Random, unrelated observations

I don't feel like organizing my thoughts into a particular order or tying them together with a theme today.  Live with it.  Instead, I'm just going to follow an ad hoc train of thought, a form of blog stand-up comedy, if you will.

Except Mr.  Pibb.  It's pretty much identical.

I am fairly well-convinced advertising agencies make a bid on a project, close their doors, discuss the product for five minutes while mocking the unfathomable idiocy of it and its producers (Shakeweight, anyone?), then get drunk and/or stoned out of their minds for three months straight.  Twenty minutes before the deadline, the team throws together a PowerPoint and bullshits some "marketing research" statistics.  Presto!  "Here's your new ad campaign.  That will be $750,000, please."

Anyone could do this.  As a matter of fact, I have an idea of my own.  I stumbled across this product while shopping for lye a few days ago:

Hell, yeah.

This is clearly the HNIC of laundry soap, the dolomite of detergents.  Pastels and flowers on the bottle?  Fuck that shit, queer-boy.  And who better to shill this product than the snake-fighting, lightsaber-wielding Bad Motherfucker himself, Mr. Samuel L. Jackson?

"Woolite Extra Dark Care.  Keep it black, motherfucker."

Tell me you wouldn't buy that shit.  It should come with brass knuckles and a chronic blunt.  Another good slogan would be "Once you go black, you never go back."

On the subject of brand-loyalty . . .

Where exactly are you from?

If you can't quite make it out, this vehicle on a Michigan road has a Detroit Pistons sticker, two Denver Broncos stickers, and a Texas license plate.  Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaking of state-specific matters . . .

It was Wear Your Striped Shirt Day.

I encountered this poster at my local State Department office.  At a passing glance, there's nothing overtly wrong with it.  But, when you're standing in line longer than you would at a Harry Potter premiere, you get the opportunity to observe a lot about your surroundings.  Take a closer look:

Is this poster censored?

No, it's not.  Actually, it has been "updated," the specific year (2009) whited out by a crafty editor.  This is how low our education budget is - we can't afford new signage to tell parents when to enroll their children for educational tuition assistance.  And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the pictures were recycled from an even earlier time.  Little Johnny Bowlcut is probably writing his graduate thesis by now, or would be, if his parents had known when to sign him up for financial aid.  Apparently, we changed the old maxim from Children are our future to Children - Eh, Screw 'Em.

Then again, we may not have a future at all . . .

Be afraid.

WTF? Seriously, what the fuck is this thing? What is its purpose, besides inducing involuntary defecation in all who behold it? Take a closer look and note the scale of this metal monstrosity. That's a road leading up to it. I just saw Transformers 3, and I'm pretty sure I caught a glimpse of this mean bastard cutting up the Hancock Building like a gingerbread house. Or, then again, maybe not . . . because this would be the thing's disguised mode. This is what it looks like when it wants to keep a low profile. I seem to recall a Decepticon named “Buzz Saw” . . . and he was nothing like this.*  Imagine this sinister thing's unveiled Cybertronian form. In the words of Shia LeBoef . . .

"Optimus!!!"

*He actually turned into a giant wasp or hornet. Because that's super-inconspicuous and totally stealth.  "Hey, is that . . . oh, no, wait it's not a giant, alien killbot, it's just a stinging insect the size of a Cadillac.  No worries!"

And if you wanted more proof the world is approaching its much-deserved end . . .

There is no God.

I can only hope this is in fact a test of sorts, a cruel-but-necessary trap to eliminate the dumbest echelons of our society.  If you so much as attempt to shell out $19.99 for this DVD, you will be black-bagged, drug out back, thrown against the wall, and executed via firing squad.  No questions asked.  At least in a perfect world.

Likewise if you wear this.

While we're on the subject of people who should die . . .

No shit.

I am so tired of this "phenomenon."  Seriously.  I can't even muster an obvious preeteen-sex-fantasy-staking-gay-sparkle joke.

And the icing on the cake . . .

Also available: syringes of lard.

It's like the restaurant industry isn't even trying to pretend that they aren't trying to kill us.  "Go ahead, fatty, order it.  C'mon, tons-of-fun, you know you want to.  That inkling of disgust is being overridden by your compulsive eating disorder as we speak. Do it, before the FDA makes it illegal."

Oh, and one more thing . . .

Because traditional Italian cuisine just screams hobbit.