A Word on TV Ads

I think the smartest thing TV advertisers and marketers did was not explain how advertisements work. 

People watch TV and say, "That commercial was so stupid, I'm never buying that!". I know, I'm one of those people. And generally, commercials are stupid. Most of the time they don't even address what it is they are selling or telling you. Sometimes its just a skit or a little funny blurb of frothy nothingness. For example, Emerald Nut commercials. If you've seen any of them, you know what I mean. 

And no one asks why it's like that, they just think it's stupid. But maybe I can enlighten some folks out there scratching their heads about TV commercials.

The main goal of TV ads is to implant images. The vast majority of people think advertising is about raising awareness of something or someone. And to a certain, small degree, it is. But mainly, they try to imprint an image into your mind that you won't forget. Look at it this way, does Coke really need to make commercials to raise awareness about itself? No, everyone knows about Coke. I think I read somewhere that, after the word "OK", Coke is the most understood word in the world. 

So the reason we keep seeing Coke ads on TV is to put an image into our heads. But now you ask, well if Coke is the second most understood word in the world, why would we need an image of it in our heads? We need it in our heads so when we go to the grocery store or pass a vending machine, we see the product and we think of the ad. And chances are, because you saw that ad on TV, you already had Coke on your mind way in the back filed under "Pointless Shit". 

Ads don't make people get up and buy shit. I think they'd rather have it that way but it doesn't work out so well. Ads put an image in your head so the next time your out and you see it, you'll buy it. 

The reason I said all that is so I can tell you this:

The other day, I was watching TV and I saw a series of seemingly unrelated TV ads. In books or movies, any time you see the words "seemingly unrelated", you know some crazy shit is about to go down. 

Anyway, I'm watching TV and I see five commercials in a row. The ads in order were: One for a chain-restaurant, one for a dieting medication, one for ITT Tech trade school, one for 5 Hour Energy, and finally, one for sleep medication. 

As I can figure it, these five ads represent the five virtues or addictions of American culture: Food Addiction, Body-Image Addiction, Work Addiction, Energy Addiction, Sleep Addiction. 

Now if you bought my whole spiel about image implantations, one can only wonder why people struggle to find an answer to their depression and neurosis. And this string of seemingly unrelated ads perfectly crystalizes all that is wrong with TV, advertising, and most of media. I have provided a little thought-sequence of a typical American whose perceptions of the world mirror the sequence of ads that I saw. 

Well, since I'm at this restaurant and they have free refills on soda and fries, I'm just going to gorge myself to the point of asphyxiation. After all, I have the right to consume as much as I want with complete disregard for the processes that came together which eventually brought the endless fries and soda into my greasy food-hole. Oh no, but I can't be fat! But I'm in luck because I can just take this diet pill and I'm be all better! But jeez is this life of dieting and gorging expensive. Oh I know, I'll just work more! And maybe I'll go to school so I can get a better job so I can buy more food and dieting pills! Oh but now I feel sluggish from all the sugar water and dieting and working. Oh here we are, 5-hour energy! Now I can stay awake long enough to work and work and work to finance my ridiculous eating/dieting routine. 

So now my tummy is full, my wallet's fat, my stomach is slim and tone, and I'm perkier than a stereotypical high school cheerleader on meth. But something's wrong. Some natural process was missed. What was it? Something that just naturally happens...oh that's right - sleep! I forgot to sleep. Oops! It's okay, there's medicine for that too! 

People are being pulled into so many directions. There's some more addictions out there that just make people unhappy with their situations - like love addiction i.e. eHarmony, match.com, chemistry.com, etc. This one may be the one addiction that is at the top of the totem pole. It's the one that all the other addictions are leading up to. The Final Solution. 

But thats the magic of TV ads. They plant this little seed in your head and when you leave your house and you go to the market it blooms into a terrifying plant of self-doubt, low self-esteem, and fear. 

Why It Sucks to be a Teacher

I like school a lot but few share my feelings. That's okay, they can feel how ever they want about the subject. But one thing that irritates me is that students generally hate their teachers. And they expect everyone to follow along. If a class demands more than what they are willing to shell out, these students automatically assume the teacher's an asshole or they're out to get them or some other retarded fantasy.

Sometimes, hating a teacher can be a good ice-breaker when you first start a class and don't know anyone. That's okay, so long as the hatred is only used as an ice-breaker and no real feelings of malice exist. But after the first couple weeks the, "Man, Mr. Teacher is so lame! What does he expect? I mean this is only a Gen-Ed," conversations should stop entirely. We should be adults and I can't stress should enough because from what I've seen around campus, I'd swear I was dropped off at a playground.

Maybe people just don't know how to form friendships where the basis isn't mutual hatred. Maybe they are still in "high school mode" where a collective disdain for another group of people is really the only glue that holds them together.

Well I don't disdain teachers. I dain them.

And God help you if you like the class and/or teacher. Those people are even more hated than the teacher! It goes beyond being a teacher's pet, which can be pretty annoying. They feel like you betray them, the other students. You commit high treason when you "take the teacher's side". If you don't take up arms to an eight page paper, you are fighting for the wrong cause. It makes me sick.

These people are here to be educated and they want everything but that. I think people forget why they are in college sometimes. It pisses me off because I genuinely like class and being educated and all those sour fucks ruin it for me because I can't be myself around them in fear of being burned at the proverbial stake.

So it sucks to be a teacher because odds are, your students will hate you and for no good reason other than it being the trendy thing to do.

The Saw/Applebee's Mystique

Whenever I think of the Saw movies, I think of Applebees. It's just the whole "Capitalism at it's best" idea. And just let me put it out there, I have nothing against the whole torture porn movement in cinema. Hell, I'm a horror junkie myself, and I embraced the movement back during the days of Videodrome. But I hate the Saw movies so much for the same reason I hate Applebees.

I'm sure Applebees started out as a nice little neighborhood bar and grill in some small quaint Midwestern town, as all soon-to-be-fucked-up-psychologically things do. And I'm almost positive that there food was pretty good. So good in fact that after a couple years, Grandpa and Grandma Applebee opened another Applebees in the town over. And then there were five Applebees. And then ten. Then a hundred. Then a thousand. Now there are over eighteen-hundred Applebees choking our collective arteries. And if everything goes to plan, there should be three thousand Applebees by the year 2020. Awesome! Wait no, Applebees sucks, nevermind. The reason Applebees sucks, and the reason why all franchise/chain restaurants suck, is because they cut corners on the things that matter.

When a company expanse like that, they have to save money by using sub-par ingredients and storage devices and so on. So how does this relate to Saw? It's the same process.

The first Saw movie was okay, not unlike the first Applebees. It had an interesting premise but the novelty of it wore thin, on me at least, especially from the horrendous acting. But it made a lot of money, so they made more. A lot more. And just like Applebees, the quality diminishes as the franchise grows and reason is because they cut corners on things to save money. It would be more expensive to actually hire a guy write a "plot"and "characters" for the Saw movies. So they just said to hell with that and just thought up really elaborate ways to torture, maim, and kill human beings. Congratu-fucking-lations.

But this is only "Capitalism at it's BEST". Imagine "Capitalism RUN RAMPANT". You'd have Saw resturants and theme parks. You'd have a Saw-Ville, with spurious torture devices placed in every home. Oh the money to be had! The best though, would be a Saw holiday where people would be guilt-tripped into buying torture devices for friends and families, like during Christmas. Everyone would gather around the "Face-Ripper-Off-er" that's lit with little lights and they'd sing made-up songs of flogging and pain and everything would be right with the world. Everything except for the whole sanctioning of torture and death part.

How the EMOs Stole Christmas

Well it's Halloween and the studios have decided to re-release The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D. They've done this before, last year I think, but this year I saw something online that I did not before. This movie is the only one that I can think of that people hate solely based on the nature of the fanbase. On IMDb, the site I love so much, has a thread on the movie entitled, "Emo kids ruin everything...". Apparently this guy hates this movie solely because of the emo kids who obsess over it. And he's got followers too, he's not alone.
But that just made me think. I thought of all the stupid fanboys in the world and I realized that I can't really say that they make me hate whatever medium they devote thier lives too. Trekkies and Star Wars fanatics were the first ones to come to mind. And while they are equally annoying, I can't really pull myself to hate Star Trek or Star Wars because of them. Moreover, even including my hatred for George Lucas, I still like the Star Wars franchise.
And this once again proves my theory that most people on IMDb are morons.

IMDb: The Scum of the Internet finds a Graceland

I love movies so much. People sometimes get irriated with me because of my love for film. I remember watching Straw Dogs with someone and asking them questions about it. I was just trying to spark a conversation using the old Socratic method. They didn't really care about it but I wanted them to. I'd seen that movie so many times and it means a lot to me but they just said it was "wierd". Whatever, it's okay, I'm just not like other people.
So being a cinephile, I browse IMDb until the wee hours of the night. And one thing that I'm drawn to by some mysterious force is the message boards. Sometimes, there can be rich discussion to be had among the users of IMDb. But most of the time, you run into hate-filled anti-movie people. Cinephobes. They hate movies. Everything that spews out of thier rotten mouths is only in reference to why they hated something or why something was a horrible movie.
That's fine. I don't expect everyone to love every movie they see, I know I don't. But when I watch a movie and don't like it, I think of the reasons why I don't like it. Then I think of examples of those reasons. This may seem like the most logical thought process to use when discussing anything really. You have an opinion, you support it. Well that little fantasy doesn't exist on IMDb. You need only state that a movie sucks and you are immediately more knowledgable or sophisticated in filmmaking. And it works in vice-versa. People to go on and on about how great a movie is can't explain why. And it pisses me off.
And so the vast majority of IMDb consists of those individuals yelling about how a movie sucked or about how a movie was the best ever. They are so absolute. They're like those fanatic religious fundamentalists who strap ten pounds of plastique to themselves.
So discussions about movies are reduced to shouting matches and name calling and stupid pointless banter that makes me want to stick my head in front of a subway train.

A Fine Look at Fascism

Disgusted is the only word I can use to describe what I saw on CNN.com yesterday. Anyone who is reading this blog, which probably is no one, I just want you to look at the picture to the right. The young man being accosted is Andrew Meyer, a 21-year-old journalism student from the University of Florida. Campus police are arresting him. And yes, that's a book in his hand. Not a gun or a knife or a bomb. A goddamn book. After they arrested him, they tasered him. In any other case, that would have made me laugh but again, I'm filled with nothing but contempt and disgust having seen what happened.

It all started in Florida a few days ago when Senator John Kerry was having one of his "town hall meetings". At the end, Andrew stepped up to the mic for the Q&A session. After a quick precursor to his question, Andrew asked Kerry about reports of disenfranchised black voters and fraudulent voting machines during the 2004 election. He was then told his time was up after about 30 seconds. Then his mic was cut. Then he wanted to know why his mic was cut. Then he was arrested. Why the fuck was he arrested? Seriously there was no reason. He wasn't a threat to anyone. He had a legitamate question, albeit on the abrasive side, but he a had a solid question none the less. And he resisted arrest, which I can't quite condone, but I do believe in fighting against fascism which is what I think he was doing. They were arresting him for asking a question. That's fucked up beyond words. So after he resisted arrest, he was pinned to the ground and tasered. And he screamed in agonizing pain and it was one of the most shocking things I've ever witnessed. A young man, voicing his opinion, and being arrested and tasered for it. And everyone in the room is yelling, "Why are you doing that! Stop!" It was horrifying.

And the Fox News reports stressed Andrew as being a "prankster" like that matters. Like a young man brandishing a book instead of a firearm can be tasered and that is justified because he "likes to pulls pranks". Are you fucking kidding me, Fox News?

And Meyer's lawyers are worried that the video of this kid being taser will inevitabley hurt his case because, in a juror's eyes, "the kid had it coming". Are you fucking serious? So next time I ask a question about the integrity of a political leader, I should watch my ass from getting tasered. And the police are trying to charge the kid with disrupting the public. Now that is interesting because I guarantee you if the cops hadn't arrested him, there wouldn't have been a disturbance. The kid would have asked the question and Kerry would have answered. OH MY FUCKING CHRIST IT WOULD HAVE BEEN CHAOS!!!!

The lack of civil liberties being displayed here staggers me.

The Controversial Abortion Entry

Don't worry, I'm still going to talk about idiots on the internet. I just watched like ten videos on youtube about abortion, both pro-life and pro-choice. I'm not even going to tell you what I think of the issue because, well, to be honest I don't even have one. I'm a guy so I could never make the decision. So two of the videos that really stood out, see the issue from both sides. The first you'll get that right away but it is ineffective, which I'll explain later, and the other appears to be something else until the very end.

The first video is from Rosary Films and is frankly titled, "Medical Science Abortion is Killing of Human Beings". Grammar aside, the video really is inept in proving anything. The video poses the question, "Is this a human being?" as it shows various stages of pregnacy. After each stage, the question is posed and the answer, "Yes, this is a human being". Thanks for that well-researched, articulated, and elaborate analysis and explaination. Praise Allah. This is another sad attempt to guilt trip people into not getting abortions. Though they forget that guilt is the last thing on the mind of a rape victim. The truth of the matter is, that question is of theological nature and can never be answered using empirical evidence because there is no evidence. No one really "knows" when life starts because for life to "start", that means it has to not exist and life is constantly in existance. The cells involved in the fertilization process are alive, so does that mean every time I jack off, am I killing thousands of possible babies?

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PPamlX4HQ0

The second video is pro-choice and has a "cool, ironic, witty, way to prove to conservatives that liberals are smarter then them". But in reality, the guy who shot this was an idiot and made the pro-life protestors look like saints. Basically, this guy walks around a protest and interviews people, asking them what the punishment should be if abortions were made illegal. To this, they all said that they didn't know. They didn't know what the punishment should be. They know that abortion should be illegal and why but they didn't know what the punishment should be. Many said that there shouldn't really be a punishment because either a) they didn't know the judicial system adequately, or b) it was between them and God. So the guy at the very end asks, "Well why should it be illegal if there should be no punishment?" and "What crime is illegal that doesn't have a punishment?"

So what does this guy accomplish: two things. First, that pro-life individuals are not crazy Bible totting hypocrits who think that any woman who gets an abortion be hanged. Instead, he reveals these people to be genuinely compassionate towards these women who recieve abortions. The second thing he accomplishes is that these people are dedicated to the protest. They really only care about these babies that are being killed, as they say. It really enlightened me to the whole situation. These people just care about life. Who gives a shit if they don't know what should happen to the women if abortions were illegal. The guy wanted to make them out to be idiots, like they didn't really know what they were doing out there, but really he made them out to be saints.

Here's the link to this callous nit-wit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo