Commercial Break

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the only known site on the Internet devoted to all things related to Un. Kind of amusing readers and taking up space on the Information Highway since 2005. This site is all about me and the random things that I find interesting.

Television ads. Some of them are amusing and clever like certain Super Bowl ads. A lot of them are pretty annoying and stupid. So dumb, you have to wonder how any thinking person could come up with that ad and what idiot paid money. Then you realize that it was made by a highly successful business and everything becomes much clearer.
I watch too much television. And I need to stop being a nitpick at the immense failure of other people.
Then agian, if I don't notice these seemingly inconsequential things, then I wouldn't have as much fun in life. And I wouldn't have something to post about on this blog. So I guess that it's a good thing in a way. But I still have very little of a social life to talk about so it's just another friendly reminder of this pitiful fact. I fail as well.
All kidding aside, a lot of stupid ads populate television. Or a whole lot of people lack a certain amount of common sense and need special guidance. Either case does not speak highly of the intelligence of humanity. And yet, there's a part of me that says that humanity has become too clever for its own good. That possibility is even more disturbing as it shows how gullible and materialistic we've become.
Take for instance the Serta Vera Wang mattress collection. Supposedly, a Vera Wang designed mattress is luxurious, romantic, and comfortable. I can understand "comfortable" and I can define it in some way. It feels good and you sleep well when you are on it. What certain physical aspects of the mattress that entails "comfortable" depends on the user. "Luxurious" is another vague term, but I suspect that it either means "we stuck a famous name on our regular product so paying money out of your ass because you're gullible" or "over the top in a subjective manner so you're paying money out of your ass." But what the hell is a "romantic" mattress? I've seen the mattress and I can't tell what's so fucking romantic about it. There's no Barry White music coming from it. No dishes are being cleaned. No candlelight. I mean, seriously, it's like every other Serta mattress. It just has "Vera Wang Collection" stickers and labels on it.
This is either a stupid commercial or a clever commercial. Stupid since they are mangling the English language and showing their ignorance of English. Clever since they are manipulating the English language to sucker people in buying their mattress.

And drug commercials are stupid and annoying.
Viagra is pawning "Viva Las Vegas" to sell the little blue pill. That's not stupid, it is blasphemy. Enzyte commercials are annoying as well. I hate the whistling as it is annoying. The damn shit-eating, dopey-ass grin on Bob's face makes me want to punch him repeatedly. And you are not going to have that much success if your penis gets erect when you want it to be erect or bigger for that matter. Who needs to be told that it's unsafe to operate machinery if the drug can cause you to fall asleep at inopportune times, especially when it is a sleeping medication? Duh...sleeping pills are supposed to put you to sleep, not keep you awake.

Fast food commercials annoy me as well. The Wendy's comemrcials suck. I liked Dave Thomas commercials where he would talk about Wendy's and the food there. None of the dumb commercials with creepy people wearing the CGI generated red wigs or driving chickens or God knows what else they've put on TV.
But Sonic takes the cake for inane drivel. The Sonic Guys commercials are stupid. The two guys who sit at the Sonic Drive-In and have the dumbest conversations about "seizing the burrito" or "weak tater tot action" or any other stupid phrase.
I've now ranted enough on commercials I hate.

That's all for now.

I'm Getting an Edumacation...

Greetings and welcome back to The Un-Zone, the only known site on the Internet devoted to all things related to Un. Basically, for those who don't get it, this stuff is all about me and the things that I find interesting. If this is not your cup of tea, try Google and find another site.

I've been through many years of school. At last count, I've spent twenty years in school. Elementary school, middle school, and high school. Four years of college. Three years in law school. That's close to 80% of my life spent in school of some sort.
Thankfully, I've managed to learn something. English grammar, fine literature, more math than I can handle (calculus, linear algebra, number theory), science of all sorts, and many other subjects. And yes, despite all of these years of filling my head with facts that may or may not be useful later in life, I've had education in other more useful subjects. Things like washing clothes, cooking food without burning it, and balancing a checkbook. Without such skills, I would be starving and broke. Possibly homeless due to an unfortunate cooking accident.
I still have many years of life ahead of me. I hope so, or this is going to be quite disappointing. Life is the best teacher there is, though life can be very tough. Life demands you pay a heavy price. Everyone ends up dead.
I find it sad that despite being one of the most "well-educated" countries in the world, the educational system is sorely lacking. To paraphrase what President G.W. Bush said about the educational system, our childrens is not learning. And yes, he was using faulty grammar. And yes, "our childrens is not learning" is meant to be a joke.

Consider the following. WWII was a bloody and costly war, both in money as in the number of lives lost. And yet, when juniors at a San Francisco area high school were asked questions about the war, most were clueless. Absolutely clueless. Mussolini was the leader of the USSR (Dictator of Italy by the way). The war ended with the bombing of Iwo Jima and Hitler's suicide (wrong again). They did, however, identify Hitler as the leader of Germany and a really bad dude.
Or this...Stanford University is one of the premier universities in the United States. It's recognized as a great school around the world. Secretary of State Rice attended there. Many other rich and famous people graduated from the institution. And students can learn all about Facebook by taking a class. It's about "gaining insight into the realm of online interaction" and other practical areas. Whatever the hell that really means.
For all I know, it could be about goofing off online, which Facebook does very well.

Finally, for all of those Star Wars fanatics out there. There's a class being taught at the University of Alabama about Star Wars and its links to religion, philosophy, and other areas of knowledge:

Finding the essence of religion, sociology, history and mass communication through the Force may seem a bit odd, but a particular Blount Undergraduate Initiative thematic seminar attempts to prove that the concept works.Taught by David DeWitt, a four-time graduate of the University, BUI 301: The Gospel of
Star Wars: Mass Entertainment as Postmodern Religion pulls many courses of study together to present a new wide-ranged look at mass media, religion and society.

There is some academic stuff involved. Like reading essays, writing papers, and watching film. Who knows, you might write a paper about Han Solo and the implications of him shooting first in the Cantina scene? That sounds a bit too geeky to me.

That's all for now.