Category: Life

You know, I don’t call it Fourth of July; I call it Independence Day as diligently as I call Autumn what others term Fall.

In my own mind, it makes me sound more formal.

Am I bruchleidend?

I saw this ad inside the back cover of the Milwaukee America Kalendar 1924 I bought this weekend, and it asked a question we all must ask ourselves daily: Bruchleidend?

Because if I am, I definitely need to send off to a far away city to get a set of four suction cups I can wear around my waist to help with my bruchleidend condition.

Heather informs me that I cannot suffer bruchleidend, as those are obviously a woman’s hips in it. Google’s translator tells me that bruchleidend means “break-suffering,” which I sometimes have been known to feel (if bruchleidend means “Dreading the last minutes before you have to punch back in after scarfing a submarine sandwich and a quart of orange juice in 7 minutes”).

Given the language barrier in addition to the archaic nature of the advertisement, I cannot be clear whether this was an actual, outdated, treatment for something, snake oil of some sort, or some mechanism to part German immigrants from their American dollars. As a matter of fact, given that it appeared in the back of a magazine and has a tarty line drawing, perhaps I’ve blown my PG-13 rating on my blog by including it.

So Greenville, Illinois, home of FCI Greenville:

Has a realty company named:

Does anyone else find that a bit peculiar?

I’ve found myself watching YouTube renditions of various and sundry commercials and “viral” advertisements lately. Once a series grabs me, I like to watch a pile of them, which makes them amusing if not effective. Brand awareness and affinity? You bet.

First, thanks to a post on StLRecruiting.com, I started watching the “Making Things Right with Pete and Red series” for Haggar:

These represent an extended version of some television commercials. You can find the HaggarFilms list on YouTube here and on the Haggar site here. And, if you search around on YouTube, you can find others and the 30 second cuts that appeared on television. Makes me want to go out and buy pants.

Secondly, when Carl’s sued Jack in the Box for its Angus commercials, I went right out to review the advertisements in question. Here’s one:

Using YouTube’s related suggestions and search mechanism, I found a number of other of the commercials I liked. I watched some that I’d seen on television. Particularly “The Intern,” which I watched again during the creation of this post. Carl’s probably made a mistake bigger than hiring Norm MacDonald to voice its star.

So then I went to find an old Bud commercial with the beavers because every now and then I think the tagline Naughty little beavers and want to use it in professional conversation but I cannot without it sounding, well, worthy of a call to HR. But I’ll embed it here because the more it becomes known, the less chance I’ll have to think of euphemisms for “fired for sexual harrassment” to use in job interviews for “Why did you leave your last job?”

Or the “Willy! It’s go time.” commercial:

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t drink Budweiser if I was drowning (which, ultimately, makes no sense). However, I like the commercials.

What’s my point? Oh, yeah, if you’re all slavering to get into Web 2.0 advertising–that is, to save money on actually distributing/running your adverts, you probably ought to spend money on the production of them and make them amusing and funny enough to warrant further watching. Sure, it’s cheap, but so’s a blog, and if this blog serves any lesson for you it’s that you can have a steady Web presence, but just because you put it out there doesn’t mean you’re doing your clients any favors or garnering any attention.

And here’s the only YouTube commercial I have ever bookmarked: Folger’s Happy Morning:

The last coffee I bought was Folger’s, partly because I was trimming expenditures from the $20 a pound stuff but partly, perhaps, because I enjoyed an amusing video that I could watch over and over again for the same set of amusement.

That’s how we used to call it, back in the housing projects in my youth. We’d say, “That’s my car” or “That’s my house” when we saw something particularly snappy.

Like this house, whose description in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel says:

Secret passages: One, from the media room to the master bedroom

How it works: A section of a built-in bookcase is a door set on vertical piano hinges, which keep it upright as it rolls open on casters. The media room sees a bookcase, and the bedroom sees a door.

The next section is “Why?” but I think anyone in Generation X or later comes with an implied because it’s cool.

Image here.

With complicated rules expressed on road signs lacking punctuation like this one:

Deconstruct and do what you want.

Blogs are getting a lot of pixel inches out of an essay entitled I Can’t Do One-Quarter of the Things My Father Can, which plays into an Instapundit narrative about the loss of traditional male skills. In my defense, I’d like to point out that I know how to do a number of things that my father can’t do. These include:

• Order a Starbucks drink just the way I want it.
  Face it, it’s only a triple venti cap, but I not only know the sizes of the cups, but I know the order in which the barristas call it. My generation knows how to express its drink preferences in ways the Greatest Generation or Baby Boomers can only dream of, which is probably why they mostly still drink coffee.
• Hook up any game console to any television or entertainment center.
  What, you don’t have the cables? Brother, I have all sorts of cables and transformers so I can still hook that old Nintendo Entertainment System to your Yamaha receiver.

• Operate video game controllers.
  Let’s face it, when confronted with keys marked with triangles, squares, and Xs, my father would totally be lost.

• Time shift my television viewing.
  I’m no longer bound to watching Lost on Wednesday nights, which means I can watch something else, probably something I had to record because I was watching a recorded episode of Lost.
• Insightfully quote culturally meaningful films.
  Because a proper quip from Office Space or catchphrase from Napoleon Dynamite identifies the user as intelligent and witty enough to use canned touchstones instead of uttering original thoughts or keeping my mouth shut and sounding smarter.

• Blithely ignore the implications of my dependence.
  Mommy State and Daddy Professionals are only a phone call away if I’m not afraid of ceding my rights to free thought and using all of my revolving credit on lifestyle maintenance.

So there you go. Maybe I do lack some basic skills required at the root level for survival, but I have mad skillz to mindlessly enjoy the fruits of an increasingly fragile modern civilization.

If you’re driving around looking for something, it’s good to have a marker to know where to turn:

Since this sign is in Old Trees, the historic suburb in which I live, it’s possible that we’re looking at an historic no parking zone that tourists might want to visit.

Here’s a little personality test for you:

If you look at that and think, “Wow, couldn’t they have said that with a single no parking any time sign?”, you obviously are one of those people who see the world in black and white, in parking and no parking. You cannot wrap your mind around the shades of grey, the layers of nuance between No Parking Any Time and No Parking Here To Corner.

But then again, not everyone can go to college and get a ::sniff:: humanities degree.

Instapundit linked to a list of Top 10 Great Ways to Save Water. This list was useless to me for the most part because it was geared to water wastrels in the first place. Criminey, here’s the list:

• Apply no more than 1 in. of water per week to your lawn in two applications.
  For Pete’s sake, if I water the lawn, I will have to mow the lawn. If Mother Nature wants me to have a pristine lawn, it will rain nicely to support it, and Mother Nature will make sure that the poison ivy that invades the yet-unnamed Noggle homestead in Old Trees needs the disappearing honeybees for pollination.
• Use a sprinkler timer to avoid over watering.
  I have never owned a sprinkler in my life.

• Use drip irrigation hoses in flower beds, covered by a thick layer of mulch.
  Great Caesar’s ghost! How does one get a thick layer of mulch to adhere to drip irrigation hoses in the first place?

• Replace deteriorated flapper valves in toilets.
  I could do this because I actually have toilets, but I also have a poorly-constructed drain system in my house that could use an extra goosing from some additional clean water flow from time to time. Also, I’m lazy and don’t want to get into it.

• Use a solar cover on the swimming pool when it’s not in use.
  A swimming pool? Lords of London, I don’t have a swimming pool. Who does in these days where you’re liable not only for drowning, but for the cases of West Nile disease that could have been borne by mosquitos bred in your pool?

• Repair dripping faucets.
  Always a good plan, but my relatively new faucets don’t drip.

• When possible, relocate indoor potted plants outside on a deck if a gentle rain is expected.
  A deck? Brother, I moved to a neighborhood that has traffic and have put a front porch swing on my home to ensure I wouldn’t become one of those deck-dwelling creatures segregated to their own family units in the suburban zoo, so I don’t have a deck, thank you very much, and I am not going to construct one because Gaia whispered it in your ear. Also, a number of semi-feral cats have taken residence here, and they look at indoor plants as a salad bar whose contents should be retched upon the rug. So we don’t have indoor plants, either. If we want to talk to flora, we engage the poison ivy in witty banter.

• Cover vegetable gardens with a layer of straw mulch to reduce soil evaporation.
  A good idea. I’ll keep this in mind when President Bush encourages victory gardens. Until then, I’ll get my fresh produce the normal way: putting on a bunny costume and raiding the neighbor’s yard.

• Replace shower heads with low-flow types.
  That’s easy advice for office-job types, but some people need the flow to get real grime off of themselves. Not that I’m speaking for myself here, but I’m too lazy to do that myself and too cheap to hire a plumber.

• Conserve water while car washing.
  I don’t have a car, thankyouverymuch, I have a truck. Also, I don’t wash it, for crying out loud; the dirt is an extra buffer between me and that BMW whose driver is arguing on a cell phone with a soon-to-be ex-husband.

Holy cannoli, that’s a lot of advice for the hoity-toity types with swimming pools and landscaping and/or water features on their grounds.

You want to conserve water? Here’s the MfBJN list for you, short form:

• Drink more beer.
  Sure, you’ll flush the toilet more, but you’re adding water to the local system. Yeah, far away someone wasted water brewing it, but that’s not your fault. You’re only trying to rectify the mistake.
• Stop bathing.
  Personal hygiene uses a lot of water. Stop shaving and brushing, too.

• Club a baby seal.
  Do you know how much those things drink? Also, the pelt makes a nice mulch for your vegetable garden or flower bed, preventing premature evaporation.

• Creative car maintenance.
  To quote the ever wise Jed Eckhart: “Well, when you grow up… then you’ll know these things, Danny. Now get up here and piss in the radiator.”

Now that’s advice the rest of us can effectively ignore.

Reader’s Digest hyperbolically identifies 25 Products That Will Change Your Life.

The list includes:

• The Oregon Scientific Wireless BBQ Thermometer, a thing you can stick into your meat while it’s on the barbecue that has a wireless pager you can wear on your belt that will let you know when the food is done.
• The Anycom HCC-210 Bluetooth Car Kit, a quick and easy speakerphone kit for cars.
• Tech-Ezz Wackerchaps, some sort of overshoes for lawnmowing chores.
• The InnoDesk Thermo-Cut Tape Gun, a packing tape dispenser with some cutting edge cutting edge.

And twenty-one more such things which will alter the very fabric of our existence and cause city planners to redesign their New Urbanist projects.

Unfortunately, they’ve only changed my life by removing the couple minutes I spent skimming the article. At least I got a blog post out of it.

I recently renewed my license plates, and to do so, one must have the vehicle’s emissions tested at a centralized facility contracted exclusively by the government (you can guess how I feel about centralization and exclusive franchises granted by the government, gentle reader). As the woman put the official sticker onto my windshield, she gave me the certificate I needed to take to the License Office to renew my plates. “Take this to the DMV,” she said.

As I stood in line at the License Office, I heard that guy, the one who talks loudly on his cell phone while in a queue, say that he was in line at the DMV. He also called it, on a separate call, the License Bureau.

Now I won’t split too many hairs about the fact that the License Fee Office is a franchised to a private company and is not an official bureau at all.

However, I will point out that it’s not the DMV, Department of Motor Vehicles. It’s an offshoot of the Department of Revenue and only exists to take money. Missouri does have a Department of Transportation, but it deals with highways, not cars.

These people call it the DMV because that’s what they call it on television. Somewhere else’s bureaucracy again becomes the national buzzword.

A job posting on craigslist, viewed in Firefox so the favicon displays, yielded this paradox:

These things do not go together.

Remember the Marathon candy bar, and its Western-themed commercials on Saturday mornings?

Yeah, the candy bar hasn’t been made in 25 years. That one.

Mmm, a lollipop:

click for full size

Looks good, doesn’t it? Not if you have certain food allergies:

click for full size

That warning says: Allergy information: Made in a facility that processes milk, eggs, soy products and wheat.

The allergy information is on the label where it’s twisted around the stem; if you’re like most people, that lollipop is in your mouth before you even look at that portion of the label, if you look at that portion of the label at all.

And if you suffer from a severe allergy to any of those food groups, your throat is probably already closing off.

But, hey, you can’t sue.

Instead of having to look through two or three rolls’ worth–maybe 100 pictures total–of someone’s ill-focused, underlit, and same-three-people-smiling-in-different-places photographs from vacations, now we have hundreds.

You think George Eastman wasn’t thinking ahead?