Which Is Weird, Because I Just Watched Kelly’s Heroes

So Facebook, which thinks I like two things in the world (virtual athletic events and t-shirts), pushed this into my feed yesterday:

And I wouldn’t have known who that was except that I watched the Clint Eastwood movie Kelly’s Heroes in which the Donald Sutherland character Oddball (depicted on the shirt) appears. And I watched it, on DVD or videocassette in a device not connected to the Internet.

But I probably had my phone nearby….

At any rate, I did not buy this shirt. To be honest, although I bought the Scipio t-shirt, I am generally not in the market for them as athletic events keep my drawer bursting with them, and I have been relying upon them a lot for birthday and Christmas presents lately, so I probably won’t buy more than a couple a year.

Meanwhile, I get the ads. Also, Facebook seems to think I have a thing for otters, but really, I was just talking about Pauly Shore (the Weasel) movies recently. Well, okay, Encino Man, because it also stars Brendan Fraser. So who knows what the Facebook AI thinks?

All it knows is that it can extend advertising reach if I make fun of it.

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Your Sugar Baby Might Realize She’s Not Getting Your House And Decamp

I mean, the picture is of an attractive young woman, and the ad is something something reverse mortgage, which is a (foolish) divestment strategy for people who own their own home:

I mean, look at her; she’s too young to own her own home, and if she inherits her parent’s (single person possessive because this is the 21st century, you know; intact families are so 19th century) home and does a reverse mortgage on it, she’ll get an annuity for fifty years spinning off a hundred dollars a month in income. So, yeah, this is not addressed to young people who own their own home.

I mean, I suppose the message if you click through (not me, brah; I’m already getting enough senior-themed advertising as it is) might be your kids won’t inherit the house, but, come on, your kids don’t look like models. I mean, mine are strikingly handsome and do, but we’re talking about your kids, gentle reader, and they probably look like you (mine do not; they take after their beautiful mother).

So, yeah, this is all about the sugar babies. Or just another instance of ads putting an image of an attractive woman in them to catch your eye. Alright, my eye. I plead guilty. Because I look for pictures of ads with attractive women who really have little to do with the product/service being teased. Also, I like to look at pictures of pretty women.

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When The Marketer Uses Your Middle Name, You’d Better Listen

I got this in the mail today:

When my sainted mother called me both names, I’d best heed!

A mail merge that somehow picks up both the first name and the middle name field or a miskey where both were put into the first name field? Not as binding.

Although my mother was the one to initially sign me up for AAA when I got my first car lo, those twenty some years ago. Yes, I was a late driver.

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Not A Fan

When I moved to the St. Louis area in the middle 1980s, when I introduced myself to the other children, they would invariably say “Like the taco?”

So I won’t be ordering this shirt any time soon.

I mean, not only was I scarred for life when my last name was confused with that of the chain, but I was further traumatized in learning that the chain name was misspelled in the Motley Crüe book The Dirt as my last name. In a not exactly encouraging passage.

Every couple years I see something about someone trying to revive the brand, and I think, here we go again.

Perhaps I should instead think people will ask, “Noggles? Like the blogger?” instead.

Oh, and Facebook? Although I’ve bought a couple of t-shirts from ads on your site, I probably won’t buy any more since the one I ordered a month before my son’s birthday and took two months after I paid for it to ship (it’s actual arrival yet to be proven). So I’ll not, thanks.

And to be honest I’m not really sentimental or nostalgic for anything in St. Louis.

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Out of the Way; I Want To See The Books

A couple of ads have hit my feeds lately with books in the background:

Get out of the way; I don’t care what you’re selling. I want to see the books.

Do you remember when visiting someone’s home for the first time, going to the bookshelves to see what kinds of books they owned? Yeah, that’s been a while. Partly because of the stay-at-home orders, partly because I don’t get invited to many peoples’ homes these days, and partly because not many people read any more.

Still, if you come to Nogglestead and try to do that, you won’t really glean many insights into my personality based on what’s on my bookshelves or beside the various sitting surfaces other than Man, this guy buys books profligately and pretty indiscriminately.

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But An Attractive Woman In Yoga Pants Is How I Got The Back Pain

An ad that appears often on sites that know how to thwart (or pay off) my ad blocker:

I haven’t watched the video to see whether it is a yoga thing or not, but I am pretty sure that I’ll not look as eye-catching and clickable as the ladies in the ads if I do any kind of stretch you would find on the Internet.

Time will tell, though, as I got my beautiful wife who favors yoga pants gift certificates to the local yoga shop for her birthday, and someday when the air is clear again, we shall use them.

In the interim, though, I’ll be doing her bidding in the garden and getting the back pain that I’ll need to cure.

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Not My Kind, Dear

I guess we can ascertain whom the models on the new Kohl’s flyer are expected to resemble.

I don’t tend to shop at Kohl’s because I don’t want to look like faux royalty.

I shop at Walmart so that I’m only out ten bucks when I inevitably ruin my clothing.

Good on ya, gentle reader, if you have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s these people, who are of little consequence and really only represent limey hereditary Kardashiania.

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Depend on the Meaning of “Independent”

The New York Times has taken to advertising to me on Facebook.

One of the largest papers in the country is not exactly what I would call “independent” journalism. I’m not even sure who would be “dependent” journalists would depend upon in this formulation if not a full-time job with a prestigious newspaper.

Also, “Every Fact. Every story.” oversells what the paper actually delivers.

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Speaking of Civ IV

I mentioned two weeks ago about how a post about Civ IV appeared on my Facebook Memories feed.

Last night, I found an ad for it in a comic book that also has ads for Age of Empires III and other video games.

Were video games the last things along with movies and television shows to advertise in comics? I’ll have a definitive answer for the state of the industry in 2019 sometime in 2022, when the comic books of 2019 are marked a dollar somewhere.

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You Do Have To Show Them The Way

The Bank of Missouri has a series of ads with bankers inserted into various situations to illustrate that they’re more than bankers. They’re part of your community or something. One depicts a banker holding a fire hose along with the firefighters. So I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be all metaphor or not.

But this one spoke to me:

The banker is not awarding the kid first base for a walk. The banker is reminding the kid to go to first base.

Friends, with the young ones, this is often the case.

As I mentioned, I coached a little league team for a season, and I was the loud coach. I cheered for all the boys, and I shouted instructions all the time.

One of the most common instructions was “Run, run, run!” which I shouted when the batter made contact with the ball. Otherwise, the youngsters were prone to gape in wonder at what they’d done and to get thrown out or tagged out easily.

Hey, I know the feeling. I had the same reaction the first time I made contact with the ball in a league softball game. Although I was nineteen at the time. And this occurred a couple of minutes before I took a fly ball to the face resulting in an ambulance ride and my getting thrown out of the league because I was an injury risk. But just so.

My second most-shouted instruction was “Get it! Get it! Get it!” when an opposing batter made contact with the ball. Because they would often stand agape at that turn of events as well.

I don’t know how many of those kids benefited from my volume, but if none of them did, I must attribute it to the fact that I did not wear a suit with a green tie that is visible from space. Clearly, I was not taking it seriously. Why should they?

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In Case You Have To Round Kick Zdeno Chara

An ad for a smoothie shows a woman throwing a round kick (or a whip/hook kick, depending upon the way she swung her leg) way above her head:

I don’t know who she would kick that would be that tall. Zdeno Chara, the 6′ 9″ defenseman for the Boston Bruins?

One of the knocks on tae kwon do is that its focus on forms and pretty kicks doesn’t have real-world applications. However, kicks like this do demonstrate flexibility and body control which come in handy when you kick like that a little lower.

Full disclosure: The school where I study martial arts blends tae kwon do kicking in with other martial arts. And although I can round kick head high, I cannot round kick (or whip/hook kick) Zdeno Chara in the head.

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Mr. Keith Begs To Differ

An ad on my Facebook feed makes an assertion that country music science does not support.

The ad:

The study that refutes it:

Why this ad appeared on my Facebook feed, though, I have no idea. One would expect with all the data that Facebook harvests from me that they would know we don’t host many gatherings here at Nogglestead.

We still have blue and orange disposable cups from my oldest child’s fifth birthday party, almost eight years ago. The bags are gone, though, so I could not tell you if they were Solo or Hefty in nature.

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