Part of why I got into psychology was I love giving feedback. The more terse and dismissive the better, which is why I just spent an hour at www.brandtags.net, giving my summary of various brands. Guess which brands I associated with:

oil spills
keeping customers in debt
no other options
greed
relentless advertising
like AOL (not in a good way)
a sinister name for a clothing company
bullshit

Visit www.brandtags.net and submit your own curt bon mots! You’re helping advertisers, and what could be more noble than that?

Answers: Shell, Chase, Best Buy, Rolex, Nike, MSN, Banana Republic, American Idol.

Oh good, another political post.

Like every responsible voter, I flipped through the flyer sent to me regarding the June 3rd vote for Props 98 and 99. Both deal with eminent domain; one bad, the other worse. Let’s get the meaningless Prop 99 out of the way first, in the ballot’s own words.

Prop 99: Bars use of eminent domain to acquire an owner-occupied residence to a private person or business entity. Creates exceptions for public works, public health and safety, and crime prevention.

…which is to say every kind of government project. That’s a pretty wide exception. But it’s the better of the two in that it doesn’t actually accomplish anything. See if you can catch what Prop 98 sneaks in:

Prop 98: Bars state and local governments from taking or damaging private property for private uses. Prohibits rent control and similar measures.

What a bargain! Protection from eminent domain… and all I have to give up is rent control. Faustian propositions like this test the voters to see what existing rights they’d give up just to gain protection from earlier, equally bad laws. Is it too much to ask to have wholly unrelated changes to California law split up into two different, less conniving, propositions? I can now see how congressmen can vote against seemingly well-intentioned bills because of all the garbage that comes with them.

These are both terrible, useless laws, and I will keep voting against these Hobson’s choice propositions until the state can come up with ones that offer real choice — with no strings attached.

…better than 20/20, and they’re blue!.” – John Crichton

A friend of mine asked me if I wear contacts. I don’t. Hearing this, naturally her next question was, “Did you have Lasik?”

I didn’t take stock of how unusual good vision has become, but I think I have more gay friends than friends with naturally good vision.

I mean really.

It’s no surprise that MySpace has the most unbelievably retarded banner ads. At first they started off normally, tricking dumb fools into clicking on them by having a big red button that makes the ad look like a video game. Press the button to kick! Press the button to shoot the clown! Yeah, that makes sense, but then they became ungrounded, and banner ads were inviting rubes to click the button to roll, or drink, or sleep, or do a pull-up. How do I click a button to continue sleeping? The ‘games’ theme had become so abstract that the button no longer made sense.

Meanwhile another genus of ads began to appear, the ‘spooky’ ads, which warned you to NOT CLICK HERE if you were easily scared, accompanied by faces of creepy stock photo children. Then they began to focus on speculating on what date you’ll die — because what could be scarier, right? Then somehow, the two merged, and now there are ads inviting you into some kind of death game, all I have to do is sign up:

No chance to win an Xbox. No free ringtones. No products, no service. No company is being advertised. I’m not signing my soul away in exchange for some prize, I’m simply acknowledging that I’m dead. Unless this banner ad was placed by satan himself (which I can’t completely rule out), what could possibly be the appeal of this gigantic, full page ad?

As if an ad inviting me to kill myself wasn’t bad enough, there’s a catch:

Subscription to what?!

You know, if it meant never having to see another incomprehensible flash ad, I would sign my own death certificate.

Ohhhh…. NOW I get it.

I recently went to the movie theater at the new recession-defiant Americana supermall in Glendale, and couldn’t decide which movie to see. It was a tough choice between:

Iron Man
Iron Man
Iron Man
Iron Man
Iron Man
Iron Man
Iron Man
Iron Man
Made of Honor
Made of Honor
Made of Honor
Made of Honor
Made of Honor
Made of Honor
Son of Rambow
Son of Rambow
The Visitor
Young@Heart

I don’t want to imply that there’s still a paucity of choice even at these swanky upscale malls, but for those of you keeping track at home, that’s 18 screens showing a total of five movies. Which do you want to see, “Boys’ Movie” or “Girls’ Movie”?

What is arugula and why does its description on O Chef make it sound like a street drug?

Where were you in the 90s? That’s when arugula pretty much became our national salad green. Actually, it was popular in Italy and France for ages, but caught on in the US and Britain somewhat more recently. Perhaps you know if by some of its other names — rugola, rucola, roquette, garden rocket, Mediterranean rocket, salad rocket, Roman rocket, or Italian cress

Now my dealer knows what to get me when I’m jonesin’ for some garden rocket. (Don’t tell Fake Steve Jobs I had to look it up.)

I just had a bowl of cereal with milk that expired a month ago. Not looking forward to tomorrow.

You’re welcome, internet!