Witchy Woman

Antibiotic resistant fecal bacteria is found in nearly half of all soda fountains.
Then there's this lovely ad for KFC in Australia. Blacks like fried chicken, har, har, har! *Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.* Say no more, say no more.

There is a commercial on right now as Kellogg's does its usual "It's the New Year's so you have to lose weight NOW! And we're a valid healthy lifestyle, so eat Special K!" Now I normally ignore marketing ploys because I like to think that I am intelligent enough to see right through them, but this one sent my blood pressure through the roof.

Since I cannot find it anywhere, not even on YouTube, I will describe it to you. A mother and her daughter are sitting at a child-sized table set complete with chairs, doing cutesy crafty things. The mother, whom I estimate to be a size 6 at the very most, stands up to get the phone. But alas! The toddler-sized chair is stuck to her obviously huge ass! The horror! She does what any sensible woman does in this situation: she runs to the kitchen for a bowl of Special K.

Yes, ladies, because you cannot fit into your four year old's chair you are fat and should eat our product. Logic FAIL.

Most sane people would simply change the channel and leave it at that. But, as we all know, I am not sane. What do I do? I write Kellogg's.

"To whom it may concern,
I am writing in regards to a commercial recently aired which I found grossly offensive. In this advertisement, there is a woman who evidently finds herself to be grossly overweight because she cannot fit into a child-sized chair.

As women we are already bombarded with enough negative body imagery without being told that if we are larger than our young daughter we are too fat. Now if it had been an adult's chair, or an actually plus-sized woman, it might have been an appropriate message.

But as it stands, you obviously believe your target audience to have the common sense of a toad in order to fall for such faulty logic.

Rest assured that I will encourage everyone I know not to buy your products as a result,
SLiver of Jade"

Driving to work, listening to NPR when this Burger King commercial comes on. There's an older gentleman talking about his life and when people *gasp* actually used to make their own food! Naturally, it's in the much joked about manner of "uphill, both ways, barefoot, through the snow."

Then his alleged grandson interrupts with (highly paraphrased) "Yeah so? I got this greasy, fake little sandwich at BK for a dollar." In other words, don't bore me with how food is actually made and give me something fatty and cheap.

I was ranting about this the other day to Bronn, about how in our culture the old and elderly are not revered and instead we worship the young and dumb. Granted, not all the elderly are necessarily good or wise, but we should not dismiss them out of hand because of grey hair and wrinkles. Stop throwing away your money on "young again" methods, like Botox! Embrace who you are and how you got here, not what you used to look like.

That having been said, part of my extended hiatus has been due to health problems.

I actually have something good to say about a commercial.

A man surprised his family by decorating the house for the holidays while he was home alone. In it, the man showed pride in his home and its appearance rather than the woman being expected to take it all on herself Martha Stewart-style.

I am praising the marketing division for being equal opportunity, and not the actions of the male character who is allegedly performing this task. I think if you want holiday decorations, you're expected to help with them.

But I do think it's a rather sad statement that I have to work to find an ad that is not sexist.

FYI, it was a Home Depot ad and the family in question was actually African-American. No, I couldn't find a clip of it.

Yet another ad that induced a paroxysm of twitching is for "Novel Adventurs," sponsored by Saturn. I could not find a clip of the odorous ad, though.
A woman enthusiastically joins a book club, and was supposed to, like, read this one book called The Old Man and the Sea. And she's totally inspired to go fishing. But fishing is gross, so she goes surfing instead and meets some, like, really hot guy.

Gender issues aside, the rampant denigration of intellectualism is sickening. Obviously a major contributor to this problem is certain politicians and their politics. Then there is the popularity of an entire film genre called "dumb comedy." (Go ahead, ask me how much I hate those type of movies).

Children are being taught that intelligence = nerd = bad. But violence is cool!

That's right. I take it all back. In fact, I hope that they do keep running those commercials. Get those poseurs out of my coffee shops, and into Starbucks and McDonalds where they belong. Let them have the crappy, watered down coffee.

That will leave more yumminess for me.

The new McDonald's coffee ads drove me up a wall. Evidently, if you drink coffee, are well-read, and socially conscious then you're "elitist," which we all know is really a euphemism for intellectual. If you're dumb and love to shop without a care for the impact of your buying choices, then eat at Mickey D's!