Ads, ads, ads. Pop-up ads, more ads playing in front of a movie than movie trailers (which are, essentially ads, themselves), ads in schools, ads above urinals, junk mail, spam, televisions playing ads in the checkout line, those dudes who stand on the street corner with those big red arrows and dance around (Every time my job gets me down, I just think of that poor dude. Granted, some of them get into it and do some crazy tricks with their signs, but most of them seem like they'd rather fed into a wheat thresher.), advertising on tombstones Ads are almost literally everywhere these days.

But that's still only almost, that's not good enough. As any good advertising executive knows, the best campaigns are those that the average citizen cannot escape

Advertising on the inside of elevator doors: When people are waiting to reach their floor, they are desperate for something to read, anything they can lock their eyes onto besides their fellow passengers. You have a captive audience staring at a space on the inside of elevator doors for anywhere from a few seconds for a few minutes. I'm surprised I haven't seen this in effect already.

Also, advertisers could really take advantage of the elevator environment and people's states of mind while they are confined in small metal boxes with other human beings. ("Don't you wish your fellow passengers used Right Guard? They probably wish you did, too.", "When was this elevator last inspected? Consider State Farm Life Insurance.", "If you've ever felt like you need to GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE RIGHT NOW try the new Ford Exploration SUV!")

Advertising at stoplights: Once again, a bunch of potential customers line up and stare at the same area for a period of time. This could generate a lot of much-needed revenue for cities. I envision mounted weather-proof LCD televisions at each major instersection, playing commercials timed precisely to be in sync with the length of red lights. This may also help the flow of traffic in that people would be less likely to to plow through red lights if they think they might miss a really cool Mountain Dew spot; people wouldn't creep up constantly on red lights, since it's cleary not going to change until the ad is over; and people wouldn't sit around, unaware that the light has turned green, since the end of the commercial would signal that is time for them to go.

I've already seen this implemented to some degree. In San Jose, at the corner of Bascom and Hamilton Avenues, is a recumbent bicyclist who simply goes around and around the intersection, passing in front of the parked cars as he does so. Attached to his bicycle is a sign advertising apartments for rent. He does this all day on weekends as far as I can tell. I wonder if he and the sign-dancer guys ever get together and argue about who has the worse job?

Literature sponsorships: In cinema, product placement is as common as the wads of chewing-gum on the theatre floor, why not incorporate that into literature as well? I'm sure most modern bestselling fiction authors wouldn't require that much monetary persuasion to have their protagonist enjoy their martini with Bombay Sapphire Gin specifically. Heck, why stop at fiction? Why even stop at non-fiction? Go straight to reference! Merriam-Webster could add in an extra definition to "refreshment" to include "The invigorating taste of LimonTM!"

Word-of-mouth: Everyone knows that the source people trust most is word-of-mouth. Sadly, at this point, the advetising industry does not have this medium under its control. Advertisements can be filled with market-speak, commercials can saturate the airwaves, reviewers can be paid off, or even invented entirely, but word-of-mouth requires that you have a product or service that people actually want to reccomend.

Obviously, advertising firms need to identify which people are most trusted ad have the ability to disperse glowing reviews of their client's wares to a large number of potential customers. Where better to go with this than to weblogs? The only thing keeping bloggers from running pop-up ads on their site is that they're annoying and stupid, why not be a little more subversive about it? For about the same price as a month worth of banner advertising, you could pay off a whole slew of bloggers to mention a product in a positive light and describe their own personal pleasant experiences with it. The bloggers people read most are articulate, have a loyal population of readers who trust them to speak the truth, and probably aren't making any money off their site. A virtual untapped goldmine lays just waiting to be exploited.

Hopefully no one in the advertising industry actually reads this thing, or else we may all be doomed to a terrible future similar to Minority Report, in which Tom Cruise freely roams our malls. Now if you'll excuse me, I don't want to get any more of this delicious Togo's sandwich on my keyboard.

Q: Why did the duck check into the Betty Ford clinic?

A: To overcome his quack habit!

4-Year Old gives Teacher Bag of Marijuana

Wow, and most of the time they have to settle for an apple. So, the girl says she got her bag from mommy, but mommy claims that she doesn't have any drugs and doesn't know where the girl could have picked up the bag.

Okay, look, which is a worse thing to admit to:

A) "Okay, I had a small sack of weed around the house, and my daughter must have found it."

or

B) "I had no idea what my 4-year old was doing, and she is left unsupervised in strange places where illegal substances are readily available."

Obviously the girl knew that the bag had some amount of value, since she was giving it as a gift, and did not understand that this gift was inappropriate and illegal. This leads one to believe that the girl had been seeing such materials sold.

Now, I'm all for the decriminalization of marjuana, but honestly, there's no excuse for bad parenting. You don't see 4-year olds bringing their teachers a 40 of King Cobra. So, if you are a parent who uses (and you shouldn't be if your kid is 4 years old, for crying out loud), you need to educate your kids about it. Not only so that they don't start smoking out in the preschool bathroom, but so they don't freakin' haul a dimebag to school to give ot their Head Start teacher.

So, from whatever line of reasoning is taken, Mommy screwed up. Bad stoner mommy.

All right folks, you won't see this anywhere else unless I am mistaken. Although this may may it look as those I had been in search of pictures of the Little Mermaid having BDSM lesbian sex with Wonder Woman, I assure you that I was not. Now, Janine from The Real Ghostbusters is another story, but.... well... umm... just read this, okay? I wouldn't make this stuff up:

Pr0nglish!

Just nude, sweat pretties. Their beauty will grow dim your mind. They will bring you all fantasies you are looking for. Nice famous girls and guys licking hot & wet pussies and fucking crazy. Some times they screaming.... 

WOW!!! Secret life of Disney heroes. They are making dirty and naughty things. You'll never seen it by TV. Super heroes and heroines showing great bodies. They are fucking so hard that you'll never see in real life!!!

Artist's fantasy create amazing & unreal kitties. What are sexy bodies and provocation poses!!! They are better then real.  Adult stories with hot and explicit story line. What could be better?! Just stories illus- trated by hardcore drawings!!!

You think that toons can't make a pain to each other? You are wrong! Sometimes they are angry like a savage beasts!!! Did you see girls with a blue hair in life? They are not even pretty, they are also fuck and suck. Really good!

The just in: In an attempt to stem their rapidly increasing criminal activity, Honduras has voted to pass legislation banning violent video games. The banning of specifically-mentioned hot new titles such as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Doom illustrate how well-informed and up-to-date the Honduran lawmakers are. I'm sure their growing crime rate has nothing to do with the more than 25% percent of their populace that is illiterate, their crazy economic disparity or their prime location as a shipment point for smuggling contraband into the U.S. *

I predict with confidence that this move will have about zero effect upon the country's crime, seeing as how nobody can fucking afford a video game system in Honduras. Except, of course, for government officials and all the drug lords, but really, why would you want to play GTA: Vice City when you're living it?

Remember, when games are outlawed, only outlaws will have games.

* Source: CIA, you trust them, don't you?

Socially Dysfunctional Dude Saga

Previous chapters:

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

The Final (?) Chapter:

I may no longer have to interact with the Socially Dysfunctional Dude again. He has been terminated. Oops, I mean: "terminated", by which I mean "let go", "canned". In other words, fired.

Though I feel bad saying it, I do feel a certain sense of relief that I will not be driving him home ever again.

The circumstances surrounding his removal were rather odd, and I only heard them second hand, but there's nothing like unfounded rumors and salacious gossip for entertainment. It turns out that Socially Dysfunctional Dude had hired the services of a matchmaking service in order to get dates with the ladies. I noticed that his in-car conversational topic choice had shifted slightly away from "How do I make my co-workers like and promote me?" to "How do I make women like me?" Usually this took the form of exchanges such as the following:

Dude: "Did you have a good weekend?"
Ken: "Uh huh."
Dude: "Did you visit your girlfriend?"
Ken: "Uh, yeah."
Dude: "When you and your girlfriend go out, do you usually pay for everything?"
Ken: "No, we generally both want to pay for whatever we're doing."
Dude: "Oh.... Is that normal?"
Ken: "I guess."
Dude: "Oh.... Girls seem to expect me to pay for everything."
Ken: "Maybe that's a sign that they are selfish and you shouldn't go out with them."
Dude: "Oh..... So how do you think I can get the supervisors to notice me more?"

Man, it made me feel creepy every time he said, "your girlfriend". I don't know why, but I didn't like it. Every time he asked, "How's your girlfriend doing?", I wanted to reply, "Oh she's dead now." just so he would stop asking me about her.

Anyhow, so the guy has employed a matchmaking service (Since he made a point of mentioning to me every time he had a date, I had kind of wondered where these girls were coming from.), with which he was not entirely satisfied. He had apparently called up to complain to the service that the ladies they were hooking him up with were not taking to him as he expected they would. The matchmaking woman then told him that honestly, the women who use the service kind of expec their dates to have cars. Well, this so enraged Socially Dysfunctional Dude that he apparently cussed out the woman and demanded that they find him a woman for him who does not require that he have a car, or give him his money back if the women don't like him. Now, I'm not one for materialistic women, but I think it's reasonable to expect that those who use dating services expect their dates to at least own a car, so they can... y'know... get to the date location. Also, it's the responsibility of the dating service to match you up with women, I dont' think it's their call whether or not they like you. For that kind of service you need um... a pimp.

The next day he was apparently (this is all second-hand news) quite distraught and shocked at himself for blowing up at the dating service operator, and put a big message on his whiteboard that said, "I'm grumpy!", which, in a work environment like this, is of course a huge advertisement for one's co-workers to come over and harass you with questions about why you're grumpy. To make a long story slightly less long, somebody got on his nerves and he stormed out of the office yelling, "Fine! I'm just going to kill myself then!".The supervisors saw this sign and his general creepiness as a sign that he may not be the most stable employee in terms of his mental health, so I'm pretty sure that was a big factor in their decision to include him in the recent cull of temps.

After he left, I receieved a few e-mails from him, as did other people in the office. I asked some other people about it, and it seems I'm the only one who wrote him back. He then asked me to pick up some of the things he had left lying around and bring them to him. I figured this would bring some closure to my not entirely pleasant relationship with him and agreed to do so. So, I gathered up his glare filter, Matrix poster, and Final Fantasy 7 dolls and brought them by his apartment complex at the designated time (Fortunately, there was no parking nearby, so I had to park in the red zone, which I felt would give me a great reason to explain why I had to leave immediately after dropping his stuff off.) However, he was not in the lobby as we had planned. His complex had a receptionist, so I left the stuff with her and left a voice mail for him letting him know where his stuff was.

I haven't heard from him since, which gives me some cause for concern. I suppose I could investigate, since even joking about killing oneself is a sign that one may actually do it. But why would he bother to ask for all his stuff back if he were going to do that? To be honest, I'd rather just assume that he's fine and creeping out the employees of some other place of business now than actually investigating. Still, unless I receive another e-mail from him, this concludes the saga of the Socially Dysfunctional Dude.

It sure would be interesting to see a document declaring all of the U.S. weapons programs.

I'm just sayin'...

"Mommy, what's a 'sucka DJ'?"

Check it: Turntable Timmy.

(link via Ari)

I learned recently of a very creative and humane way to slaughter one's Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey.

First a live turkey is purchased. The family takes it home and then makes it drink two bottles of red wine. The turkey, at this point, is pretty much completely obliterated and runs aorund the yard bumping into stuff, much to the amusement of the family. Eventually it will pass out and is at this point beheaded, prepared, cooked. Because the turkey was not aware of its impending demise and was totally realxed when it was killed, the meat has a much better texture, in addition to being infused with wine, and is apparently far superior to the meat of a bird who was under stress at the time of its demise.

Personally, if I had to be beheaded, I'd much prefer to be passed out drunk when it happened as well.