I Remain Unimpressed

Yep. What I want when I have a cold is a product that contains not only cold medicine, but also mucus and congestion. ‘Cause, like, I don’t have enough snot already in that situation.

So, either A) Alka Seltzer is so stupid that they don’t realize they’re moronically selling the promise of a snootful of phlem to someone who already has one, or B) or they figure (far, far too overconfidently) that their name is strong enough that people won’t notice.

Either way, they’re today’s idiots. And Me? I remain unimpressed.

Today’s item is stupid on not just one level, but two–a regular you- got- your- chocolate- in- my- peanut- butter- type mash-up of two wonderful ideas that go great together. And by “wonderful,” I mean “really, really stupid.”

I’m talking, of course, about Best Buy’s vending machine in the A concourse of the Las Vegas airport (see crappy photo, right).

Stupidity No. 1: Best Buy’s marketing geniuses (genii?) designed this thing to sell iPods and whatnot to people not only dopey enough to have left their music players on the plane they just got off of, but also moronic enough to decide, 100 yards later, that they should shell out for a new one, rather than walk back to the gate and retrieve their old one. To say nothing of the fact that if you’re not packing a laptop full of music and iTunes, a brand-new iPod in an airport is the functional equivalent of a five-pound bucket of lard–it may be a bit lighter and more easily fit in an overhead bin, but with a dead battery and no songs, it’s every bit as useful as rendered pig fat.

Stupidity No. 2: You can also use this machine to buy–wait for it–gift cards! As we all know, gift cards are contemptible on their face–a marketing plan driven by overt hope that you’re suggestible enough to want to restrict your money to one store, and the unspoken dream that you won’t use all the money that you or some other dope put on it. After all, every customer who leaves a dollar on the card before losing it in the back of the junk drawer is a potential patsy–and a profitable one at that.

But the real problem is worse: I mean, who the hell needs a Best Buy gift card at the Las Vegas airport? The nearest Best Buy is not only on the other side of a security checkpoint that takes 70 minutes to get through, but also a 15-mile cab ride away. I can think of a few places where a Best Buy gift card is less useful, but most of them are in sub-Saharan Africa. Go fish.

So, what have we created here? A machine aimed at the peanut-buttery center of your weak-kneed desire for an impulse purchase, enrobed in the chocolate-covered dissatisfaction of delayed gratification, since it’s thoughtfully placed where you can’t possibly use what it sells. Impressive.

For this, Best Buy earns the coveted double-whammy. To badly paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, “The only thing sadder than the fool who put this thing in the airport is the fool who uses it.” Please, don’t be that fool.

Me? I remain unimpressed.

"I know! We can target bulimics!"

Today’s morons? The dopes who put together Bed Bath & Beyond’s latest sales flyer (crappy cellphone pic at right).

Turns out that the store in which no heterosexual male would be caught dead has (to quote the Blues Brothers movie) “both kinds” of products: Those for binging and purging!

Just in case you were worried that Bed Bath & Bulimic didn’t have the sweet tang of passive and the salty snap of aggressive covered, the company’s latest attempt to make you forget that the economy has not only circled the toilet bowl like an errant turd, but also flushed through and left unsightly brown claw-marks that require the vigorous application of a bristly brush, clearly proves the marketing department thinks its shoppers are bi-polar buffoons.

Alongside pictures of $40 and $80 chafing dishes and $35 tiny-food trays, all heaping with Queen-Latifah-sized portions of food for your piehole, is a picture of a pair of feet on a $60 scale. The food pictures all carry the headline “yumm,” while the scale carries the headline “YIKES!”

Just in case you’re too stupid to get the “joke,” (and I can assure you that the marketing geniuses at Bed Bath & Bile think you have the IQ of a sandwich) the scale reads “UH-OH.”

Now, which buttons, exactly, is this supposed to push?

I guess they figure I’m going to run out and buy all their food-preparation crap, use it to pack my colon full, then step on their scale and freak the hell out–all the while knowing that this incredible circle of self-loathing was calculatedly premeditated by the people who sold me this junk in the first place?

Riiiight. Now how, exactly, is that supposed to make me feel good about parting with my rapidly withering disposable income while my 401(k) does its impression of a Japanese Zero dead-aiming the U.S.S. Arizona? Anyone with enough of a brain to recognize a mirror and fog it can answer this question easily: It’s not.

You guessed it: I remain unimpressed.

Here’s the problem with political discussions: They make you look stupid in the eyes of whoever you’re talking to. Unless of course, you’re talking to someone who agrees with you, in which case you’re just jacking off.

That’s because people pick presidential candidates for complex reasons, very few of which they even understand, let alone are self-aware enough of to cogently relate to others when asked. And, truth be told, other people’s opinions reveal far more about themselves and their narrow-minded views of the world than they ever will about a particular chosen candidate.

Somehow, most political blabbermouths manage to realize that it just wouldn’t be cool to say: “I’m voting for McCain because I’ve spent so much time training myself to act like I’m over 50, that I can’t back away from the Republican party, no matter how hard I try.” Or, conversely: “I’m voting for Obama because I resent the rich, and in my relatively young life, Republicans have screwed up everything they’ve touched, given enough time.”

Instead, they’d rather parrot to you what their friends, favorite talking TV heads and radio-show mouths have told them, hoping that regurgitated tripe will taste like filet mignon, and convince you as easily as it did their own feeble, easily-swayed minds.

Ask yourself this: Have you ever been in a political discussion where one person suddenly says: “You know, I never thought of it that way, I’m changing my vote”? Assuming you’re not discussing the finer points of your irrationally chosen political party down at the student union coffeehouse, don’t hold your breath waiting for an affirmative.

That’s because if you’re an adult who finds yourself in a political discussion, its because the person you’re talking to showed up at your table spoiling for a fight, for the same reason any schoolyard bully wants you to fight: So they can bring you down to their level, where (let’s be honest here) they have far more practice.

Bottom line, voting is like choosing a spouse, a car or even a slice of carrot cake for desert. If you’re truly honest with yourself, you’ll admit you’re choosing for mostly emotional, left-brain reasons that are more complex than you realize. That doesn’t mean they’re not entirely valid to you, this being the existential world it is. But showing those reasons in a spittle-throwing blabbermouth display of what you think is intellectualism is a sucker bet. And you’ve probably fallen for it.

Honestly, you’re better off just enjoying the common interests you share with your erstwhile debate partner, having another beer or cup of coffee and then actually doing something far more politically effective to spite them on your own time, like working for or contributing to your chosen candidate behind their backs.

So please, save the crap you used to convince yourself to vote for one candidate or the other for someone in your own twisted little circle jerk.

I remain unimpressed.

Somebody actually built this, which was kinda the point.

Sure, everything was better when you were a kid, but when it comes to Thomas the Tank Engine, everything was better when my 9-year-old kid was a kid–which obviously wasn’t that long ago.

Yup, Thomas the Tank Engine is now computer-generated. If it weren’t bad enough that hand-drawn animation has gone the way of, well, hand-drawn animation, now the creators of what was once a decent little kid’s show have cheaped out, scrapped those cool old train tables and likely off-loaded the whole shebang to some second-world computer-animation house to save some money and otherwise suck all the fun out of it.

The old shows used real-life toy trains and elaborate sets, replicating the magic of a kid putting his head on the floor while playing with toy trains to become a part of that world. You could appreciate the inventiveness of it all (along with the clever/subversive narrator choices like Ringo Starr and George Carlin). The new version has all the magic of a bad videogame.

I can only conclude that the people making it have decided that we’re all too stupid to notice, so we can just sod off. Worse, Thomas the Marketing Engine makes boxcars full of money, so ditching the old, slow and more expensive production method smacks of nothing but pure corporate greed.

Watching the new versions, I can only feel cheap, used, considered-to-be-stupid and obviously marketed-to. What’s next? Plastic Thomas trains instead of wood?

Ah, crap, that’s already happened, too.

You guessed it–I remain unimpressed.

I’m not talking about morons who misuse the word to mean “figuratively,” or “metaphorically,” which is not just a little bit wrong, but pretty much every bit of wrong you can have, all rolled into one gi-normous ball (”His head literally exploded”). Nope, plenty of other eggheads have jumped on that bandwagon.

Instead, I’m talking about people who tack the “literally” onto the end of a sentence, as if to squeak with glee, “Look at how clever I am! I made a pun! Wheeee!” Examples: “Britney Spears Overexposed-Literally.” “Ready to Drive Mom Crazy, Literally.” And “Second Life Rocks (Literally).”

Aside from their obvious lack of agreement on how to properly punctuate their sentences, these would-be humorists are not just pointing out their own (fairly obvious, and obviously lame) attempts at cleverness. They’re also making a fundamental assumption that the rest of us are too freakin’ stupid to notice the pun without the person who just made it grabbing us by the hair and pointing us at it. Puh-leez.

Here’s the thing, idiots: 1. We noticed the pun before we got to the end of the sentence; 2. It’s nowhere near as clever as you think it is; 3. You’ve actually managed to irk us subconsciously; and 4. We just decided you’re a dope.

Know what would be clever? Since the word is so overused as to be meaningless, distracting and annoying (the trifecta!) consider using something better: “Britney Spears Overexposed–desperately” “Ready to Drive Mom Crazy–Clinically.” and “Second Life Rocks–Musically.” And sync up on the punctuation while you’re at it. Hmmm?

Better yet, spare us the childlike self-absorption of your shallow mind, drop the whole secondary-word thing completely and let the sentence stand on its own–without a lame crutch.

Until you do, I remain,

Unimpressed

.

So Taco Bell has a new pitch: “Help feed the hungry.” That’s right, the marketing geniuses who gave you “Forthmeal” “I’m Full!” and the half-pound burrito now want to you to donate a dollar to “help feed four people” in some cry-baby Sally Strothers pitch every time you order up the same food assembed in various ways. Now, I’ve got nothing against feeding the hungry. It’s a noble cause, and I’ve always admired those who tilt at impossible-to-accomplish windmills.

No, what I do have something against is a company spending millions to convince already-fat humans that they need a fourthmeal between dinner and breakfast during which they should shove half-pound tubes of meat and slurried beans into their churro holes–telling ME that I need to help feed the hungry. Worse, all the geniuses at Taco Bell are doing is COLLECTING OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY. What’s missing? TACO-Freakin-BELL’S MONEY, that’s what.

Worse, if you donate, you can get a free downloaded song from Mariah Carey’s new album. This is all helpfully displayed in a large sign on the counter, upon which the horrifying visage of Mariah stares out confusedly from indiscriminate shadows. In case you’re wondering, Mariah shills for Pepsi, the eponymous root of Pepsico, which owns Taco Bell.

So what is this, really? A desperate attempt to market Mariah’s new album in Taco Bells across the country, hitched to an otherwise noble cause that’s designed to make me forget I’m being marketed to with a cloud of guilt that comes when the waitron behind the counter is forced to ask every customer if they want to donate.

Want to impress me? Donate the money it took to make the ad campaign to feeding the hungry. And stop making me feel guilty for refusing to help you market some washed-up crooner to the masses on my nickel.

Until then? I remain unimpressed.

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