Last night, after a few hours of solo questing, I made this and sent it to James:
And here < are the ads google provided for our email thread. Apparently, after making such a lame, warcraft related lolcat type joke, I am going to need advice on how to get my ex back. Really, google? Was it that bad? I thought it was funny.
Few things offend me more than diamond ads, and they get worse around Christmas-time every year. You expect me to believe that this stupid guy is going to get lucky just because he bought that girl a diamond? We should just skip the innuendo and get right to the point with a slogan like this one:
Because women are all basically prostitutes.
Buy diamonds.
Never mind the social and financial price we pay as a planet for a commodity that has no inherent value.
Normally I don't get this vitriolic until after lunch, but I've been practicing this particular rant for years.
I think it's safe to say that if a foot pad could really suck toxins from your body (see Figure 1.1) while you sleep, that would really be amazing. Incredible, even. Incredible in the sense of "unbelievable." And by unbelievable I mean ridiculous. But the question remains: why would Facebook's supposedly clever targeted ads think I would be interested in these products? I mean, it specifically says in my profile that I have no unwanted hair.
Heh.
Also: I heart pirate Facebook. "Hawkin'"!
I hope your turkey day was satisfactory. Mine certainly was! My only regret is that, flying across international borders as I did, I was unable to bring home any leftovers. I did bring home lots of new clothes though, which is almost as good--especially since they were purchased from cheap, cheap stores. (Although the Canadian dollar is not as strong as it has been recently--bad for outlet shopping.)
I got home today, went and voted quick like a bunny, and then went for a swim. I'm cooking some food now for my election-night eat-and-grumble fest. But I also have some Muppet Show DVDs to switch back and forth between during the commercials. Should be good. Muppets + Canadian election = makes more sense than you might think. The polls close in about two more hours here. I'm practicing my old-lady-style fist-shake.
I never, ever watch broadcast TV. I don't have cable and I would much rather spend my entertainment time and money on things I can structure myself--renting movies from Zip and playing WOW come to mind. Since I moved into this apartment I have tried about three times to tune my TV. Each time, I'm surprised by how poor my reception is. The only channel I get AT ALL is CBC. The sound is great, but the picture not so much--it flickers from black and white to colour if I stand in a particular place in my living room. So weird. Anyway, it'll do for tonight, and then tomorrow I can go back to watching sweet, sweet DVDs.
Anyway, the really weird thing I always forget about in regards to broadcast TV is the commercials. When you're not used to watching them they become even more surreal and irritating. I just saw one for a medication that helps heal cold sores, and it had a weird little pseudo-scientific animation, and my brain felt like it was going to implode. I feel like someone from East Berlin who somehow got across the wall and wandered into an unanticipated, sophisticated world of products.
i'm dreaming of buying a new computer. the one i'm using at home is still James's, which is both bogus and sad. Dell now sells ones that have bamboo casing on the tower. Pretentious... and yet I feel a friendly, enviro-friendly glow. I wanted to figure out how much this would cost, but the Dell website doesn't seem to offer Canadian shipping. There is a box for "State/province," but the provinces it mentions are like Alabama and Wisconsin, in other words, the kinds of provinces that aren't.
This neat little utility will use your browser history to estimate your gender. It got me way wrong (87% male!), but then, that's my own fault for being obsessed with nascar.com, b00bs.com and the Yahoo! sperm-count self-tester. (heh. if only they really had that. No seriously, the websites i visit that mark me as male: imdb, flickr, urbandictionary, salon, boingboing, wowwiki, consumerist...)
Also: what the hell is this?? I really hope it IS a monster, and not, say, some kind of viral marketing campaign. (It's really disappointing when seemingly exciting things turn out to be viral marketing campaigns.) A lot of gawker commenters suggest it's a dog that has lost its skin, which is both sad and gross. I actually want to KNOWWWWW. Montauk Monster News! It has its own blog!
One of my biggest advertising pet peeves is the completely fake science that is always used in ads for moisturizers, shampoos, etc. (Or I should say, it used to be one of my greatest advertising pet peeves, until I stopped watching TV more than a year ago! I'M FREE!) They show these totally hokey "diagrams" of the "cells" being "regenerated," but the whole schtick has about as much scientific accuracy as any other cartoon you see on TV. I buy shampoo and moisturizer based on the same criteria as everyone else: 1. does it make my hair/skin look OK? 2. does it smell like something delicious that you would want to eat? I don't want my decision-making clouded by false or irrelevant information. So I was happy to read this article in the UK's Times: "Skin cream science is branded as ‘waffle’".
Leading cosmetics companies are making claims about the rejuvenating properties of their best-selling products that are scientifically incomprehensible and insult customers’ intelligence, pharmacists say.Debunking fake advertising science: Hot. Using the word "Waffle" in a headline: even hotter.
Facebook turns its users into endorsers [NY Times]. I'm not sure if this new Facebook advertising scheme is going to be completely evil or, uh, less than completely evil. It launches tonight, so we'll see what happens, one way or the other. I am so, so opposed to the pervasiveness of advertising, and yet I always get almost-won-over by these arguments about it: "We're just telling you about things you will really want to know! It's not advertising if you can use the information!" Well, yes, it is. And yet.
Speaking of things that are less than completely evil, this week I discovered Better World Books, which sells new and used books. You know what I love even more than normal bookstores? Bookstores with carbon-neutral shipping that donate some of their money to literacy non-profits. That's profits for non-profits--I haven't given up on capitalism completely, yet.
Saving the world is tiring. On Thursday, I am going to serve dinner to homeless people at the Mustard Seed Street Church. This is something I don't do very often, and last night I remembered why: because carrying 6 kg each of frozen mixed veggies and perogies, a giant box of Oreo cookies, and a 5-kg toupie ham (plus, to be fair, some groceries for myself) home on the LRT is exhausting and sore-making. I woke up at 6 am, took some Tylenol and turned on my heating pad, and went back to sleep. Then I woke up again at 7:25 and realized I still had to go to work, even if I WAS still tired and in pain. There's nothing worse than waking up, feeling like you want to die, and realizing that no one else cares.
I'm having a crazy day at work. My supervisor is ill, so I seem to be basically running the whole province of Alberta. Fortunately, I am doing a pretty good job, so it's unlikely you'll notice any service disruptions.
Since Abercrombie & Fitch seems to be so adamantly shirtless-male-friendly, 110 men from Improv Everywhere took off their shirts in the New York A&F flagship store and insisted they wanted to buy shirts. Not surprisingly, the store was not that friendly towards them. The photos are great. Very A&F-y.
14 American Apparel Models Freed In Daring Midnight Raid | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"There were girls lying everywhere—draped over furniture, sprawled spread-eagled in the corner, and huddled close like animals," FBI Special Agent Curtis Froman, who oversaw the raid, said at a press conference. "Many of them had been given nothing more than a pair of tube socks or men's briefs to wear."
Has anyone else noticed that Coca-Cola is now marketing Fanta a lot more aggressively in North America? It also seems to be available in stores here more than it used to be. I think of Fanta as Coke's third-world soft drink, because in places like Africa it's often cheaper to buy Fanta than bottled water. Coke airlifts shipping containers of the stuff onto roadsides in Kenya, where it's sold straight out of the container--putting other local roadside stores out of business. When I was there, one bottle would set you back about 30 cents (Canadian). As well, different flavours are available in different places worldwide. This Wikipedia page details the international availability of Fanta. I'm intrigued by Honeydew Melon Fanta (available in Taiwan) and Elderflower Fanta (Norway).
Fanta was actually invented by a Coke factory manager in Germany during WWII because shipping restrictions prevented Coke syrup from getting into Germany. Then it was marketed in Nazi Germany. The Scopes page linked above points out that it was not, as is often incorrectly said, invented BY the Nazis. However, I'm sure they found it delicious, especially since original German-recipe Fanta was made with whey and apple fiber. Yum.
What is maybe the most discouraging detail from Fanta's history is the fact that it is marketed using a made-up girl group called "The Fantanas". The Fantanas look kind of like Josey and the Pussycats, only more commercial, if you can imagine that. The Fanta website includes online games and, my favourite feature, you can send an email to your mom pestering her to buy you Fanta. I'm trying to picture what would happen if I sent such an email to my mom.
This little soft drink factoid has been brought to you by bored Jocelyn and the internet.
James and I saw The Bourne Ultimatum on Saturday, and I have one question: Did Motorola pay to have the V3 Razr product-placed as the chosen mobile technology of assassins everywhere? I mean, can you HAVE detrimental product placement? At least my phone is pink, not grey or black, so maybe I have a slender hope of NOT being a soulless, anti-social psychopath.
It's Monday, so that means it's link time, although the pickins are a little slim today:
the comic book economy-- a set of scans of old comic book ads. Fascinating and compelling. Hosted on flickr.
pacman's skull, a paleontological miracle as envisioned by an artist. Whose name I don't know because je ne comprends pas le website en francais.
Two crafty sites: burdastyle, an open-source sewing site; and u-handblog, a blog all about sewing handbags. That might sound a little too specific, but believe me, to the obsessed (including me) it makes perfect sense.
My Tylenol/Coke cure totally worked, I feel 80% better today. I should totally be, like, a doctor or something. And I get paid tomorrow so I am totally going to be ordering some things from Etsy. Like cute cards, and an emo wallet. (I'm not posting the links because then someone will buy them right out from under me, you bastards! I know you would!)
I bought some herbal essences shimmery nights "shimmery spray gel," because I cannot resist glittery things that cost less than $10. However, the package claims that this hair product contains "a fusion of diamond dust and champagne." I am HIGHLY suspicious of this advertising claim. Other "fusions" (by which they may mean "infusions") that could spice up hair products and make for glamorous-sounding packaging:
I have spent the past 7 hours staring at my computer screen, compiling a digital library of artifacts related to advertising to women. But I have trouble retaining my righteous feminist rage when I see commercials like this one:
7-Elevens are ostensibly being converted into Kwik-E-Marts as marketing for the new Simpsons movie.
