Ads I Don’t Like

Brian J. Noggle

For no other reason than because it’s my blog and I wanna, I’m going to lay upon you, gentle reader, three advertisements or advertising campaigns that really get on my nerves.

  • Dry pits win.
    I can’t remember what antiperspirant company put out this weird line of print ads (and it serves them right, my proud ignorance). But if you’ve been reading a men’s magazine of any stripe–Playboy, Maxim, or Esquire–for the last year, you’ve seen this abominations. In a romantic setting such as a nice restaurant, riding on a horse on a beach, or lying on a carpet before a crackling fire, we espy an attractive woman (a different one in each ad, just like in James Bond films) canoodling with what appears to be an armpit with strange, three-toed feet). In each instance, this bizarre creature is seated, so he’s bent, and the feet are where the ribcage should be, and where the arm should be we have no head, just a flat spot like the damn thing’s not only hairy in the front but decapitated.

    Jesus and mary chain, what the hell kind of bad acid trip in a muddy-field rave inspired this thing? I mean, I can understand a tendency to want to appeal to the average schlub who knows he doesn’t look like those eighteen year old pretty boys who pout their way through the pages between the cheesecake on the front cover and the table of contents, but good God, man, who identifies with an anthromorphized armpit? I mean, this set seriously creeps me out.

    I mean, when the armpit has its fun in its one night stand and romps off with the next hot model in the next exotic locale, stranding the heartbroken previous hot model who thought she could tame his untamed but dry armpituous nature alone and unfortunately pregnant because he used the line not only am I dry, but I am sterile, you’ve got to wonder what will those poor children look like?

  • AAA Insurance.
    You might have heard the radio commercials in the “Why would you pay for insurance you’re never going to use” campaign. Lord knows I have. Whomever, whoever, or whatever wrote these ought to be handling a run for office somewhere. “When you have AAA insurance, along with a AAA membership….” you get insurance you can use for free towing, discounts when you show your card, and so on.

    What the wet sprocket? With the purchase of bleach and bread, I can make a sandwich, but I’m not using both for it. How on earth do they expect to convince a rational person to purchase their insurance by hyping the AAA membership, which is $105 a year for the Gold plan last I checked? Who can trust a vendor who tries to sell you the falcoing insurance for a lot of money to give you the separate advertised features thrown in for a little extra?

    Apparently, they’re targeting undecided voters, too.

  • GMC Trucks
    Built professional grade, huh? Perhaps you’ve seen the particular commercial where they tout the individual, 4 inch galvanized steel bolts they use to bolt their truck beds to their frame. They illustrate this by linching a pulley with a single one of these bolts and winching a truck to the ceiling with that pulley while a guy in a lab coat, undoubtedly an underpaid Quality Engineer who should only have faith in the tests and never in the products tested, stands underneath the truck while it’s creaking on the line and single bolt.

    Then, with the music coming up but before it cuts to the still featuring the latest financing package, a truck roars into the frame at probably thirty miles an hour and skids to a stop, fishtailing it forty degrees over a very stern Professional Driver. Closed Course. Do Not Attempt caption that does its best textual impression of James Earl Jones warning you about skidding in your automobile. Personally, I’ve never gotten the whole idea behind using footage of the vehicle out of control to sell a car, but I work for a living.

    Message: Don’t try some small fry fancy maneuvers while driving unless you’re a professional; however, standing under your truck while it’s swinging from the rafters on a single bolt is a perfectly good way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Chumbawamba, how many half-gassed suburbanites have to die while trying to impress their hemi-having neighbors before this commercial carries the appropriate number of antilitigatory warnings that if you consume hyberbolic acid, you could have a bad trip?

Thanks. I feel better now, but not much.

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I Thought So

Brian J. Noggle

Here’s what passes for hard-hitting investigative journalism here at MfBJN. Our crackhead staff contacted our sources looking for insight into John F. Kerry’s plan:

John Kerry's Plan
Click for full size

I had to get a screencap because I understand that thirty seconds after I click Publish Post, George Soros will go the extra $75 to buy that domain.

You want to know the length I will go for a gag? It’s obviously less than a single domain name registration. There you have it.

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Fill In Your Own Conspiracy Blanks

Brian J. Noggle

From various sources including Associated Press and the New York Times (links courtesy of Boots and Sabers and Little Green Footballs respectively), we get the dramatic fevered imaginings of a few:

What was that bulge in the back of President Bush’s suit jacket at the presidential debate in Miami last week?

According to rumors racing across the Internet this week, the rectangular bulge visible between Mr. Bush’s shoulder blades was a radio receiver, getting answers from an offstage counselor into a hidden presidential earpiece. The prime suspect was Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s powerful political adviser.

In the hopes of elevating this line of thought from the absurd to the….well, there’s really nowhere more absurd to go as a serious story. So I will do my best to mock it.

The real reasons for the bulge under Bush’s jacket:

  • It’s the wind-up key. Because President Bush, unlike other candidates in this particular race, actually shows up for the job for which taxpayers pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, he had to send his wind-up body double to the debate. And it didn’t do to badly. It certainly looked less mechanical than, say, Al Gore.
  • Missouri is a right to carry state. Since Bush can’t feel the comfort of cold steel in leather in Washington DC, which he frequently visits on the people’s business unlike his opponent, Bush wore a piece to the debate. He wore it McClane-style so as to not frighten the undecideds in the audience nor to stir controversy with the press should his jacket fall open to display it. Undoubtedly, they would say he was trying to intimidate Kerry and pander to the NRA.
  • It’s where the mechanical arms attach.

    To manipulate oil prices, to violate the civil rights of every man, woman, and child in the world, to start wars just to watch them burn, and to conduct his other maniacal schemes, Dr. Octobush has devised a set of extra chimp arms to help him do all the evil that he does more easily. They attach via a special clip wired directly into his brain.

  • Man, who knew how small devil wings folded up?

Hey, feel free to add your own. We’re on the Internet for crying out loud. It’s all tRuth.

(Note: Capital R truth does in fact differ from capital T truth, but it’s more accommodating to those whose personal feelings differ from the real world, so it’s capital E bEtter.)

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Talking About My Vaccination

Brian J. Noggle

Michelle Malkin asks a question about vaccines:

Why on earth does the U.S. get virtually all of its flu vaccine supply from just two manufacturers?

Short answer: Because the government hasn’t nationalized it yet and left us with a single inefficient source.

Sure, some people might accuse me of wanting children to die; this is not the case. I do, however, not want the remote federal government to use its vast bureaucratic power to do its best to employee middle managers with poli-sci degrees whose goal is to perpetuate their own employment and budgets and save the children, only one of which they’re really good at.

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No Live Blogging Here

Brian J. Noggle

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not live blogging the second presidential debate, although I have watched about twenty minutes of it too much (which, oddly enough, was about twenty minutes). I am voting for Bush, and every time Kerry opens his mouth, I start spitting and cursing and quite frankly, I cannot afford the bib cleaning bills.

I don’t dislike Kerry as a person, because I don’t know him. And although I can snark a bit here among friends, I don’t think he’s necessarily a lying, conniving coward. I have no way of knowing. He’s never started a bar fight and run off while I got pounded.

I do know that almost everything I hear him attack George Bush for, particularly in domestic agenda, blurs the division of government powers laid out by our Constitution and sometimes even blurs the line between government and private life, and if we elect someone who thinks that the President, not the Congress led by the House of Representatives, spends tax dollars or that the only the George Bush’s obstinance and not understanding of economic and human nature principals holds up drug reimportation schemes, well, I guess we’ll be ready to elect someone who’s willing to nationalize industries to protect the children and are ready to dismiss the Congress to save money better spent on unelected bureaucracies run by appointees of Our Glorious Leader.

Some people impugn Bush and his administration for their simple devotion to protecting the country from threats abroad and for enforcing the ill-conceived lawa passed on by the too-comfortable and too-protected-from-the-consequences-of-their-actions legislators. But I, almost alone it seems, recognize that the executive branch of the government, including the President, only has those powers granted by the legislature.

And when I hear a legislator, or an alleged legislator whose absence from the legislature has not matched the legislator’s willingness to forego pay that we taxpayers like to give to practicing members of that hallowed profession, when I hear that pseudo legislator bloviating about the president spending money, or running a deficit, or cutting anything, I….well, I’ve explained what I do.

Hasn’t it occurred to any other voter but me that the entire reason John F. Kerry enjoys his $200,000 income tax bracket is because he’s supposed to be a Senator? Come on, the really rich in America aren’t paying income taxes, they’re paying capital gains, if anything at all. Oh, but Senator Kerry as Supreme Leader would exercise powers not granted to the Constitution to repeal the tax cuts granted to the “richest” Americans, and at the same time he’s lambasting that these people get tax cuts while President Bush hasn’t single-handedly created five million jobs.

Pardon my misunderstanding of economics as a small business owner, but galdern, “Senator” Kerry, but when you’re wanting to soak those who make two hundred thousand dollars a year and “Big Corporations,” who’s going to hire the unemployed? Last I looked in the want ads, I didn’t find many $30,000 a year junior technical writers or $25,000 printers looking to hire five million people. Not even two and a half miillion each. So where do you think the capital is going to come from to keep the economy going?

Oh, I forget, the government will have us all working in its Bureau of Pharmacology, where we can work ten hours a day turning the manual pill-presses to grind out some acetylsalicylic acid to cure any ailment our citizens–who’ll return to the time-honored tradition of dying before they’re sixty–have.

I’d say a pox on ya, Senator Kerry and his idealogical counterparts, but I am still trying real hard to merely pity you instead.

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My Senator, Hard At Work

Brian J. Noggle

Looks like Jim Talent, R. MO, is putting his, erm, talents to work on issues of national importance: lighting the Gateway Memorial Arch pink for Breast Cancer Awareness month:

108th CONGRESS

2d Session

S. 2895

AN ACT

To authorize the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, to be illuminated by pink lights in honor of breast cancer awareness month.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. ILLUMINATION OF GATEWAY ARCH IN HONOR OF BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH.

In honor of breast cancer awareness month, the Secretary of the Interior shall authorize the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, to be illuminated by pink lights for a certain period of time in October, to be designated by the Secretary of the Interior.

Passed the Senate October 5, 2004.

Swell. One of my two Senate representatives, purportedly of the small-government party, has wasted his time, his staff’s time, and other taxpayer-funded time not to mention sundry expenses to turn this idea into law.

And that’s before we get to purchasing a large number of pink light bulbs or pink cells and paying maintenance people to implement them…..

But that Jim Talent, he’s sensitive.

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Truer Words Were Never Spoken

Brian J. Noggle

Lileks, from his Newhouse News column yesterday:

The next time America is attacked, people will not want someone who can calculate pi to the 48th digit while reciting Latin maxims on the nature of war. They will want someone who says, “Hulk smash.” Inelegant as the sentiment might be, Hulk-thought works better than Captain Nuance striding into the United Nations waving resolutions and chastening editorials from Le Monde.

I feel clever in likening the purpose of a robust military in foreign policy as the same for criminal punishment:

  • Deterrence. Opposing states are afraid to attack, because if they do, they will suffer consequences.
  • Retribution. Oh, yes, Hulk smash.
  • Rehabilitation. After Hulk smash, Hulk elevate people’s standard of living in the defeated country and leave behind something akin to a republic.

Perhaps I am too simplistic; after all, we’re talking about nation states and not individuals. But one would have to argue that nations are more than the sum of their rulers, and some rulers would disagree, even though Louis XIV’s time has passed. Some rulers just don’t know it yet.

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Make the Connection

Brian J. Noggle

Another internal consistency pointed out, courtesy MfBJN:

Remember this nugget in the first debate between Kerry and Bush?

I think the United States should have offered the opportunity to provide the nuclear fuel, test them, see whether or not they were actually looking for it for peaceful purposes. If they weren‘t willing to work a deal, then we could have put sanctions together. The president did nothing.

How about someone directly contrast this with 1994’s Agreed Framework, wherein the Clinton administration exchanged fuel for promises that North Korea would scrap its nuclear program.

John Kerry wants to apply the unsuccessful Agreed Framework to Iran.

But at least that foreign policy type is consistent. Consistently bad.

But hopefully, perhaps to them, a Republican administration will come along after a short failed Kerry era to take the fall for Iran’s nuclear weapons.

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Mishandled Metaphors

Brian J. Noggle

Meanwhile, back in the Seattle Post-Intelligence, columnist Thomas Shapley decries an ad from a candidate for Senate. George Nethercutt, the Republican challenger, includes in the advertisement Senator Patty Murray from this immortal exchange:

“He [Osama bin Laden]’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful,” Murray told them.

Shapley tut tuts the despicable practice of using someone’s words against her and opens a can of whoop metaphor:

By that standard, fighting crime by trying to figure out what drove Gary Ridgway to murder 48 women is excusing him of the crimes. Sorry, that Doberman won’t hunt.

Perhaps Shapely took a Doberman hunting when he went crawling through the brush with John Kerry and a trusty shotgun while deerhunting.

(Link via National Review‘s Kerry Spot.)

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A Sincere Offer of an Honest Trade

Brian J. Noggle

Friends, Romans, and those with differing political philosophies: I offer a sincere, heartfelt trade to you.

I shall not extrapolate the vandalism and thuggery of a few criminals galvanized by their support of John Kerry as a property of the whole Democrat party or anyone with liberal sympathies if:

People on the left do not extrapolate the actions of a few vandals and thugs as being an insurgency of the entire populations of Iraq or Afghanistan.

Do we have a deal?

No? I didn’t think so.

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Steve Jobs and Michael Dell ARE IN MY HEAD!

Brian J. Noggle

Dell Computers and Apple Computers are trying to brainwash me. Here’s how:

In the course of my self-employed Pat-Verbeek-of-Software-Testingdom, I have cause to use an eMac computer and a Dell workstation to test the various and sundry applications that clients pay me innumerable (as I explain to the auditor) dollars to test. My main workstation has a standard keyboard, with the slight rise and the stadium keying layout, where each row rises a little above it. The kind I’ve used since I got my first Packard Bell in 1990. The natural shape one can even remember from Commodore 64s and Apple IIs, and probably even abacuses.

But the eMac has a concave keyboard; that is, it’s curved, with the tops of the keys actually turning toward your fingers like flowers to a star.

But the Dell workstation has a convex keyboard; that is, it’s bowed outward, like its keys are employing centrifugal force to fling my software-destroying fingers into space.

And you might think it’s nothing but some sort of Substance of Style-ing to be neat-o, but friends, I can tell you what they’re doing–they’re doing Pavlovian and Skinner tricks on you, and you’re the dog and chicken. Apple, dog, and Dell, chicken. Pay attention!

You see, if you use one of these freak keyboards as your primary interface with the greater intelligence that is the Internet, Blogosphere, and Return to Zork, you’ll grow accustomed to the unholy shape beneath your fingers. Then, when you’re forced to use a different computer, that is, not a Dell or not a Macintosh, you’ll think it weird, inconvenient, and slightly uncomfortable. All because you’ll have to use a normal keyboard.

So forget Bill Gates; he’s trying to rule the world in an honest, straightforward fashion. Dell and Jobs are conditioning you, man. Rise up! By an old keyboard at a yard sale for a buck and use it. Or you will be a lifelong customer lackey of one of these aforementioned diablolical geniuses.

I beg of you.

(Why, yes, another part of my s.e.P.V.S.T. lifestyle is drinking a lot of coffee, sometimes two or three pots a day. Why do you ask?)

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The News Eric Mink Avoids

Brian J. Noggle

Courtesy of Allahpundit, we find this analysis of current events in Afghanistan courtesy to someone closer than Tucker Boulevard:

Three years after the Taliban were chased out, Kabul has returned to the real world. The streets are jammed with cars, the shops are full of goods. Last year Afghanistan’s economy grew by 30 per cent. The weirdest thing about Kabul under the Taliban used to be its unnatural silence. Now it’s as noisy as anywhere on earth.

This week, though, the move back towards teeming normality has received a perceptible check. The host of restaurants that have opened up here (I remember only three during the Taliban days, all disgusting and utterly predictable as to the menu) are empty.

And:

This is not Baghdad. The Americans and their allies are not unpopular here – except in the east and south of the country, where there has been fighting – and they are regarded as guarantors of Afghanistan’s stability. The West is seen as essentially benign. At the international donors’ conference in Berlin last April, $8 billion in aid and investment was pledged over the next three years: about as much as the Afghan economy can absorb.

There is no equivalent here of the stories you hear every day in Iraq, about people being insulted or mistreated by American soldiers; no suburbs, towns or cities are attacked with the latest American weaponry. If Afghanistan gets safely through this week, it will be a remarkable success story.

Eric Mink probably has enough cosmopolitan stuporhuman skill at seeing through reality to the fantasy beneath to ignore these hopeful signs. Still, I think he would waste even less of my time were he still in the clique that lauds Desperate Housewives for lifting a leg on the American Dream, wittily and intelligentsially, of course.

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