New and Improved Organic Locally-Sourced Hate
I’m an official selection at the Holy Shit I Went In The Cannes festival.
The “multiplier effect” is an economics term that means so much horseshit or some such. (Economics is the branch of sociology that specializes in humans fucking each other and not in a fun way.)
I’m here to tell you about the real multiplier effect.
It works a little something like this:
A store notices, perhaps even by accident, that products with a red dot sticker are selling slightly faster than non-stickered items.
The produces a sexual response within the store owners, but that’s a story I’m saving for another post. Click here to buy access to my premium content.
No Hapologies
This way to the helipad!
I like Hillary. I’ve been her supporter for a few presidential cycles. On her mailing list I think you’ll find me in the “Old School” section. I got seniority. And, depending how things go, she probably has my vote in 2016. The “probably” is a subtle hint that my vote is not ironclad. Not this time around.
Some people give Hillary a lot of shit. Some I agree with (to some extent). Some is just stupid, crass, and mean-spirited and falls under the category of “My Side Good, Your Side Bad” politics.
Me? I prefer to call ’em like I see ’em. And this is one such case.
After School Special: Booze Lotto Parenting
World’s greatest mom.
Sure, you love kids, so you gleefully punched out one, two or even octo-quantities of them. (Hint: Almost as many as a nine-round ammo clip.) But then, like a baby chick a few days after Easter Sunday, they stick around and are always underfoot, demanding attention and care.
What then?
It’s not like you can make a chicken-and-egg scrambled omelet with them and viola! Problem deliciously solved! (Although an amazing number of parents do find a way to carry out filicide but that’s decidedly outside the scope of this post.)
Like the vast majority of my blog posts, it all started when I decided to set foot out of my house…
Looking for some dinner my wife and I drove into the parking lot of the divey Chinese restaurant. The lot was amazingly full. What gives? The food must be awesome here, eh?
But when we walked into the dining area, only two tables were occupied. Huh?
That’s when I slapped my head and yelled, “D’oh!” I almost forgot I live in Oregon. That’s where they have a state-run lottery and run a continuous stream of commercials urging the citizenry to go out and gamble because doing so accomplishes “good things.” (Like increasing revenue into state coffers.)
Sure, they simultaneously run anti-gambling ads but that’s only because they like a mixed-up, dazed and confused populace. Let’s blast ’em with a hot mix of pro-gambling and anti-gambling messages … at the same time, they seem to be saying whilst rubbing their hands together in glee. That’ll learn ’em a lesson!
Indeed. What’s not good for the individual is apparently good for the state.
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LivingSocial Disease
Somehow I got signed up to LivingSocial. How? I don’t know. Maybe I pissed off one of my neighbors and they did it as passive-aggressive revenge. Well played.
Meanwhile, I happen to love me a good Mongolian BBQ. I have many happy memories of loading up bowls and topping them off with bean sprouts piled so high they resembled Marge Simpson’s hair. And onions. Lots and lots of onions.
One time my bowl came up and the lady in front of me grabbed it by mistake. Moments later she returned and said, in disgust, “This isn’t mine! It’s full of … onions!” I said good day, you onion hater. Those are my onions you’re talking about!
Another time I was in a Mongolian BBQ stuffing my face minding my own business and I watched two snot-nosed bubble-launchers kids load up giant bowls with nothing but meat. That’s bad form. Mom and dad watched approvingly. I can only assume they were also redshirting the bastards. Yeah, they were clearly on the right path. Anyway, these kids brought their steaming bowls of meat back to the table, picked at them momentarily, then pushed them away. It was none of my concern but it still pissed me off. Man, what a waste of good meat. And the food went uneaten, too.
The point is, I love me a mean Mongolian BBQ.
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Come On Be Happy
Drink this shit, you idiot!
Remember when I told you about the inventive advertising process of mascotization? That’s where you take your product and turn it into a “character” to appear in your ad campaigns. This is done by adding cartoonish facial features, the magic of animation and cutsey voice overs. I originally introduced this idea in a post entitled “Human spam at home and on the road” back in May of 2010.
If your product is a wrench, you draw a face on it and animate. Voila! Instant mascot. And so creative, too. This is important because it’s an opportunity to show your customers your inventive genius from which, they can infer, you’re a great business person with a great product.
In the four years since, this process has continued. And how.
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¡ Yo Fear-O Taco Bell !
I just had a filler enema!
I am not a foodie. (If you have to paint me in a box go with trekkie.) I know I’ve written about food a lot lately. It’s just this naive bleef that we have a right to know what we eat. And that increasingly the people who make food are seemingly at cross-purposes to that deceptively simple objective. (And sometimes cross-porpoises but that’s another story.)
Take Taco Bell, for example. (Figuratively, not literally, I hope.) A while back there was a hubbub that Taco Bell’s “seasoned beef” was rumored to be 35% beef and 65% other stuff. (Taco Bell eschews the word “filler.”)
Well, Taco Bell wants you to know the truth. They are proud to announced that their “seasoned beef” product is a whopping 88% beef and only 12% other stuff.
Forget about the daily grind, it’s time for an afternoon party! 88% is pretty damn good! Hot mess good. If only we could achieve that standard for everything in life.
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Unhealthy Whoregon
Advertising. Marketing. Sales. These are a few of the things I hate.
Life is meant to be more than simply persuading each other into spending money and consuming goods and services.
The fact that “sales” is the artifice of lies, pressure and Jedi mind tricks to compel people to do things they don’t really want doesn’t help its case.
Advertising can, theoretically, be something good. If you are in the market for a thing and there’s information about that thing at a certain price, that can actually be helpful. Unfortunately, most advertising has devolved into petulant attempts at distraction and attacks on the subconscious. Not just merely advertising, they are better classified as “persuasion attempts.” Some estimates claim the average American is subjected to 15,000 persuasion attempts per day. That’s hinky.
It seems obvious the game has shifted from being informative (advertising) to persuasion warfare (psychology). And it doesn’t have to adhere to the rules of the Geneva Convention or even be honest. Not content to simply remain available in case you might need something, the free market win-based transaction paradigm is now hunting you down to make the kill. The consumer is prey.
Taxes are funds taken by the awesome power of governmental force. As such, they are sacred in my mind. Taxes must not be used frivolously. Taxes must always be respected. Taxes must not be used to benefit some at the detriment of others. There are certain things taxes should be used for and certain things that must never be allowed to happen. Because taxes are monies taken by force that’s just the way it has to be.
What happens when tax dollars are used on advertising? Bad shit.
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Shouts from the Abyss 
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