Sunday, February 8, 2009

Crappy Valentine Day

Let me get one thing straight; I do like teddy bears. I am rather particular about which ones I collect; I'm not so particular about whether my stuffed animals are bears (I like other animals as well). None of this makes me a squealing moron who'll drop her panties upon receipt of an ursine toy, and I resent the crap out of anyone who portrays me or other double-x-chromosomed in such a humiliating light. Hence my objection to Vermont Teddy Bear's choice of advertising.

It's aimed at guys. Okay, fine, no problem there. Its opinion of guys is no higher than its opinion of gals. Oops. Not good. If gals are twits, guys are halftwits, too stupid to get laid without the help of a prefab sentiment delivered by an inanimate (albeit plenty cute -- more than we can say about said guys) object.

The message is, hey, idiot, we KNOW you forgot all about V-Day, and you're too dense to know what your gal wants; furthermore, you don't know her well enough to get her something unique to her taste or desires. However, you DO want to get into her pants. So trust us. All women are the same. They will uniformly, if not actually en masse, melt into unabashed acquiescence if you spring for our adorable, overpriced product, and she'll never notice that your inspiration was not your appreciation of her personality but rather this offensive but ubiquitous TV commercial, which of course she won't see (which market research buffoon decided that women don't watch TV?)

When, in the ad, all the women in an office gush semiorgasmically over the bear received by the lucky one among them, and all the men in that office peek over their cubicle walls in absolute awe because they know some lucky stiff is going to get the promised "results," one of the less lucky ladies sighs, nay, squeals (we said it right the first time), "Where can I find a man like that?" I can only hope she was referring to the bear... the only innocent party in this offensive affair.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Coming Up at Ten....

Everyone has teasers now. You can't just get the news straight; you've got to click, or stay tuned. Okay... it's a technique to draw people in. It turns me off, but some are drawn in. Thing is, when the theatre is on fire, "What dire emergency is likely going to kill innocent people tonight? Coming up at ten, stay tuned...." doesn't work as well as "FIRE!"

AOL headlines are never "So n so's baby born with two heads"; they're always "guess whose baby was born with two heads?" Okay, that's not urgent stuff, and it's kind of lurid to start with; why is this headline news? Sorry, why is this headline tease? But last night I tuned in to ABC television a little early for Ugly Betty and was hit with "It's not only peanuts causing salmonella; coming up at ten." It was a couple minutes shy of seven, locally; if this was a national announcement, ten was two hours off, and if the announcement was local, make that three.

That's plenty of time for lots of people to eat the mystery food and get salmonella.

Quite frankly, I find that disgusting. The news should be interrupting regular programming, at least with a scrolling message, to announce for us to stay away from whatever it is that's now killing people. And the show to which I had tuned in, aired just before Ugly Betty? THE NEWS. But of course it was probably local; they save the really hot stuff for national. Who cares if people die?

Disgusting.