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.
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.
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.)
LOLcats are the big thing right now, but I found my new favorite internet joke meme which combines the moving, emotional ephemera of music with the drab suckfulness of an Excel spreadsheet: song charts.
I’ve been trying to lose a little weight, so my friends and I got together for a game that’s both great exercise and a clever way to hide my secret bulimia: vomit tag!
I can’t believe how people actually voted way back in the 20th century. FUN FACT! Did you know there were as many as THREE political parties back then?
I was browsing music videos on the iTunes store when I saw this musician in a sharp suit and short-cropped haircut and thought, “Hey, new Eurythmics video!”
OK, once you put them together I can tell which one looks like a girl in a suit and which one is Annie Lennox. Zing!
