Man Tries To Pay Bill with Spider Drawing

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=665847

More On Sea Kittens

Stephanie urged me to mention the "Sea Kitten Stories" on the PETA website, which you can access here. I hadn't even seen these when I wrote the earlier post, but they definitely bear mentioning. It's an illustrated book, with stories of sea kittens and the cruel things humans do to them. Here's one tale, reproduced in its entirety:

Tony the Trout is the smartest Sea Kitten in his school. Already litter-trained at 2 months old, Tony went on to double-major in neuroscience and environmental studies at Clamford University, eventually graduating with honors. (Accompanying this is a drawing of a fish throwing his graduation cap into the air.)

When Tony is caught and fed to a precocious young child who, having eaten one mercury-filled sea kitten too many, falls to the bottom of the class, the irony is not lost on him. (Accompanying this is a drawing of a sad kid, staring at the skeleton of the fish he just ate, and for some reason the aforementioned graduation cap is also on the table.)

That isn't even the best one. I encourage you to look yourself.

I Need A Business Idea Like This

Take a look at this website, Beauty Holding. Here’s the premise: Invest in stock of a fledgling model. When the total capital raised hits $10,000, the website/model management company takes this girl under their wings, and pays for her to get a portfolio. Theoretically, international superstardom ensues, and investors receive 45% of her next 12 months earnings. Yay! Everybody wins!

It takes about ten seconds worth of math to realize this is horrible as an investment. Here it is quickly – if a model from this site can somehow earn $60,000 (which she won’t do) in the first 12 months, $10 invested (which I hope you won’t invest) returns you $27 (which you’re not going to get). Which means you need 2 out of every 5 models you invest in to be $60,000 earners literally right off the bat. So yeah, no. This may not fund your retirement.

That being said, it’s pretty ingenious as a business idea. If the website doesn’t gain much traction, you just collect all this cash, $10 and $20 at a time, that has been theoretically allocated to the models by (presumably) a bunch of horny guys sitting at their computers, vainly believing they might actually earn money this way. But since most (all) models will never hit $10,000, whose cash is it? That $1,400 sitting in the account for Lisa from New Zealand? Effectively it’s yours, clever business owner. That’s the brilliance of it; because you haven’t committed to doing anything until the $10,000 mark, you’re almost instantly cash flow positive. And if the business really does somehow take off, and a lot of models hit $10,000, there’s really no way for investors to verify that you spend all $10,000 in services or check what the model ultimately earns in those 12 months. So it’s really easy to skim off the top, not that I can prove they would do that. (I’m just saying that if I ran this business, that’s what I would do.)

Creators of this website, I salute you. This is brilliant. Simply brilliant.

Sea Kittens!

Navid alerted me to PETA’s latest campaign, which is so ridiculous that I don’t even think I need to make any jokes. I think I just need to state it. Here goes:

PETA has launched a campaign aimed at getting people to stop fishing and eating fish. This is the premise – people don’t eat dogs and cats because they are considered cute and friendly. People don’t think fish are cute and friendly. The reason, for the most part, is the name “fish”, which does not connote any warm and fuzzy feelings. So the way to fix this “problem”? Change the word “fish” to “sea kittens”, and develop an extensive “sea kitten” marketing campaign with graphics of anthropomorphic “sea kittens” doing things like reading books. Once you have effectively removed the word “fish” from the national vocabulary and replaced it with “sea kitten”, people will stop eating “sea kittens” and causing “sea kittens” to feel pain.

The campaign is so ridiculous, when I sent the link around, some people asked me if it was a joke website meant to mock PETA. Seriously, people need to eat more fish, not less, and if certain practices help bring fish at a lower cost to the obese masses, I am all for it.

Making fun of PETA is, to paraphrase Chris Rock, “Like calling double dribble on a retarded kid. You just gotta let some shit slide.” But I can’t completely resist, so I’ll end with this one, from Navid.

"I'll have the sea kitten. Grilled."

I Need To Know

I totally don’t understand this commercial for the 2009 Nissan Versa. Watch it first (with sound, sound is the most “important” part here), and then I’ll get to why I am hung up on this.

The most obvious problem is of course the music, but let me come back to that.

My takeaway from this commercial: I should buy the 2009 Nissan Versa if I am a married father with multiple children who has no qualms with looking like a dork. The car would be a good fit for me if I had a suburban residence but inexplicably lacked either a garage or driveway, making it vital that my car be easy to park on the street. Also, I am the sort of guy who wears pants to the beach.

Another source of confusion for me is how the narrative randomly transitions to the old guy on the bench at the very end of the commercial. Who is this guy? Am I supposed to buy the Nissan Versa because old dudes sitting on benches will be pleased with my frugality? “The 2009 Nissan Versa! It’s not going to impress chicks or your friends or anything, but maybe a senior citizen waiting at a bus stop will approve!”

So far, I can only conclude that the commercial is going for the rarely-pursued “look-we-all-know-you’re-not-that-awesome-so-let’s-not-kid-ourselves-you-should-have-a-lousy-car-but-at-least-this-one-isn’t-expensive-and-gets-good-gas-mileage” marketing angle. Which, I mean…okay, whatever. But then, for goodness’ sake, WHY THIS CHOICE OF MUSIC?!? It’s not subtle either, Marc Anthony’s “I Need to Know” completely dominates the whole commercial. The song is so horribly misplaced I can’t understand what could have prompted the choice. It’s almost like they assembled a focus group of mediocre guys who wear pants to the beach and their favorite song was Marc Anthony’s “I Need to Know”.

Ad Exec 1: “Hey what song are we going with for that Versa commercial?”
Ad Exec 2: “The focus group’s favorite song, hands down, is Marc Anthony’s ‘I Need to Know’. I say we go with that.”
Ad Exec 1: “What? But that doesn’t fit the commercial at all.”
Ad Exec 2: “It’s their favorite song by a mile. No other song is even close. When I mentioned this song they all just immediately started singing and trying to salsa with each other.”
Ad Exec 1: “What? How did you assemble this focus group?”
Ad Exec 2: “I went to the beach and rounded up all the guys who were wearing pants, just like you said.”
Ad Exec 1: “Alright well if the focus group says so…”
Ad Exec 2: “Oh, they do. They definitely do.”

As an aside, the song has such an annoyingly repetitive chorus that no one can remember the verses, even though it was a big radio hit. I challenge you to remember any lines that aren’t from the chorus without looking it up. This effect is so strong that Fu (somewhat reasonably, I should add) contended that the song didn’t even have ANY verses, and was just the chorus on repeat plus some “ohhhhh” ad-libbing. That turned out not to be true, so Fu owes me $5 now. I digress.

I should end by saying that this is not a personal attack on any 2009 Nissan Versa owners, just the makers of this commercial. If you own a Versa, congratulations on your good gas mileage and approval by the elderly. But if you made this commercial, you should probably be fired.

C is for Cookie

Hemanshu sent me a link from the Consumerist the other day, with a picture of a Kentucky restaurant that devised a clever little way to disguise its “C” health rating.

Reminded me of a time back in 2002 – LA County was one of the first places to require publicly posting health ratings. I was in the Century City mall food court, and the pizza place there had a “C” health rating. An elderly Hispanic lady walked up to the counter, and the following conversation ensued with the pizza shop owner, translated from Spanish:

“What is that letter on the wall?”
“What letter?”
“The big ‘C’ there.”
“Ohhh! That! The ‘C’ is for Jesus Christ!”
“Ah! How wonderful, of course it is! I will have that slice there, to go”

Awesome.