Archive for the ‘haha’ Category
corporate disappointment »
Saturday, October 16th, 2010
Did you hear about the Gap logo? This is obviously rhetorical. While not the first, last or most ridiculous branding fail, it is the most recent and hilarious.
Gap (in a fit of desperation) tried to rebrand with the doodles of a nine-year-old (I’m not clear on the details). The results were horrendous and everyone was talking about it.
To tap into this “discussion” (read: almost universal loathing of their dismal offering), they tried crowd-sourcing a new logo. This, predictably, turned the “discussion” toward how a multi-national, multi-million-in-profits company wanted free work.
They relented and are back to the same logo they’ve had since before time. (more…)
looking forward to November »
Friday, May 7th, 2010
George W. Bush has a book coming out. I’ll let that sink in.
Now, with his decision-making and demeanor, I bet you’re surprised he could legibly write his name. I am too. But computers are glorious machines and maybe he learned how to pay someone to type.
I suggest you read the excerpt highlighted by The Awl. (I’ve been working through my noted items in my reader and finally got to it.)
First, I have to make note of his being baldist. I get that he should fear or loathe Dick Cheney (everyone should) but even for him this sounds hurtful to the hairless:
But he and the bald man had kept in touch. I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being bald bothered me. My idea of baldness came from the movies. In the movies, the bald were always trying too hard, like they wanted to make up for their lack of hair. My friend Karl was that way. At any rate, a bald man in my house was not something I looked forward to.
That’s cold, Georgie. Cold. (Granted, I have friends who probably meet my presence with trepidation.)
Second, you’ll note from that little bit and the passage (if you read it), he writes like a prepubescent. Cool narrative style, right?
Unfortunately, (if you read the passage; seriously, did you read it?) this story can’t take place more than seventeen years ago, so he’d be forty-six, at the youngest. That cool narrative turns into a depressing look at his capacities.
(Sigh.)
Generally, it’s a poorly written, glossy portrayal you’d hear in an octogenarian blogger’s memoir about his first Christmas memory. If that story included homoerotic architectural sketching with a weak-hearted, grunting uncle full of booze. (Which, I think you’ll agree, would be awesome.)
This is how he decided to run for the Presidency? Is it that easy? Along those lines, this is a story about his decisions and there aren’t any. What’s the point? (That’s rhetorical.)
If this is any indication of the rest of the book (I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be), it saddens me it was even put to print. That Palin, Beck and Bush can sell so many versions of their ignorance is telling of where our nation is heading.
I’m looking forward to November.
Photo courtesy New York Times
get in your car, everyone’s dying! »
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
I watch the local news. I don’t watch the local news closely. The former is because I don’t have cable, the latter because it’s universally terrible.
Exhibit #328: Piles of dead people on the roads.
There’s an epidemic of drivers and their passengers ending up dead around here. (If fourteen people out of millions is an “epidemic.”) The local news is on the case.
Of course, it’s not that drivers would have been better off not being idiots. Instead, the state needs to interfere to make the roads safe (for idiots to risk their lives on).
Monday’s newscast used a lead-in that amounted to: “What are officials doing to keep you safe?” Here’s the write-up about Sunday’s fatal fender-bender out in nowheresville (which they were alluding to).
Briefly, one sixteen-year-old driver was out two and a half hours past curfew with two more people than permitted. The other was driving with a revoked license. And the roads were wet.
Those jerk officials better get on it. It’s entirely their fault.
Local “journalists” could blame the number of cars on the road or how many trucks, fueling our consumptive needs, share it. Hell, we could blame drivers for being idiots.
Instead, carmakers make cars easier for idiots to drive. They give the illusion of safety and fill their cabins with audio and visual distraction.
Brilliant.
We don’t hold idiots accountable; we provide them tools to increase their idiocy. Local officials did all they could to keep these idiots alive.
Thanks, local news, for really hitting the issue where it counts.
One caveat. This is only one example. I’m sure the other accidents were caused by state-employed men in reflector vests directing teens into oncoming traffic while they sexted.
Note: I realize I’m getting heavy on posts about stupid drivers. If you’re tired of reading such things, get me cable. (Seriously, buy me cable.) Also, I am not counting myself outside of the idiots. In fact, as an idiot driver, I feel it’s my duty to call out my co-idiots on a regular basis.
Photo courtesy Car Insurance Tips Blog
I don’t want to meet Steve Jobs »
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
I’m a Mac convert. Their products are beautiful, somewhat top-of-the-line (at least upper quarter) and expensive. It took me years to buy my MBP and I’m in like with it. Still, Mr. Jobs is a dick.
You can all look back on all the finer points of his large security entourage, his staged conversations with other demigods and that he wears turtlenecks. (Only turtlenecks.)
I don’t need all that. I just need this one answer to a question from the recent OS 4 keynote.
Q: How do you close applications when multitasking?
Scott Forstall (Senior VP): You don’t have to. The user just uses things and doesn’t ever have to worry about it.
The Holy One: It’s like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it. In multitasking, if you see a task manager… they blew it. Users shouldn’t ever have to think about it.
To elaborate: the OS actually has a task manager (so his developers “blew it”).
“You click, hold the icon and quickly delete. It’s as simple as any other part of the interface. You don’t have to think about it.” This, an answer that promotes the product and doesn’t vaguely paint everyone else as an idiot.
Can you imagine a conversation with He Who Knows? I don’t even use half the hyperbole in a typical month Our Savior lays down in five minutes (and I’ve tried… hard). The Great One’s iPad, a tablet based on years of systematic improvements to the iPhone, is “magical.” Really? (::facepalm::)
I will piss off a dozen Macheads out there but I don’t want to meet I Am. He’s just an IRL Gregory House, a toolbox tolerated for his brilliance. (Which in his case is still debatable.)
That said, if Gregory House ran Apple I’d have bought my MBP a hundred years ago. (See what I did there?)
Note: This was written on the ninth; I totally forgot about it. I’m so good at this. Hope you enjoyed the pointed commentary related to something nearly a month old.
“well at least he’s not so late today.” »
Monday, April 5th, 2010
This quote from one of three men who wait at Southdale for the same express bus as I do when I don’t bike. I’ve taken to the nickname “The Trinity” when cataloging their odd…
The Tiny Badass
This guy shows up occasionally in a bright blue beret. He has anti-establishment, pro-awesome hair hanging a couple inches past his shoulders. (It’s thin and usually greasy, which provides as much disgusting as hilarious.)
This is made worse by two irrefutable facts: Badass is in his mid-forties and he probably weighs 120lbs with his 80s era bright blue ski jacket soaked through. The man is far too small for anything but a Napoleon complex bigger than its namesake’s to justify a bravado he so clearly has.
He’s someone who hangs with bikers but doesn’t own a bike because they’re too establishment. He probably saw many things I’d never want to in a war he didn’t believe in but the chip on his shoulder is heavier than he is.
Quote: “That place Lyle’s? I’m two blocks away and would never go there.”
The Slick Kitten
Both Slick and Badass are avid smokers. They stand in front of the bus stop while indulging themselves, shrugging their shoulders in the face of an imaginary authority that politely suggests they move fifteen feet to their left. With pride, they toss their still smoldering drugs on the sidewalk, into the parking lot or toward the grass because society tells them the sand-filled receptacles need be used.
Slick pines for expensive gadgets he will never afford. He doesn’t talk within earshot often (also, I almost always wear headphones), but when he speaks of magical features no tangible device has, my left kidney shivers. (That he usually attributes them to an iPhone is doubly hilarious.)
He’s taken to wearing shiny black shoes that clash so strongly with his frayed jeans it sparks concern that there are no women in his life. As soon as he finds one, he’ll toss his “too cool” for “too cute.”
The Aged Comedian
Without the nicotine habit, Comedian has to force his way into the conversation. He thinks up a comment no one cares about (you can tell because he smiles to himself), steps within a few feet and then drops said comment like slate tiles.
With his reusable, Colbert-emblazoned bag, he’s both too sure of his being hilarious and environmentally conscious enough to be innocuous. Add that he’s in his sixties and he’s basically invisible. He makes himself laugh, though, and that’s all that matters.
Quote: The title above, which he said every day for a week. That the bus was on time each of those days and hadn’t been more than three minutes late the full week prior makes me think he’s found his catch phrase. You know, if anyone were listening, which (read: said invisibility) they are not.
Photo courtesy Veer, obviously