I enjoy going to restaurants, asking for a "cherry soda," and listen to how most waitpersons instantly repeat back to me "cherry Coke" or "cherry Pepsi." On a couple occasions, I've gotten something resembling plain seltzer with grenadine.

The "Trend Watch" has been removed from my browser's home page.

Am I the only one who never got anything out of 3D glasses?

Advertising Round-up (Cinco de Mayo 2010 installment)

I love poking fingers at advertising. It's a nice, reliable target, and I figure any debate that may emerge will be nicely light-hearted and not blow up in a hideous ball of flame. So here I go.......

.....Starting with the Progressive Insurance saleslady. She's annoying. Please, someone make her go away. Fakely (is that a word?) perky salespeople are annoying and, as far as I know, virtually nonexistent in real life. Why would anybody who sells insurance (the very idea of which makes at least one portion of my brain blow up in a hideous ball of flame, but that's my problem) be that perky?

Another highly annoying trend in ads is that of things seeming as though they really ought to be funny.......you guessed it.....but aren't. That brings me to the Dairy Queen "lips" icon. I think I've mentioned that character on here before, but I never really explained why. Lips, if you're out there......you're not funny. Either stop trying or go away. Arby's Oven Mitt and the lady from T-Mobile both seem to have disappeared from our televisions, and I haven't missed either of them. They had the same problem.

One more major irritant to me is any use of the phrase "ooh-la-la" in an advertisement. As soon as I hear that, I make it a point to not buy that product.

And the big one that really seems to be in full swing these days: using words naturally exclusive to one part of speech (noun, verb, etc.) as a different one. I don't know if I ever actually noticed it that much before recently, when I first saw billboards for Droid (whatever exactly Droid is) over Chicago that read "A bare-knuckled bucket of does." When I first saw that, I was confused. I interpreted it for a moment as pronounced "a bare-knuckled bucket of d'ohs." I thought "Uhh...okay. What am I going to do with a bunch of female deer? Lucy doesn't get along with other quadrupeds that well. She hissed at her own brother for years." Then I got closer to the thing and saw at the bottom, in smaller print, "...In a world of doesn't." Suddenly, it all became clear: certain marketing people must be destroyed. I've noticed the phenomenon many times since then. I think Chex Mix is now calling themselves "a bag of interesting." In fact, one of the most recent ads out there features the promoter actually catching itself using "bacon" as a verb. Ironically, it was the Dairy Queen "lips" icon........

....Anyway, I happened to recall an old Calvin & Hobbes strip while I was thinking about that. I go along with Hobbes. Leave it to the cat to be the voice of reason.

All right. Um.....another one I just remembered: the occasional tag line describing something as "being the new (other thing)." That may have been clever once, but now it's just cliché. And confusing at that.

How should one advertise, you ask? Simple. Follow the example of Empire Today carpeting. Describe what you're selling in an easy voice....not shouting. Car dealers, I'm lookin' at you. Then, at the end, have a nice, simple, catchy jingle. Empire's been using the same jingle, recording and all, for I don't know how long. It's gotta be at least from the Sixties. I can tell you this: I don't know if I'll ever actually use Empire's services, but, by golly, I know their phone number by heart, thanks to their jingle.

On radio, meanwhile.........yeah, I still sometimes turn the radio on when my mp3 player's battery runs out or the Cubs game is on.......I understand they once would run programming alternating between one song and one commercial, rather than a handful of songs followed by seemingly interminable commercials. I wouldn't mind bringing that back. Or radio ads could be in the form of nicely crafted songs. I got a few vintage Coke ads by popular bands from back in the day, such as the Who, the Box Tops, the Blues Magoos, and so on. They're probably on YouTube somewhere. But a nicely crafted original song is good. The Kars for Kids song, on the other hand, is one of the most revolting sounds I've ever heard. I change the station as soon as that keyboard plays.

And that can be my ending note for this rambling: kids' singing is not pleasant. Keep that stuff on your own digital cameras, Facebook accounts or whatever. I don't care if he's dead; if Michael and the Jackson Five pop up on my radio, I change the station. If the kid writes their own songs, bleeding angst and oozing creativity, preferably with a psychedelic touch, then maybe I'll consider them. And, while I'm at it, that Just For Men ad with the little girls giving that stuff to their father is just creepy.

Right. Well, I'm off to dinner. I want my baby back baby back baby back baby back ribs. And maybe a Tommy James record.

Actually, no I'm not. I just remembered one more annoying trend in advertising: using re-recorded versions of classic songs in the ad, especially if the lyrics are altered to suit the product. I don't know if there's a connection between the Chili's jingle and "Draggin' the Line", but I haven't seen the Applebee's ads with the bastardized oldies for a while now, and I'm perfectly okay with that. (Although it was pretty laughable when Kentucky Fried Chicken was using "Sweet Home Alabama" for their ads.)

Okay, now I'm done.

(All company names are trademarked in the names of themselves. Blah blah blah.)


Edit, a few days later: I was just reminded of a groovy commercial character earlier when I saw one of the ads: the Miller High Life delivery (or, more frequently, revocation) guy. Go get them rich business @$$#*£&$!

I just discovered I have a "follower"!

Who are you? How did you find me?

Someone tell me again what people see in Joe Cocker....?

Re: One of those random bits that comes up in the upper right, or "Come, all Freudian disciples!"

Specifically: My train of thought hasn't really derailed so much as it has driven into a wormhole in the space-time continuum that opened up on the track, and landed on a strange planet whose predominant life forms closely resemble trains...

I just dreamt about this. The scene opens on a guy who appears to be riding a train that's running alongside another one. He's quite alone, evidently, and he shouts out his situation in the hope that someone will hear him and respond. "I'm an interplanetary explorer, and I've landed on a strange planet. Is there anyone here?" Suddenly, part of the train next to him seems to form a bizarre, kind of olive green face that speaks: "You have no idea how strange it is....." "I just got an idea," responds the human. "Kindly get off my friend," says the train. "Ow! What the hell?" says the train that the man has been riding. The man quite cinematically falls onto the sparse, dusty grass and rolls around until he stops on his back, gazing up at the trains, who have stopped as well. "Is there anything to eat in this place?" says the human. "Funny you should ask....." A lovely action scene ensues, in which the human discovers another "locomotive being," this one with humanoid life forms swarming all over, in and out of, it like an infestation of parasites. None of them speak or display any kind of "intelligence," nor do they notice him.

Flash to: something that appears to be a giant warehouse. Most of the people herein are oblivious to everything. Two are not. They run frantically in search of an elevator, which they eventually find. It seems to close and depart without them, but they manage to jam a bit of it and get in. At the wide-open top level, there's a giant sliding plexi-glass door with a wooden grid throughout—too large for a single person to budge. But, on the other side of the door.......a large group of people. Not sheeple. They work together with the two of us (oh, yeah, did I mention I'm one of the two?) to slide open the door. It gets more difficult the closer we get to opening it, but we do eventually produce a wide-enough crack for the two of us to squeeze through. The lot of us proceed to fly over the dull grey parking lot into the similarly dull grey sky.

I continue to see that grey light unique to a rainy sky. Except everyone else has disappeared. I momentarily remain in the sort of suspension that I sing about in "Frequent Flyer." The light briefly changes color just a little bit, but the same grey remains.....just on the other side of the sheets that have hitherto shielded my suddenly half-open eyes......

Well, I hope you enjoyed that bit of nonsense. Tune in next week when I investigate the printer at the end of the tunnel, or whatever that one says.

Relation or coincidence?

I took the train home yesterday, and I sleeplessly looked out the window most of the trip. I couldn't help but notice that, in a few of the small towns along the railroad and US 45, there's a little blue building next to the tracks. It looks the same in all those towns.....namely, it looks abandoned. I had to wonder if these small towns used to have passenger train stations and, therefore, nice little relatively local trains that stopped there. I'm a fan of public transit, and it seems a pity to not give small-townies the option thereof. I think if I were stuck in one of those small towns, I'd go ins—well, I'm already insane, but—I'd require a straitjacket, yeah. Kind of run-down looking pits of boredom, they seem.

These are the kinds of things you see on public transit.....pitiful small towns, and what seems to be a full square mile of a (one) Wal-Mart outside of Bourbonnais. (See it in Street View on Illinois 50 at "Indian Oaks", just north of the Interstate interchange.)

Anybody else hearing more sirens than usual recently, or is it just me?

Trend Watch Noticer

MSN changed their homepage recently, which I noticed for the simple reason that one of my e-mail accounts is on Hotmail. They have this thing now in the lower right called a "trend watch," which lists a bunch of nouns and whether those subjects are increasing, decreasing, or remaining steady in apparent popularity.

What would be the purpose of this thing, exactly? Is it a strong suggestion to readers of what to care about? The few times I've seen Chile on there, it's always been accompanied by a red down arrow. Or are they trying to expose the shortcomings of the sort of people who use Twitter? I don't even look at Twitter myself, much less use it, so I can't really offer any comment on the sort of people who use Twitter.

Either way, it seems totally useless to me, so what I think I'll do is add a nonsensical "trend watch" to the side bar of this blog. The graphics won't be as advanced, but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway.

Bump: I wonder if, just maybe...

....the story of Noah's Ark refers to an event that's yet to come....

I had a wicked dream about this last sleep....probably influenced by the peculiar amount of snow that the northern hemisphere has seen this winter (and is still seeing). It came on the heels of other dreams involving a stolen car, hopelessly drunken acquaintances (actually nobody to whom I can attach a name I know, but they were acquaintances in the dream), and finally my own being held hostage by a psychotic police state. And I don't mean imprisoned, I mean being in a large house and part of a group of people whose numbers were ever falling.

So I got to thinking once again about the possibility of global warming inducing massive floods to "clean up" the wholly messed-up world we're on. And I don't know if anyone reads this blog regularly, but I do wish that somebody would comment and let me know what they think.

I'm still here.

Just haven't had much to say lately, is all.

Printscreen: Simultaneous Headlines

I don't actually have anything to say at the moment. I just thought the blog needed a little more green.

I saw an advertisement on the bus: "You've found a cure for cancer; now take it to market." I got a better idea: "You've found a cure for cancer; now CURE SOME &%@#ING CANCER PATIENTS!!!!!!

*sigh* Another one for the "Good ol' Fashioned Stupidity" tag

I should get a laptop.

That way, when I'm out at the record stores, I can instantly look at my other blog and make sure I don't already have something before I buy it again.

High definition: Like......maaaan....it's when, like......everything just seems so CLEAR....and REAL, man........you gotta try this!

A lot of people's allergies are acting up this time of year. 'Tis the sneezin'.

Creepy is....

....Thinking, while supposedly asleep, that you hear your father whispering to you about doing stuff before your mother gets home if he were you.



It must have been the rain or something......

I was thinking.....you know how inbreeding produces, um, messed-up offspring? Well, if all the theories about the origin of the universe are true, it would explain a lot........

Suppose a tornado came around here at 10 AM on the first Tuesday of the month. Would anyone realize it?


(If this makes no sense to you, then I explain: 10 AM on the first Tuesday of the month is when they test the sirens.)

I dreamt I was snuggling Lucy, and when I woke up, my head was ridiculously buried in my pillow......

I miss Google-bombs.

I couldn't afford to see Springsteen, 'cos times is rough.

Writing from work....

...Because my home Internet connection is out. Apparently the earliest they can get out to look at it is Thursday (when I'm likely to be in class). So if you miss me, that's why. Cheers.

Headline that I, for one, would have thought twice about

Senator Kennedy, liberal giant, buried

—Reuters

Phrase heard in local car dealer ad

"...brand new used car..."

Latest story idea......

Husband kills wife out of frustration over her failure to pay attention to him because she's wholly engrossed in "Law & Order"-type television shows.

Questions/Answers/Advice about home recording with Audacity?

Feel free to join the technical discussion in the comments of my It's Psych song post. Cheers!

There are few things so annoying as people who ask questions of you and immediately answer them for you.

What the HELL are those new parking machines on the streets of Chicago? Only quarters, dollar coins, and credit cards? What's wrong with dimes and nickels? Or dollar bills, for that matter? Can't these things make change? And what's wrong with individual meters? Was the perk of finding a meter with time on it from the previous car too much of a strain on the economy? (Hey, it's possible...) I suppose I could Google it, but I'm not going to....

True Brilliance is....

...A toaster, the lever of which will not get pushed all the way into toasting position unless the thing is plugged in.

We have one of those at home.

We don't have one of those where I am now.

First Christmas ad of the season! August FIRST this year!

Idea

Vehicles powered by human waste.

Can it be done?

How awesome would that be? We create our own fuel for our vehicles while finding a practical use for our own "waste."

And, for cryin' out loud, don't tell the suits!

Christ, there's that headline again: "World's Oldest Man Dies." STOP IT! The world's oldest people are always dying! It's not news!

The powers that be realized the error of their ways when they heard Jackson Browne's "The Pretender." So they did away with ice cream vendors.

My Wholly Bizarre and Incredible Excuse For Today

Usually, when I'm here, I dream about a variation of my aunt's house, and when I'm at my aunt's, I dream about a variation of here. So when I dreamt of here when I was here and then woke up here, I got confused and went back to sleep, expecting to wake up at my aunt's.

The Mandrake Memorial - s/t (a quick review by ~C.A.~)

A wonderfully odd mixture of pop and baroque sounds with just a slight dash of rock. Many of the songs feature a pseudo-harpsichord sound. Me, well, though my favorite song on here is the well-paced "Dark Lady," I think that, overall, the softer sounds on this album are the ones that work the best. The vocalist's voice seems especially well-suited to soft sounds. Some of the musical themes seem to reappear throughout the album, as though the whole album were a Beethoven-esque symphony. All said and done, though, this is a nice album. Some soft moments, some odd moments, some songs that run right into each other, and a proper psychedelic ending with voices and a sound effect. Good stuff.

What exactly is "passion fruit"? It's all over the friggin' supermarket now.

Dead Celebrity Round-Up

Bad time for celebrities these days. It only seems like my humble duty as a blogger to face it. When three of them depart on the same day that I see the largest real rainbow I've seen in a long, long time, it's rather difficult to ignore. And I know it's probably coincidence, but it still lingers in the mind like the smell of curry. (These are not designed to be jokes in poor taste. I'm just telling it like I perceive it. I turned 23 this past Friday.)

Ed McMahon: My generation might remember him as the Publisher's Clearing House guy. I'm only vaguely aware of who Johnny Carson was.

Sky Saxon: Does the Seeds' founder qualify as a celebrity? Well, although I've not had much success getting into the Seeds' brand of garage/psych, this is probably the one of the recent that affects me the most.

Farrah Fawcett: Never really known much about her. I may recall the occasional headline about her battle with cancer. I caught an episode or two of "Charlie's Angels" a couple nights ago; she does have a nice smile.....

Michael Jackson: All due respect to Michael Jackson (however much that may be), I was never a fan. Don't much care for the music; in my life, he's mainly been a tabloid and media favorite, not unlike Paris Hilton or the "Octomom." And you know how much I care about tabloid and media favorites......

Billy Mays: All I can say about Billy Mays is: Advertisements will seem quiet without him.

A Scene I'd Like to Enact

Two guys, one of which is me, at a bus stop. I'm in yellow; other guy's in cyan (or light blue, if you prefer).

Hey.

How ya doin'.

Eh, not too bad. I'd be a lot better if the coffee machine were fixed, but I should be able to have everything done on time.

Ah, you dig that whole "deadlines" thing, huh?

Hang on a sec....I'm not talking to you; I'm on the phone.

....Ah.

....Yeah, I'll CC the whole HR department. Shouldn't be a problem. .......Talk to you later. Bye. .....Haven't you learned to tell when someone's talking on the phone yet?!

Hang on a sec....I'm not talking to you; I'm talking to the voices in my head. .......Yeah, nevermind that stuff, why don't you just throttle him by the neck? Let him know you're not a &$@# robot! .....Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about! Catch you later. ........Anything else I can do for you?

Anyone else ever feel like they've pulled a muscle yawning? I've done it a few times now. It's really weird and unpleasant.