Crazy

Watching baseball on Fox and a NCAA BCS title game ad came on, finishing with a shot of two players looking at the National Championship trophy. The two teams represented? USC and - Missouri.

Of course, that's not looking like a great choice this week (although I guess the Tigers could be right back in position if they somehow pull out a win this weekend) but as a Missouri alum, it's pretty odd to see anybody put the Tigers in line for a Championship.

cavemen

The Geico cavemen ads have clearly outlasted their humor usefulness, but that rarely stops advertising executives.

The new tennis ad simply baffles me, though. As you're sure to have seen unless you're one of those who manage to live without the pleasures of television, the caveman is playing a match against Billy Jean King. As he taunts her, she points out he's not winning and hasn't even gotten a serve in, to which he responds "you might want to look at the scoreboard." Both do, which shows that, in fact, he hasn't scored a point.

So here's my problem with all this - what's the point of the caveman appearing to not know the rules of the game? The whole premise of the Geico campaign is fact the tagline "so easy, even a caveman can do it" plays into a wrong-headed stereotype in this alternate world where cavemen simply happen to be a hirsute minority constantly struggling with the perception they have not evolved past the primitive pre-humans who lived in caves.

So either this ad is saying cavemen really are so stupid they don't know what's going on, in which case the point of the previous commercials sort of gets lost, or maybe they're indicating that the whole match is rigged, right down to the scoreboard operators, which doesn't seem very sporting, really.

spam, spam, spam, spam

Sometimes I love actually reading through the sales pitches landing in my inbox.

Today's favorite line: "Become the Tasmanian lovemaking Devil!"

If it'd actually turn me Tasmanian and get me an Australian passport, I'd consider it.

huh?

This is about a month late, but I figured it was time to archive the simply confusing full-page ad in a free weekly I grabbed a while back as I entered the Metro.

This is the ad, exactly as it ran. If you can make any sense out of it, you're probably in a far worse mental state than I am.

The guy behind the ad got some local blog space on DCist. Sounds like the protest went off exactly as well as his ad did.

a merchant referendum

I should have posted this months ago and seemed like a genius, but instead I'm behind the curve. I was reminded today, however, of a political barometer. Based on an informal accounting of the T-shirts offered by street vendors and gift shops, Obama has held a decided advantage over Hillary since well before the New Year. Today in the window of a gift shop in Union Station, Obama had several T-shirts displayed prominently, McCain had a couple next to his and Hillary earned one design down in the corner.

kiwi humour

I thought I'd posted this a long time ago, but they came up in conversation recently and I realized they hadn't made it onto my corner of the internet:

One of our favorite aspects of New Zealand culture was the willingness to poke fun at themselves, and just about anything else. It even manifested itself in a government advertising campaign for home safety. The ACC - Accident Compensation Commission - pays for all medical bills resulting in any accidents, for anyone in New Zealand. (This takes the place of personal injury lawsuits, which are generally not allowed in the New Zealand court system). The ACC put out a series of TV ads to try to lower accident rates around the home, but the ads have a serious black humor to them.

For example, every time this ad came on TV, Kirsten started laughing uncontrollably:

More of the ads can be seen here. And here's one more that wasn't on-air while we were in NZ.

kiwi humour, part II

One more for you-

This is an official Australian tourism commercial that got a ton of play in NZ our last few months there. Apparently it created some controversy in the UK, since "bloody hell" was seen to be a bit dirty:

This is a NZ take on the ad, apparently put together by a consumer advocate program:

shampoo, used on my hair or other body parts

I was reading my shampoo bottle in the shower the other day (doesn't everyone?) and noticed a totally useless sentence fragment.

My shampoo informed me it was "Made in the USA." All fine and good. Then it added, "... from US and/or imported ingredients."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the same thing as saying, "Made from ingredients"? Which is the same as saying "Made"? Essentially this is as useful as putting "This shampoo exists" on the side of the bottle. Although if I come across a product which needs to assert its existence on its packaging, I'll find that far more interesting than this shampoo bottle.

Too much chunky?

On a grocery run the other day, I stopped to pick up some Peanut Butter.

In front of the many options, I was hit by a semantic inconsistency. I was looking for crunchy peanut butter. However, of the two brands taking up the vast majority of the shelf space in Safeway's peanut butter section, one brand offered smooth or Super Chunky, the other smooth or Extra Chunky. Neither, it seemed, offered an option in between.

Do we need the extra adjective? Does the Super or Extra mean anything when there isn't a non-Super or non-Extra option? I suppose it is Extra Chunky, compared to smooth, but anything would be.

I supposed I'm more troubled by the verbal inconsistencies from those marketing to me than most. But when did the adjectives take over my peanut butter?

The Rodenator!

I loved this item in Wired Magazine last month. Who wouldn't want to force a bunch of explosive gases down a gopher hole and ignite them? I wonder if I can rig something up for less than $1,900, though.

The actual movies of the wonder in action are a little bit disappointing:

If you're looking to kick up dust, it appears to work well enough. But the product also has the cheesiest promotional video ever:



Rodenator- Let's kick some gopher ass.