Category Archives: advertising

Fame Day: Stopping Super Bowl Sexism

Posted on February 13, 2014 by | 1 comment

I have to admit it. We had a Super Bowl party at our house. By Super Bowl party I mean we had some friends over and John watched the game while the rest of us chatted and ate food and had fun, then when the commercials came on we would all quiet down and turn up the volume.

While there were, of course, a few “ugh” commercials, most were pretty good.
One that really stood out was this year’s GoDaddy commercial. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it featured this woman quitting her job in their commercial, since she knew her boss would be watching the game.

Gwen Dean says “I Quit” to her boss as she publicizes her plans to become a puppet master.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in advertisement, advertising, Fame Day, feminism, internet, sports

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Culture War Correspondence: Censorship

Posted on February 11, 2014 by | 1 comment

GORDON: Welcome readers to another exciting installment of [redacted], where we’ll be discussing [censored] and the [undisclosed] surrounding it.
(The topic for today is censorship, for anyone baffled by my oh-so-subtle clues…)

While this topic did originate out of Evan’s and my discussion of TV (how we’d deal with rating systems, more specifically) we HAVE touched on this topic before, with our previous discussion of the UK’s automatic porn-block for British ISPs.

KAT: You guys actually included a poll in your discussion on television, too. And while there weren’t an awful lot of votes, it seems like more readers agreed with censoring daytime TV to some degree.

Censorship is such a big topic, but before we go much further, let me get an idea of how you feel about it. Is censorship ever okay? If so when? And by who?

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in advertising, America, bizarreness, Canada, Culture War Correspondence, film, internet, literature, media, morality, news, politics, pornography, television, video games

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fame Day: Chipotle’s Farmed and Dangerous

Posted on February 6, 2014 by | 5 comments

I am a man who likes a number of different things, but high up among them are food and environmentalism. When it comes to the latter my immersion into all things animal-related at a young age [Kratts’ Creatures, anyone?] made me care deeply about their habitats, and that extends to this day. As far as food goes it’s something that has kept me alive for the past 23 years. Big ups to food.

Just last December I ate at Chipotle for the first time. While I was extremely unimpressed by my burrito assembler’s assertion that the medium salsa was “pretty spicy”, everything else was great. A good quantity of good quality Mexican food at a reasonable price, plus great chips- what’s not to like? Or, I guess I should be asking, what more is there to like?

goodjobchipotle

How about a Hulu-exclusive show that lauds sustainable agriculture and humane treatment of food animals with one hand while damning the modern world of industrial agriculture with the other?

Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in advertising, business, Comedy, environmentalism, Fame Day, food, internet, television

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Drive-By Evangelism

Posted on February 2, 2014 by | 1 comment

A couple nights ago I heard something blaring outside my window. My apartment complex is situated next to a high school football field, so I didn’t think anything of it until the sound started getting clearer. I walked over to my window and looked out to see a truck with a flat trailer hitched up behind it, carrying a sound system, floodlights, a microphone, and a guy singing an (awful) Christian rap/altar-call hybrid.

Again.

Yeah, these guys have been through before. I’m not sure if it’s a monthly thing, or if they go for it whenever they can sneak in (I’m pretty sure the management, slum-lords though they are, haven’t signed off on this).

For the most part they just roll up and down the streets in the complex at a couple miles an hour and shout through the loudspeakers that we have got to accept the Jesus into our hearts as lord and savior and…

Well, that’s about it really. And it’s junk like this which is the subject of today’s post. Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in advertising, bizarreness, Christianity, morality, religion

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Grammarly: An Online Platform Review

Posted on January 31, 2014 by | Leave a comment

I tried Grammarly’s check grammar free of charge because, well, let’s just say that I’ve been skeptical of any sort of program that claims to be able to assist or improve writing. Sure, I write a fair amount as you’ve probably noticed, but I edit quite a bit as well [every post that goes up on this blog, for one, so any mistakes you may find are unfortunately all on me]. Suspicion of any product that may eliminate the line of work I’d like to be in is warranted, I think.

Not only that, but back when I was still working as a copywriter I was asked to try out some software that would be used to “spin” articles, turning old content into fresh, new content that would draw search engine attention to our company. Unfortunately the program [the ironically named The Best Spinner] only served as a sort of glorified thesaurus, providing alternatives to words used, something that any accomplished writer could handle themselves, while rearranging sentences as well. 

So I tried out Grammarly with equal parts skepticism and trepidation- would this be an online platform that would make me, and others editors to boot, obsolete?

grammarlylogo Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in advertising, internet, language, review, writing

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Culture War Correspondence: How We Would Do TV

Posted on January 29, 2014 by | 2 comments


EVAN: The idiot box, the boob tube, the . . . television receiver . . . TV’s a pretty important part of our culture, and even as I write this the flatscreen is on, showing the Rockets pretty soundly beating the Spurs-

There are also certain ways that things are done, which is apparent as anything else given the upcoming Super Bowl and the so-called “Ad Blitz”. What we’re here to do is explain how we’d do things, were we the ones running the show.

GORDON: Since you brought up commercials, that’s probably a good place to start.

How about declaring a law that the same commercial cannot be shown twice in the same hour? Continue reading →

2 Comments

Posted in advertisement, advertising, Culture War Correspondence, television

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,