I Can't Believe It's Not Butter

Take 30 seconds to watch this commercial featuring the Buttertons. The giant globs of the "nutritious" butter substitute all over the modern food looks almost as excessive as the butter sticks on the retro food. Sorry, but that ad is promoting just as bad 'overconsumption' of their product as they are trying to parody. Maybe it's just me, but I would fire that advertising agency. ;-)

Truth In Advertising

Sizzlin' Nuggets

Blue Q makes the cutest things. I got a pack of this "Boss Lady" gum the last time I visited my friend in North Carolina. Here are pictures of the entire package.



If I were a dominatrix, the cowgirl get-up might be my thing. Chew'em up and spit'em out. With a little help from Snappy. ;-)



I love the attention to detail in this printed reverse side of the packaging. Isn't this Boss Lady Country a fun little map? The tied up bundles of men and the running guys are so cute. ;-)




I also got this "Next to the Last Supper" gum. Well, maybe it's a sin, but the Bonus Shroud (printed inside) really cracks me up:



If you've ever seen a guy with a huge wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek like that you might find it even funnier. It's part of the baseball symbolism of the "trading card" theme, because baseball players have been known for their chewing tobacco.

Homemaking 101

Some of my favorite modern homemaking products:

Glad Press'n Seal Wrap



This stuff is just awesome. It's so much better than old fashioned "saran wrap" and Glad says that there are 1000s of uses for it. Well, I don't have time to explore all those, but I can imagine that you can use it for almost anything. I certainly like it and have invented some new uses for myself, such as wrapping wet paint rollers to keep them from drying out while I take a break from painting. Anyway, this is a kind of big step in the evolution of materials for homemakers. ;-)


Swiffer Dusters



These really do work. They pick up all the dust, and it clings to the duster so that it doesn't fall off so that it has to be dusted again immediately. ;-) In other words, they don't just move the dust around and if you just want to do a quick dusting without using furniture spray/wax and a cloth they work great. I've dusted with them just about everywhere, but one caution would be to avoid any delicate items with parts that might get caught on the fibers and fall. My friend broke a favorite collectible when using one a little carelessly.

The Swiffer wet mops are okay, but my floorspace is pretty big and it's inefficient to use them here. I'm usually not a big fan of disposable cleaning products because they seem wasteful and unnecessary, like the disposable toilet brushes. Sure, cleaning toilets is a yucky job, but if the cleaner you use is supposed to kill 99.9% of the germs in the toilet wouldn't it also kill 99.9% of the germs on the brush? It's just a waste of money and resources to use the disposable ones, but who am I to judge people if they want to waste their money on such things? Anyway, the Swiffer dusters might be a modern indulgence, but in my household they are efficient ones. ;-)


Scrubbing Bubbles



I love, love, love Scrubbing Bubbles. And you don't have to keep them confined to the bathroom. They work anywhere. I've even cleaned the inside of the car with them. Yeah, sure, they are chemicals in a spray can, but if they work great that's what really matters. They have been around for a really long time, and I recall the old commercials for them when I was a kid. "We do the work so you don't have tooooooo...." is what they said as they slid down the drain. Cute. In all my years of testing new cleaning products, I've found nothing that is better than Scrubbing Bubbles.


The next installment in the Homemaking series will discuss my favorite floor cleaning machines. I have a particular penchant for these kinds of things.

Sex Sells: Olive Oil

Click image for enlargement.

This is an honest-to-God real ad that appeared on page 204 of the August 2007 issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine. I only scanned it and did not alter it at all.

"Discover the secret ingredient Italian chefs don't want you to dip into," it says.

Extra Virgin olive oil with "rich taste" is apparently this "secret." (The best secrets are the ones you share with someone you love.)

Well, of course, we are supposed to think, "Oh, yes, bread dipped in a nice extra virgin olive oil does taste good." But surely the art director in charge of creating this ad realized that their bread looks like a huge penis. Are we also to conclude that penises dipped in extra virgin olive oil taste good too? ;-)

Maybe there's something going on that I'm unaware. Do men use extra virgin olive oil as a lubricant when stroking their breadsticks? Maybe they should? Olive oil is supposed to be good for your skin, as well as your heart and tastebuds. All natural and healthy, smooth and delicious. How can you go wrong?

(I wonder if Bertolli sales are going to experience a sudden increase now.) ;-)


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For those who don't cook much or know much about olive oil, extra virgin olive oil is the premium grade because it's from the first pressing of the olives and retains the best flavor.

Ho, Ho, Ho, Green Giant!

We have had our first casuality in heroes attempting to meet the challenge proposed in my previous post. The Jolly Green Giant has tried and failed.



I really didn't mean to emasculate him, but maybe because of his advanced age his fruits were probably about to fall off anyway. I guess the heat was too much for him.

Well, in memory of the Green Giant's (he's not so Jolly anymore) younger and more intact and virile days, here is a commercial from 1970:




Actually, maybe the feminists will say that I'm a hero for making the Jolly Green Giant pay for all those cans of niblets. ;-)

Besides, It's Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature!

Targeted Advertising

I was doing some reading about Foley to find out if he was married or what. I didn't know that it was rumored that he's gay until I found this article, "Is He Gay?" It is from 2003. I wonder if he was chasing underage boys back then too? Anyway, I'm not devoting any more space to that. What really struck me about this webpage was one of the rotating ads on the sidebar. Really, you've got to see it. I don't know how to copy or link to that kind of thing so just click it and look.

It's an ad for a resort in Costa Rica. When I first saw it I was somehow entranced (really, I watched it for way too long, lol) by it's strange selection of images: a full-frontal picture of a monkey eating something off a big Budda head followed by a picture of a shirtless, gay-looking guy sitting in what looks like a fancy bar and then two typical landscape pictures. Okay, the monkey nuts in Budda's face is just plain freaky. It's not even subliminal. Is that something that appeals to gay men? Or is that just an unfortunate choice of images? And then that half naked guy in a bar with chandeliers? If that's not gay then I don't know what is.

Well, my curiosity gets the best of me sometimes so I had to check out this resort's website to see if it was just for gay men. I half expected to find something pretty wild, but the resort's website is 'normal'. (Actually, the place looks really cool and has a bar in a cave.) I wonder how they ended up with a gay-targeted ad? I wonder how it's working for them?

I certainly intend no offense to gay men or women. I'm just noticing the advertising on the website.

I've had a "mild" migraine all day (woke up with it). I think it's because I saw an ad for a migraine prescription in a magazine last night. Maybe there is some kind of "migraine trigger" in those ads because every time I see one I end up with one. It's almost as if seeing the ad 'reminds' me that I haven't had a headache in a while so it's time to have one now. Well, it would probably increase their sales if they had ads that prompted migraines. Someone should find out if there is a relationship between seeing the ads and getting headaches. It could be a real effect like the "white coat hypertension". ;-)

It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!

For those who are either too young to remember or not American the title comes from an old Chiffon Margarine commercial (click to watch it). I always got a big kick out of it when I was a kid and would run around playing Mother Nature and saying that catch-phrase followed by a big thundering sound. I'm sure it got on my mother's nerves.


Have you seen Dr. Laura lately? Oh my God, Becky, look at her face, it is so scary. She looks like one of those plastic surgery addicts... It's gross. Look. *shake that healthy butt* (sorry, Sir Mixalot just popped into my mind)

I was on the very verge of receiving one of those life-altering revelations when I got distracted by Dr. Laura on FoxNews. OMG! She looks like a freakin' talkin' skeleton. Lady. Pu-lease. You've got enough Botox in your face to paralyze an army. Ick. I think she's a hypocrit. I always have. She might give some good advice, but a lot of it is garbage. But to be fair, I haven't read any of her books or listened to her much because it doesn't take long for her to bother me, no matter what she looks like. But now, man, she is a freakin' freakshow. Sorry, if I'm being too mean, but she needs to fire and/or sue whoever told her she would look good with a gallon of botox in her face.

Damn that woman and her plastic surgeon/dermatologist for causing me such distress that I lost my brilliant thought. ;-)

And Barbara Walters too. She's got that perpetually surprised look (with overly pulled open eyes and raised eyebrows) and the motionless upper mouth of botox. Who told her she looks better like that? She needs to fire/sue them too.

It's not nice to fool Mother Nature! *thunder*

Sex Sells

I'm mostly immune to advertising whether it's on tv or in print or where-ever. I don't read fashion magazines in protest against the ridiculously unrealistic images they portray as 'normal' or desirable. It's all a lie. And I can chuckle at many tv commercials like some of the funny Geico ads (my 9 year old says they ALL are stupid and not funny), but they don't make me want to switch my insurance to Geico. I think I can safely say that no commercial (well, except maybe food ads when I've got the munchies) has prompted me to lay out hard-earned bucks for what it was peddling. Many commercials and print ads leave me thinking, "What does that have to do with anything?" Maybe I just don't 'get' it. I don't know.

But I have to admit that I'm not immune to snazzy packaging. I'm prone to impulse purchases if I see something that strikes my fancy. Sometimes the way something is merchandised and displayed can lure me into a purchase whether I need that item or not. (Incidentally, before I had kids my job was sales rep/merchandiser for L'Oreal Cosmetics.) This just happened at Walmart the other day.

I saw this display of new 'feminine' care products. It instantly caught my eye. I've never bought any of that stuff before, like FDS spray and what-not, because, frankly, I don't stink and it's not really healthy to spray chemicals on your foosey. But the packaging for these things drew me in like a fly to horse shit. There were a variety colors in both the cleanser and the moisturizer. It was the vaguely phallic shape of the bottle and the nifty way that the stuff squirts out as a white foam that really sold me. I just had to have one of each. I've never been one of those women who has to have a different cleanser and moisturizer for each part of my body. I use shampoo as a shower gel and vice versa. But I was so totally enamored with these phallic squirting bottles that I just had to have them.

Sorry for this crappy picture. I googled it trying to find a better one, but these products seem to be so new that they aren't available on any of the drugstore sites I checked. Maybe they are a Walmart-only product. Who knows? Now that Sam Walton is gone even Walmart is using the sex sells method of marketing.





"Beyond Fresh" by Intimates