I've been reading a lot about Blog Issues lately, and one that has resurfaced often is advertising. I used to shake my fist at the inexorable ad creep that burrows its way everywhere, but now I'm ready to let my lungs fill with water and acknowledge that advertising, although sucktastic, is the way of the world. It's everywhere, it's not going away, and my children will soon be of dream target age. So it falls to my wife and me to explain what it is and what it's trying to do, and maybe my sons will understand how and why they're being manipulated.
Ads on blogs don't bother me, and not just because I'm a Federated Medium. Frankly, they're so ubiquitous that regarding them is a lot like living next to the railroad tracks. The trains go by so often that sooner or later, you don't even notice them.
One thing, though: Those transparent pop-up things? The ones where you have to search for the well-disguised "close" button? That shit has got to stop, because it's fucking annoying.
As long as we're talking about marketing, I'm starting to wonder about that sandwich franchise that rhymes with (and may soon change its name to) Tubway. Isn't this the company that built its entire image on sensible eating? That prided itself as the anti-McDonald's by centering its ads around a former blob who slimmed down on a diet of bread and cold cuts?
This same company is now selling "super-stuffed" bread balls using absolutely revolting footage of the many revolting ways that revolting people can eat them, revoltingly. The biggest joke is the tiny woman who apparently finishes this immense foodlump in one sitting. If she had somehow summoned the stamina to sock this entire thing away in one go (and suddenly my mind is filled with the images like this one), she wouldn't lick her fingertips so damned perkily. She would instead be staring forward, hazily, begging for the sweet release of death. McDonald's should fire back with a new campaign: "At least our food isn't bigger than your head."
It's a curious marketing tack, but it seems to be working because my neighborhood is infested with new franchises. Including the new one around the corner, which has become a fun little puzzle. Twice over the past couple of weeks I've arrived twice in the middle of the day to find it closed and empty, even though the sandwich board is still on the sidewalk urging us to Come On In. This other time, I walked in with the boys and found no one behind the counter. So I looked down the little corridor toward the rest room and found a dude in a chair, head on the table, fast asleep. Nothing roused him, so we grabbed a cup of ice water and left.
Maybe he was in a meat coma.
