random woman gave me a free sample container of some snake peel-scented Axe body wash. I normally don't accept soaps from strangers, but I decided I'd accept it as long as I could finally have a body wash that would make me smell like everyone's favorite smell, which is that of a snake's skin that has peeled off. Who doesn't get wistful for their childhood summers at Grandpa's Snake Farm when they get a whiff of some snake peel? Certainly not me, because I not only know what snake peel smells like, but I love it, too.

How long has snake peelbeen an acceptable smell for a person? I just got used to Right Guard making my armpits smell like "sport", but now my body can smell like snake peel? That's ridiculous.

50% More Sparkles than Coke

I've recently become a masochist, so not only have I started a blog, but I've started buying soy milk.

The thing is, in the nutrition facts, Trans Fat is in italics, as if the milk itself is bragging about how there are 0 grams of it. However, Trans Fat is one of those things that nobody understands, like Ginkgo Biloba and Taurine. Sure, it's advertised, and we know if it's good or bad, but it's still just as good as saying 'Pepsi has 50% more SPARKLES than Coke.'

Whenever I want to think like most people, I imagine what my mom would do. And I'm sure Mom has no idea what Trans Fat is, but she knows it's bad. Ginkgo biloba is made of old wizard's magic, and taurine turns all your hideous rashes into delicious slices of pepperoni.

Speaking of pepperoni, it's time to eat things.

(food, mostly.)

I recently realized that most people have no idea what the hell a lot of food labels mean. For all I know, ginkgo biloba could be a common type of grass. For all I know some asshole's been putting his lawn clippings into vitamins and making a fortune by throwing "Now with GINKGO BILOBA" on all sorts of product packaging (plus, his lawn's all mowed).

And once again, urgency makes things awesome. Not only is a burning pub a way to create meaningful relationships with strangers, but by including the word "NOW" in advertising, people are reminded that there's no time like the present to buy stuff, and buy it FAST. "NOW WITH NEGATIVE SEVEN GRAMS OF TRANS FAT!"

It's amazing how much thinking I do despite the fact that this is just a place where I post needlessly long away messages.