How to Flunk Out of Fourth Grade

Although I am not planning on profiling Southcenter Mall for a while (at least not until the new expansion opens later in the Summer, and probably not before I get at least Redmond Town Center and Bellevue Square done,) I happened to be in the neighborhood yesterday and began taking some photos to use when I do get around to it.  This is a poster that I came across in one of the hallways, ostensibly a PSA explaining how to go to college:

Apparently the admissions criteria at the major universities have changed a bit since I graduated from high school.  I don’t seem to recall there being any prerequisites in shopping cart hooliganism or bike theft when I applied for college, nor do I remember being taught anything about the need to inflict cruelty to animals in rooms with hideous wallpaper (although I suppose they might let you wait until you attend your first frat party to take care of that one.)  Given the fact that I graduated from the local community college roughly four years ago and since then tuition to attend the school has more than doubled, I suspect that the discovery of money growing on trees may be just about the only way most people are going to be able to afford it anymore, although I’m pretty sure they’ll still let you run up crippling amounts of student loan debts if you’d prefer that method.

It turns out that there’s supposed to be some sort of hidden meaning to each of these pictures, which reveals one of four steps you need to take in order to get into college.  Not only are the “correct” answers to each of these virtually impossible to figure out just by looking at the pictures above, Even if you know what these are supposed to mean they still don’t make any sense.  The “correct” answers to these are posted after the jump, but Feel free to add your own interpetations of these.  Also be sure to check out this website which the poster points to, featuring a television ad for this campaign which is even more inexplicable than the poster above:

This is your math teacher on drugs.  Any questions?

Why Settle For Being Nickeled and Dimed to Death?

As anyone who lives around here knows, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the days when the big weekly bolus of junk mail arrives, clogging your mailboxes with all sorts of circulars for grocery stores you don’t shop at, coupons for fast food joints and other such detritus.  As people who have been reading this Blog are probably aware, at times these big piles of ads can also prove to be an unending source of unbelievable “bargains” and all sorts of other stuff you didn’t know that you don’t ever need.  Another case in point is this ad which arrived in today’s batch of dead tree spam:

There’s nothing too unusual here, as long as you’re the type of person who is open to the idea of buying coins for more than their face value.  If you haven’t bothered collecting those state quarters that the US mint has been producing for roughly the last decade or so, you can spend $19.95 on a (nearly) complete set of those, or that same $19.95 can also buy you a silver dollar from 1921.  If those are too rich for your blood, you can spend $2 on three World War II era steel pennies, or $5 on a couple of what I would assume to be highly collectible 2008 half-dollars and Sacagawea dollars.  In addition to those, there’s also this offer:

Given the fact that large scale production of the Sacagawea dollars was halted only two years after it started due to low demand and excessive supplies, I don’t think that “popular” is the word I’d use to describe these.  Since 2002, Sacajawea dollars have only been produced in relatively small quantities for collectors (although annual production is still well into the millions,)  Because of this, I’d say that there’s a pretty good chance that thirty years from now this set of coins is going to be worth all of nine bucks.  At the “original” price of $67.95 a set like this would be out-and-out highway robbery, but at $19.95 I’m sure it’s a steal (although it remains unclear which party in this transaction is the one that is doing the stealing.)  Granted, the United States Mint themselves sells these things at a markup (a $25 roll of 2008 Sacagawea dollars goes for an asking price of $35.95 plus shipping, and a bag of 250 goes for $319.95,) but nowhere near as much as these ones are selling for.

Of course, even at those unbelievable prices (well, I don’t believe them anyway), these things are sure to go fast, right?  After all, this is your last chance to “save” 70% on these things.  Of course, what happens if you don’t act now?

You end up saving 77% instead.  This ad is located just a few pages away from the one above, but it offers the exact same set of coins for the somewhat less ridiculous price of only $14.95, complete with a free Oklahoma state quarter you can take with you on your next trip to the video arcade or the laundromat.  At least they have the courtesy to  throw in free shipping with the deal, so that means you’ll only end up paying about $5 more than these are worth by the time you’re done.  Oh yeah, and don’t forget the “prized” first year coin in the set from 2000, one of only 1.2 billion or so that were produced back when the government thought they were actually going to replace the dollar bill with these things.  I’m sure that there will be some numismatist (yeah, I had to look up the word) out there who’s going to flame me to a well-done crisp for this  post, but I suspect that if I ever found myself inclined to take up coin collecting (given my prior track record with collectibles, this would probably be an incredibly bad idea, but that’s another post that I’ll probably avoid writing anytime soon in the interest of preserving my dignity) there’s probably a better place to buy coins from than my junk mail…

But Are They Made of Real Hobos?

As I’ve discussed here previously, virtually every Tuesday a new batch of miscellaneous advertisements seems to find its way into my mailbox.  For the most part, these ads consist mainly of the weekly circulars for the local grocery stores and coupons for various products found therein, but there also seems to be a fair amount of 2am infomercial fodder up on offer as well.  Case in point:

This ad offers something called a Hobo Bag in what they assure is is genuine leather (from what source they don’t seem to specify) at the standard unbelievable price of $9.95.  The ad exhorts you to hurry though, as this unusual offer may never be repeated…  or will it?

Just a couple of pages away in the same circular, we find another offer for a Hobo Bag from the same company, but this one is made out of fake leather, and carries the same unbelievable price.  It seems to me that you’d probably have a better time convincing people that SUPPLIES ARE GOING FAST! if you don’t stick a low-rent version of the same thing two pages away with the exact same price tag on it.  Of course, if you don’t want to miss out on the tremendous savings, the website offers denim and suede versions as well.  As long as you’re not picky about designer labels (or being able to pronounce the name of the country of origin) you can find a surprising variety of other leather apparel, as well as plenty of other consumer goods of questionable source at the same time..

Got Milked?

Recently at work, they changed the brand of milk that they provide in the breakroom coolers. Usually, such a change wouldn’t warrant much attention (after all, milk is milk, right?) but one thing that I’ve noticed over the years is that there seems to be some unwritten law that all milk cartons of a particular size are required to contain some form of advertising geared toward elementary schoolers. In most cases this appears in the form of some sort of puzzle requiring roughly second grade reading comprehension to solve which inevitably extols the virtues of milk-drinking, or occasionally they might throw some popular preteen pop cultural icon on the box in barely legible monochrome and call it good. On the other hand, sometimes they go just a little further:

Meet Smoooth, Darigold’s suspiciously androgynous spokescow, now with 33% more vowels than the leading brand! Sunglasses and a bright red mohawk that would get a door slammed in your face if you showed up for a date with it lend automatic street cred (provided that it still happens to be 1988.) With those looks, Smoooth should need no introduction, but the side of the carton provides a little background

As you can see, no expense was spared on the adjectives here. Not only is Smoooth a super-cool, hip, chocolate milk drinking, number one bovine, but he/she’s also an ambassador of fun. Unless there’s some UN proclamation I don’t know about that has made Casual Friday a universal human right, I ca’t think of any situation in which an ambassador would dress like that, especially when acting in a presumably official capacity such as appearing on a milk carton. And since when do cows actually drink chocolate milk anyway? For that matter, do cows that are presumably capable of lactation still drink milk in the first place, chocolate or otherwise?  It’s probably best not to think about these things too much…

What Was I Supposed to Be Excited About Again?

Let’s face it, even on a good day I don’t think you’re going to convince anyone that a bank is anything besides a necessary evil. Apparently that’s not going to stop them from trying though.  As part of WaMu’s latest ad campaign,  a number of these billboards have popped up around town:

OK, so I’m supposed to be excited about my bank, but these cheery but suspiciously minimalist billboards don’t seem to have bothered to explain why.  The decorations in the window of the local bank branch provide a little bit more context, which seems to be mostly in the “We’re not charging as many fees as we used to” vein.  Of course, if you’re already baking there you’re still getting all the same old fees and low interest rates that you were getting previously, which means that as a valued longtime customer, you are presumably still entitled to grumble quietly to yourself about one thing or another as you exit the bank.

I’m also guessing that WaMu’s investors aren’t nearly as excited as their banking customers are supposed to be, these days especially after they posted a 1.6 bllion dollar loss in the fourth quarter of 2007, mostly as the result of numerous subprime loan defaults.

Well, At Least They’re Honest About It

I’m sure you’re familiar with the 25-cent vending machines full of two-cent trinkets that seem to find their way into the front entrance of just about every grocety store in town.  Over at my Uncle Jeff’s Blog, he shows an example of what happens when someone decides to be (sort of) honest about the contents of one of these things.

I suppose this means you’ll be filing as an individual?

I already got my taxes done for this year about a month ago, and actually ended up owing money for the first time that I can ever recall.  That means that this advertisment in my e-mail came just a bit too late for filing this year’s paperwork.  Given what they seem to be advertising, that may not be a bad thing:

 Call me crazy, but I get the sneaking suspicion that the IRS may not share your sense of creativity when it comes to determining the manner in which one should do their taxes.  No matter what cheery piece of random clip-art that H&R Block decides to stick on their spam, the fact is that doing taxes ones own way is just asking for trouble.  I suspect that trying to use that excuse to explain your “creativity” to a scowling IRS auditor is just going to get you even deeper in the hole than you already are.  Besides, isn’t the purpose of going through someone like H&R Block supposed to avoid any of the inadvertent creativity that might result from attempting to do one’s own taxes in the first place?

Radio Ad Nauseam

 Over at buzz.mn today, James Lileks asked a question about what type of advertisements really get on your nerves.  This is something that I’ve been meaning to write a post about for a while now, so I figured this might be a good time to go ahead and do so.  I don’t actually watch a lot of TV these days (and what little TV I do watch I generally use a DVR for in order to be able to skip the commercials,) so most of the advertising I encounter comes from listening to the radio in the car while driving.  I usually alternate between the two local classic rock stations (102.5 KZOK FM and 95.7 KJR FM,) mostly trying to avoid the ads on one or the other.  The “hard break” at the top of the hour means that both stations will frequently be playing ads at the same time.  Unfortunately, this happens more often than I’d like, which doesn’t do me much good, but it does mean that I could probably quote Shane Co. ads from memory (Yeah, I have a friend in the diamond business.  Who knew?)

 On the other hand, even when the stations aren’t playing ads it doesn’t take much to get me to change the station, or if neither station is playing anything worth listening to at the moment I’ll just mute the volume.  One of the tiny little features I enjoy in my car is the fact that the stereo makes a satisfying little beep whenever the volume is turned down to zero, which really emphasizes the whole thing (although shouting “DELETED!“while you do it is probably not a good idea, especially with other passengers in the car.)  Needless to say, it doesn’t take much for an ad to get muted.  In a lot of cases, there isn’t anything particularly annoying about the ad itself, but the ad gets so overplayed that it completely loses whatever initial impact it might have had, and just annoys you.  On the other hand, there are some ads that are just annoying right away. A few examples of these are noted below, after the jump.

Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz, Oh we’re not even trying anymore

Like clockwork, every Tuesday and Wednesday a weekly ration of dead tree spam hits my mailbox.  Since the apartment complex I live in provides convenient recycling bins right by the mailboxes to dispose of the stuff, very little of it actually makes it more than a few steps from the mailbox itself, but I do usually at least browse through it just in case there might be some coupons I can stick on the fridge and completely forget about until three months past the expiration date.  Most of the mail consists of relatively mundane weekly grocery store ads, but there’s also a section containing various coupons and some of those “special offers” that you just can’t wait to pass up.  In this week’s mailing, this particular ad caught my eye:

Yes, it’s none other than Speedy Alka-Seltzer, brought back from the dustbin of history after market research showed that nobody has bought any of the stuff since the mid Seventies.  In fact, he doesn’t appear to have aged a day during that time, although the vaguely seasonal catchphrase he brought along for the ride seems to be seriously stretching for a rhyme.  It also doesn’t seem to have anything to do with heartburn and/or headache relief, which leads me to wonder exactly whether he’s here to sell you Alka-Seltzer, or if he’s just spouting some generic ad copy he got from the National Beer and Chicken Wings Promotion Council?  For that matter, doesn’t he look just a bit young to be drinking in the first place?  Someone check his ID. 

But if you can put those issues aside, you can get Speedy and his newly rehashed catchphrase emblazoned on a free (with purchase, of course) limited edition T-shirts, perfect for doing things that don’t involve going out in public and/or retaining any shred of the dignity you may have once had.  If that one isn’t quite to your liking, they offer a second option for the slogan, perfect for the next time you need to get yourself fired from your job in a hurry.  At least you won’t have any heartburn or headache while you’re standing in the unemployment line.

EDIT:  I keep forgetting that YouTube exists.  Here’s a clip of Speedy from his heyday: