Promotion

Looks like I've been promoted to lead Webmaster at the Chronicle. Should be interesting.

Santa Fe: Super Chief

Today I added a new car to my expanding Lego Train collection. I already have the engine to the Santa Fe, and now I have a second car, currently being used as a cabus or some kind of breakfast car. The car has two other versions, that's three full sets of building instructions. It also added a healthy number of bricks to my collection, mostly grey.

The $300 Star Wars Star Destroyer keeps teasing me whenever I go in that store. It's probably a good thing I couldn't manage it on the bike ride home from the Lego store. The allure of getting the largest Lego set ever made is a strong one, and it would provide an incredible number of bricks for future Brick Wars games or other lego projects. Lots of mini-figs too! I have been holding myself over with small sets like the little buggy shown in the picture. I think several more of that type of set is in order.

Annoying Commercials

I see a lot of annoying commercials on these days. There are a few categories of dumb gimmicks that just get used over and over again. I present them in three easy categories so you can identify them easily.

They are, the Repeaters, the Headcrabs, and the Barneys.

The Repeaters are by far the most annoying, since they just kick you in the face till you're bleeding. A lot of ads do this, from PETA to Presidential campaigns. You can immediately recognize them, because they contain anywhere from 4 to 80 people all repeating each other nearly word for word. I recently saw a Suzuki ad using this technique. Three people in a row all said the same thing, then a fourth laughed about something, and now I'm supposed to buy a fucking Suzuki!? I think of a repeater ad as something like a jackhammer for the ears. In case you were not leaking the second time they said the same thing, you will be by the 7th.

The next two are benign, they're not really annoying, just silly and over used. The Headcrabs (named after the cute little guys that turn you into a zombie, from Half-Life) are the commercials that have shit floating over peoples heads, these are pretty easy to spot too. They were cool the first time they came out, but now several products are using these and it's getting cliche. Some examples of these ads are Verizon, Earthlink, and now some pill about cholesterol. They involve people that are either in the right (and have shit glued above their head) or are wrong/ignorant (lack of shit.) They're not really annoying, just silly. I think Earthlink started the trend, and they even have the class to make fun of it now in one of their recent commercials, where the woman which the hovering Earthlink logo calls it a "marketing gimmick."

Also harmless, but silly, is the Barneys, named after the famous purple dinosaur, these commercials involve people dressed in goofy costumes. There are a ton of these on TV today, from car ads to alcohol. It even seems popular to have them dressed in cheep looking suits! I don't think I really need to say much about these. You can decide for yourself if you like them or not.

These are really the major annoying groups of commercials out there. There are of course other annoying commercials, they just don't fit into these catagories.

Of course, there are a lot of top quality commercials out there as well. I'd say Geiko just keeps putting out funny and quality ads. There parody series is great! They always catch me off guard when I first see them air, but it's good to see them making fun of pop culture these days. Like their reality TV spoof ad. I also enjoy the Carrot-Top ads. They all say the same thing, but somehow they're entertaining.

~Aaron