A Man Said To The Universe

You have more than likely seen the commercials for Lipozene, that fabulous weight loss supplement that helps you lose "body fat" (As opposed to what? Two feet left of your body fat?). Any way, there is a telling bit of information in the small print that constantly flashes across the screen during the ads. I am paraphrasing here as I really don't care enough to record the add to get the 100% correct text:

Average weight loss was 3 lbs. over an 8 week period.

So that means the loss was 1.5 lbs. a month. Lets say that together and let it sink in:

The loss was 1.5 lbs. a month.

But wait! There is more! At one point of the ad they say (paraphrasing again) "78% of each pound lost was pure body fat". So doesn't that mean that only 2.25 lbs. of fat was lost over 8 weeks, 1.125 lbs. a month? And considering the nature of the product, I am going to doubt that the study was tightly controlled and that the participants didn't know they were taking a weight loss supplement. Which would make the amount of weight loss statistically insignificant. Now I will as some point gather the fortitude to track down the study data. At at that point, I will retract the previous statement if shown incorrect, but don't hold your breath. And save your money.

I ran over to CVS the other day and in the parking lot was treated to the sight of a green VW decorated with sixties-ish flowers and smileys along with "Jesus Loves You!" all over. Sickly sweet, wildly overdone, and mildly retarded. I laughed, muttered an explitive under my breath, and walked inside. I determined that I would NOT see if I could figure out who it was in the store that drove that car. I managed to do it, but it was REALLY hard. So I check out, get back in my car and pull out and what car should be in front of me, but the VW. Not entirely to my surpise, I saw ther was one more thing on the evangamobile that I hadn't noticed before. "LAST CALL!" was written on the bumper.

Ahhhhh!! Thats the stuff. There is the threat. "Jesus is happy happy!", says the evangamobile, "but don't forget that you burn in hell for ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and also get poked with pointy sticks if you don't believe in the uber fairy!" "Jesus loves you! (unless you use your capacity for reason in which case he will majorly fuck you up." Yay! Xian love!!!

I really have to make it a point to ask some believers what the process is like when they have their capacity for sensing irony removed. Also how they add the ability to compartmentalize things beyond the reach of reason. I bet it hurts.

God's dream: Peace and Harmony.

I swear...the idiot who chooses the things to put on this church's marquee is a functional idiot. Isn't their god an omniscient, omnipotent dude? Buy he has dreams? Things that he needs to strive toward? They seem to have a deep and fundamental misunderstanding about what their god fellow is supposed to be able to do.

Bad advertising drives me nuts. I am constantly amazed at what companies think will sell their product and/or that they would want to be associated with some of the drek produced. So here is one of my current unfavorites from US Cellular.

The commercial is a girl telling about how it was hard to go away to college because she used to have to help her dad do the bills as he never learned to read (or do math apparently). Then he took his US Cellular bill to a US Cellular store and a nice woman helped him with it. So then he brought his other bills to her to have the nice US Cellular person help him with them too. The girl thanks US Cellular for service above and beyond. (I would include a link to the commercial, but I haven't been able to find it on the web yet)

Truly a heartwarming story on the surface. But it only takes a few moments of consideration to see what a horrible trainwreck this commercial actually represents, on many different levels. Lets go through them, shall we?

1. The girl is an enabler.
   
   Its too bad her father is illiterate, huh? If only there was a way for him to learn to read, like some sort of program, or class...hmmm. No, she will just peform this basic life skill for him.


2. The father is a tool.
   
   There are a few options here, either he is incapable of learning to read in which case he is a functional idiot or he refuses to learn which makes him an ass.


3. A kindness has been repaid with abuse
   
   The nice USC lady helped the man with his USC bill. How nice, and certainly within her job description. So to repay this kindness, the dad foists his problems onto a stranger. Even if the nice USC lady is happy to do it, it is a shitty thing to do. The man is a tool. So again rather than take responsibility for his own life, he forces somebody else to clean up his readily fixable mess.


4. USC has opened itself up for a world of hurt
   
   Apart from the poorly chosen human interest story, USC has majorly messed up. Do you think that people will NOT take this as a invitation to go to their local USC store with their problems? What sort of idiot watches this commercial and does not see it as a huge potential liability when Mrs. Johnson walks in and asks the USC staff to help her find her cat, Snuffy Wuggums, and they say no? Or am I just misreading this? USC is now the "Help you with the minutiae of your life" company? Who thought that would be a good idea? How long will it take for some backlash?

This really is a horrible ad. And like so many others, I envision the company people in charge having just watched it sitting around the table and saying "Yep, go with it!" despite the glaring problems. I cannot understand how this could have gotten by all the people looking at it without at least one person pointing out its significant problems.

OK, the holidays are over. Fortunately the "War against Christmas" was not as prominent this year. One thing that was being played up was the whole "Keep Christ in Christmas" thing with the manger car magnets. (And I thought the yellow ribbons were annoying, sheesh)

One of the big problems I see with this is where the argument lies. I am not aware of any entity trying to remove anything from anybodies holiday. If a corporate entity wants its employees to say "Happy Holidays" to be more inclusive, well that is their right. They are not trying to remove belief in anybody (and if somehow they could, that would be wrong). So as I see the problem, it is NOT people trying to take the Christ out of others' Christmas but rather believers attempting to insert Christ into mine. What a surprise, believers playing the role of victim-bully! Again.

The irony here being that Christmas is the hijacked solstice celebration that they ALREADY inserted their little fantasy into. Hence the name? Hello?