rage ale

I'm driving down the freeway and I see a pickup in front of me with a spray painted plywood sign advertising Rage Ale. It's pretty DIY and the truck looks battered and it made me happy to know some low-budget brewery had been born and was making their dream come true.

Until I realized that they had just cut up a piece of plywood that had been used for a GaRage sAle.

in which i break up with atk

This is personal and filled with drama...I broke up with America's Test Kitchen! In an email, no less (they won't take my calls):

For years, I've been damn-near evangelical in my love for Cooks Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen. I receive your publication and I own your cookbooks. While perusing recipes with a friend (who pays for web membership) we hit a recipe that was blurred out and reserved for "Editor's Choice" memberships only.

...I've had it with premium memberships, elite memberships and all the other marketing crap that striates and monetizes every level of information and makes everything into a goddamn tollroad. I am heartbroken to say this, but I'm done. I'll go elsewhere for recipes from now on.

Seriously, I'm bummed. But a girl has to set some boundaries.

*see shameful update

bubonic marketing

I love that it's named Black Friday. For the retailers, it's all about being In the Black, as opposed to where they're swimming right now, which is In the Red. For those of us who loathe shopping, it's a plague warning shot and we're quarantining ourselves/hunkering down...only venturing out into Target-Shopper-Free zones, if at all..

sufferin' succotash

Okay, all I have left are the carrots and corn. I always eat those chalky lima beans first to get them out of the way.

An epiphenita, then: it seems that everyone around me is on anti-anxiety meds. Not judging, just noting. So when I start to torque out about something that seems...you know, like normal shit, I look around and everyone else seems so...fucking Calm. Placid. Unruffled. Being around people who have their anxiety medicated out, makes me feel a wee bit crazy. How's that for a side effect?
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Oh, look a stray pea: my coworker shared this with me a while ago and I've forgotten about it until now. If you do a book review of the Bible, don't forget to include this (but space down below the fold so you won't ruin the ending for those who haven't read it).

NEW TESTAMENT SPOILER ALERT: Jesus dies on page 43.
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I always feel like I have to apologize reassure people that my stress over the last couple of glob posts is nothing to worry about. There are things that I have been doing and things that I haven't been doing that contribute. One of the main ones is that I haven't been doing my daily must-control-fist-of-death walk. It is an unexpected form of therapy for the exercise-hater than I am. It also gets me away from that mind-numbing cube with the staring dual computer screens. Like big rectangular eyes boring into my soul...ha. Kidding. I can outstare them on my worst days.

Anyway, I resumed my constitutional today and have two observations (and feel much better).

1) I am the poster child for exercise discouragement. I do this walking thing five days a week (when the rare meeting or vacation doesn't interfere) and return to my cube in a lather. Seriously, be grossed out, I don't care. I'm a head sweater and I really push myself. And almost two years later, I don't look significantly different. Call it phantom metabolism. It kind of makes me smile. Because losing weight isn't my goal but I can see it is the only goal in the faces of the other regular walkers...damn, she's out here every fucking day and she's as big as she was 18 months ago. Aw. They noticed.

2) When I changed the clocks for Spring-Lose-an-Hour, I wasn't worried about extreme accuracy. What's 5-10 minutes difference on a Sunday morning? But, there was The Workday, tapping its schedule planner impatiently. So I started looking around for a clock while I walked so I could adjust my watch. The tunnels are a retail haven so I figured there would be clocks.

No clocks hanging anywhere.
Really, no clocks.
And that seemed odd.
Until I put my manipulative marketing hat on.
No merchant wants to remind patrons that time's awasting! Particularly during the work day. They want you to Mosey. Linger. Take a few more minutes. It's so subtle I never really paid any attention to it. It creeps me out that such a quiet, concerted effort to con the passerby is everywhere. Don't get me wrong, we are complicit in this shit. The merchants aren't duping the innocent. We choose buy shit we don't need or tarry when there's nothing we're really interested in.

Still. Marketing is eveeeel.

really?

Do you remember some years ago that Philip Morris did that whole campaign to stop teenage smoking? It was probably mandated or something but here's an example of the creative:

Nobody bought their feel good tactics. Even if you didn't believe there were subliminal messages (like some educators and anti-smoking groups did): that the clouds look like smoke, the snowboard like a lit cigarette and the mountains like piles of tobacco leaves, the idea that a corporation that made its money off tobacco sales would seriously want to discourage the next generation of salary-paying consumers from smoking is pretty ludicrous.

Which brings me to Chevron's latest media blitz. Tagging onto the feel-good, planet-saving conservation wave moving across the country/world:

Sorry. I just don't buy it. Chevron makes its money, and plenty of it, when we don't leave the car at home. This feels like such blatant bullshit to me. Marketing-driven bullshit to put a green tint on Oil & Gas. I admit, we all would be in a shitpile of trouble if the Oil & Gas industry went belly-up tomorrow. We need oil and we need gas. At least until we come up with a plethora of working alternatives. That said, don't insult our intelligence. BIG Oil wants you to put BIG miles on your BIG cars. It's their bread and butter. Or their crude and diesel.

It's like Whole Foods promoting the nutritional value of Velveeta. Like Hustler publishing an article on the importance of abstinence. We are not fooled. And we are not amused.