The Last Thing I Saw....

Stag beetles are pretty laid back around non-stag beetle species, but you've already closed the browser, haven't you?

I let it live. It's still out there...somewhere. MWAHAHAHA

The Last Thing I Saw....

Commercials That Make Me Want To Lock Myself In The Bathroom

Bears don't use toilet paper.

I know what bears are legendary for doing, and it is not using toilet paper.



No, damn you, Charmin.

WHY DID MR. WHIPPLE HAVE TO DIE?!

Commercials That Make Me Want To Lock Myself In The Bathroom

Commercials That Make Me Want To Kill

I don't have rollover minutes with my phone plan. It's okay, because I can't speak half the time. No, really, it's okay because only two people in my directory are still living.

But there's these commercials where the non-existant entity known as rollover minutes take on a life of their own, Chucky-style, and become fascinating to people I don't care about.

Daft asses selling bowls of kitchen timers being chided by their mothers as a device for learning why some phone plans are better than others is very confusing. These timers, they aren't things you can actually buy and plug into your phone. I HAD TO TELL THIS TO SOMEONE VERY DEAR TO ME.

THEY DON'T EXIST. They aren't real. Say it with me. It's okay, I see things that aren't there too, but I don't go attributing characteristics to crap and making other people believe in my psychosis, do I?

Oh, right.

But I don't put it on TV morning, noon, and night, do I?

Commercials That Make Me Want To Kill

Commercials That Make Me Choke

I can't say I've never smoked, because until the age of seventeen I had so much second-hand smoke it's a wonder I don't sound...oh wait, I do sound a bit scratchy from time to time, don't I? Anyway, as a kid I did all the sensible things to try to help people in my family quit smoking: hide the expensive buggers, crush them, wet them and put them all back into the pack, poke holes in the filters...and ask, time and time again, just stop.

Price hikes managed to succeed where I failed at causing the last smoker in my family to quit. Or something. Iron will. She stopped 11 years ago and never looked back. I think it's kind of awesome, actually, but then...the anti-smoking ad with the multiple amputee was airing around the time Mum's leg ulcer was at its worst. The shmuck in the commercial, inexplicably hanging out in a children's playground, refused to quit even when his circulation was compromised. I found that out from Google. I guess a lot of people found that out because the ad was replaced with something more disturbing, a man who plays a doctor on TV showing the insides of a lung riddled with cancer. Those ads hit around the time I was losing friends and relatives left and right to respiratory diseases. Fie, late-night television.

I said last week I don't really give a flip about commercials, and I don't, I don't watch TV for commercials, I watch it...when I watch it, to forget reality.

So now there's this crying little boy in an airport or something. I don't know why he's crying, kids tend to crack up over anything--I know, I spent years as one of those--and you know what happens next in my version? Either a creepy wheezing man lurches over to show the little boy his dead fly collection or mumsie returns ten puffs closer to doom only to be, "WHY DIDN'T YOU KEEP UP?!" And that weeping toddler will take up smoking to cope with the PTSD he incurred when some weird camera crew watched it all AND DID NOTHING.

Or not. He'll grow up, have a few kids of his own, and one will require an asthma inhaler while he and his equally polluting wife yuk it up at whatever the hell they're watching. Beer ads, maybe. That's the other new PSA, some kid who totally doesn't appear to be having any kind of asthma attack pauses his Godzilla/GI Joe makeout session to take a hit of the inhaler. Bad parents, filling the air the carcinogens. Tsk.

Don't smoke kids, it's not as cool as you think it is and you'll probably end up making people who love you sad. Seriously. I don't want to watch those awful PSAs, stop now before they make a new one. One even weirder than the one where time runs backwards and roaches decompose around where the cigarette butt some hot chick puts in her mouth falls.

Commercials That Make Me Choke

Commercials That Make My Mind Weep.

I apologize for my recent mopey posts, but real life tends to suck some of the time. I would also prefer it not to. This month, however, I decided to go with a theme to amuse you with, and that theme is why the hell are some commercials so mind-numbingly stupid?

I thought I'd start with Cialis.

Yeah, I went there. Mind you, I don't care one way or the other about commercials, but the TV's on a lot, and people tend to ask me what the hell is up with certain ad campaigns, like my secret knowledge of Internet clues me into why people are wasting time taking baths on a mountain top when they could be doing what that pill they're advertising is said to help them do.

For those of you who haven't witnessed the ads, you could look them up on YouTube, but then again, maybe you don't want to. The gist of every one of the ads is a couple is getting overly friendly with each other and then the neighbors show up. After a list of ways the pill can kill you and everyone in the vicinity of your home, the couple have been transformed into Cylon hybrids are in tubs, separate tubs, watching the sunset. I HAVE NO IDEA WHY, AND NEITHER DOES ANYONE ELSE.

There are theories, though. I Googled "Cialis bathtub" and came up with endless speculation on WHAT...THE...HELL.

It's times like that, when I'm faced with a problem that has no solution, that I start editing--only in my mind, officer--alternate realities where Norman Bate pays a visit to the two utter twits bathing in the frikkin' woods. Or Harvey Keitel's character from Point Of No Return, even, with the jug of acid. Yeah, that's right, I don't care if you enjoy getting together with your men friends in a shack out in the middle of nowhere singing Elvis filks about rival remedies to having to live with what you live with, and I don't care if you made a college student that can't do their own laundry and therefore has to interrupt your sexy times, just don't make me have to try to explain what the hell you're doing on the beach in a bathtub. The ocean is two feet away!

While near the ocean, toss in the Enzyte ads with that sick grinning bastard and those giggling women who all seem to have bought the same vibrator. Then throw in a live grenade. The god of testosterone demands it.

Commercials That Make My Mind Weep.

What Time Is It? It's Still Frikkin' Christmas Time!

Even though every FM radio station in New York ceased playing Christmas music--and The Hanukkah Song--at the stroke of midnight Thursday, it's still Christmas for like, 9 more days. And that is the story I'm sticking to in order to show you my lovely collection of musical holiday time pieces.

I've mentioned my Christmas Tree Watch that plays the Lambada before, if you know me it's legendary, even...but only now, thanks to the glory of technology, can I share the magic with you. (And yeah, I know the timekeeping part has ceased to function, that's not what I wear it for. It's right twice a day, anyway.)

Festive, yes? For actual timekeeping, however, we turn to our musical snowman clock, which was marketed as playing a different Christmas carol every hour on the hour for as long as the lights stayed on. The idea of that bothered me, as you might imagine it would if you were positioned directly underneath something that spontaneously burst into music regardless of how those beneath might feel.

I ENDED UP LOVING THIS CLOCK. Here's why:



Every hour on the hour, baby. SPROING!

What Time Is It? It's Still Frikkin' Christmas Time!

This Is Your Brain Being Flipped Like A Fried Egg.

I'm watching a listing for krinkle gauze for Mum on eBay and writing this post at the same time. Will wonders never cease? (I shouldn't kid, I've been known to miss the end of listings I had noted on my arms while sitting at the computer staring at the very listing I was meant to be bidding on.) We get the gauze from a seller called vetsupplies, and when I mentioned this as a selling point along with, "22 rolls for a buck each!" my family's only concern was that it would be okay for people too.

...

The old joke of confusing vets with vets is alive and well, but sadly it took me an hour to realize they thought I was buying veterinary supplies. If it took you until that explanation, it's okay. Really. It isn't like my book is going to be clever or anything.

Among the other supplies for veterans, I found something called a brain spatula. I was looking for sterile spatulas to apply the silver sulfadiazine, see, that is why I innocently typed in spatula, but I didn't find those, I found that there is a spatula...for brains.

I'm fascinated. I thought taking the brain apart to work on voided the warranty or something.

My mother, always with the good questions, wondered only why someone would be selling a brain spatula on eBay.

Hey...speaking of eBay, there’s still a few hours to check out my aunt's factory-sealed 2-tape set of Titanic.

This Is Your Brain Being Flipped Like A Fried Egg.