If you were unfamiliar with Groupon, you certainly got a weird introduction to it last night with the “Tibet” commercial. That ad was stunningly bizarre. However, if you have ever sat down and read a Groupon ad, last night’s commercial was not a surprise.
We talked about these ads in Crosstalk and I did a post way back. I was just re-reading it and thought I’d post it because it shows the truly bizarre advertising ideas that Groupon uses.
(This post is from September 2010) Have you subscribed to Groupon, the online coupon group? You sign up and they email offers to you. The deals are pretty good. I got a great deal on carpet cleaning through Groupon. However, if you stop and read the text, it contains some of the strangest writing I’ve ever seen.
Here’s the first one that caught my notice. It’s a Denver area Groupon. It contains an odd analogy:
A marriage between two cuisines is preferable to a marriage between two clones of Sylvester Stallone, a process that eventually results in a baby reared on raw egg and meat punching bags.
WTF? It’s an advertisement for a Denver restaurant that I think serves fusion cuisine. This is on the menu:
Mr. Croque, a sandwich of Black Forest ham and cambozola cheese with a champagne saucette ($9), puts taste buds on a first-name basis with pleasure, and samurai sea bass attacks hunger with preserved veggies, a miso-beurre blanc, and a rigid code of honor ($26).
“What exactly,” inquired one of my online friends, “is pleasure’s first name?” The ad never reveals it. I suppose you have to go to the restaurant to find out. My favorite analogy is further along in the ad:
An extensive menu of signature cocktails and a globally focused wine list give Japoix the libationary power of a team of mixologist Clydesdales.
Are horses working at the bar? Do horses have qualities that are desirable in a bartender? My husband wondered if, maybe, the copywriter was from another culture in which the compliment “Hey, that’s a real horse of a bartender!” is common.
At first, I thought the restaurant had a random, weird copy editor. However, this morning, I opened my Groupon offer for a mainicure/pedicure and was greeted with this analogy:
Your feet have felt neglected ever since you started walking on your hands, and your hands have been jealous of your feet ever since you sold your fingers to pay for college.
In this case, why bother with the manicure? Further on, the ad reads
The luxury mani-pedi gets metacarpal and metatarsal teams looking their best before competing with rhinoceros horns and flamingo plumage in the World Keratin Showcase.
Okay, WHAT????? Will my toes look like horns? Is the nail polish flamingo-colored? I’m so confused.
I shared this with a few friends on Gawker and found out that it’s not just Denver. “Lymed”, from DC, sent me this gem from a Groupon Golf Course ad in DC. I tried to read it to my husband over the phone but started laughing so hard at the Keebler trees that I could not continue.
Gentle creeks and tributaries flow through the 7,077-yard championship layout at Old Hickory Golf Club, which is lined with oak, maple, and hickory, and conspicuously vacant Keebler trees. The Bull Run Golf Club meanders through pictorial meadows and woodlands. Regardless of the course, masterfully avoid stepping on cracks that break mothers’ backs by rolling over them (mothers, that is) in the included golf cart.
The ad got off to a good start as well:
Golf, like professional wrestling, involves an inordinate amount of tossing chairs, wearing flashy costumes, and putting while a spandexed competitor has you in a sleeper hold.
Who are these people golfing with? “A Piece of the Continent” sent in the following text from a Chicago Groupon for a science museum:
Science is one of the world’s most marginalized subjects, often bullied by math, disregarded by geography, and ridiculed by gym class.
I actually don’t think that’s true. I know for a fact that gym class isn’t around any more and I believe the science majors are the only people with jobs these days. “Delta Sierra” posted an older one from Orange County, CA:
A grocery store is like a carnival midway-it offers shelves and shelves of goodies that only become available after lobbing baseballs at stacks of bottles.
That’s not how I used to shop but I’m going to start immediately.
Clearly, the same person is writing all of the copy for Groupon because these are some of the weirdest analogies on earth. They are startling in their bizarre similarity. Do you think that alcohol is involved? I imagine it’s a more mind-altering substance. I’d like to see more of these if anyone has them on hand. At first, I thought I’d write them and tell them to get a new writer, but now I’m getting sort of attached to these little gems. I wonder if they are actively trying to make them bad at this point.
Thanks to the awesome Gawker crosstalk posters who helped with the Groupon research: spikenard, lymed, A Piece of the Continent, Madfall, Nuclear Bore, Shady Esperanto, Bebe, Mother Gooch, Delta Sierra, tipsy_hausfrau, yearscomeandgo, naugahydeinplainsight, Daisy_Sage, lamey007. This is crossposted from bbqcornnuts.typepad.com
bbqcornnuts
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Why am I, a nearly 40 year old woman (gah! How did that happen?) obsessed with Teen Mom? I was secretly looking forward to last night’s premiere of Teen Mom 2. I set the DVR to record it twice just in case some of it got cut off. I have a theory that 30-40 year old moms are watching most of MTV’s docudramas. I bet if you could get people to really admit what they watch, you’d find out that I’m right (someone is watching all those episodes of True Life). Every time one of my friends has a baby, they tell me they spent their maternity leave watching 16 and Pregnant or My Super Sweet 16 or Jersey Shore or My Super Sweet Shore or 16 and At The Shore.
I did some self-analysis and here are some of the potential attractions that Teen Mom 2 holds for me:
- I was obsessed with the original Teen Mom, so this is a natural progression.
- I have little kids and this show makes my life look way easier.
- Leah lives near my hometown so I see glimpses of where I grew up.
- No matter how dumb I act, I still have more sense than Janelle (or Amber. Pick your season and there will be an applicable trainwreck).
- Lawd, 17 year old boys should not be parents. Teen motherhood is a concern; teen fatherhood is a tragedy.
- It makes me so glad I did not have children until I was in a stable relationship.
- I am a huge dork for an underdog love story and am rooting hardcore for Leah and Corey.
- Damn, is my husband ever WonderDad.
- When I get irritated about spending Saturday night surrounded by tantrums and Goldfish crackers, I can remember that I spent my 20s going to so many clubs that I was sick to death of them
I continue, despite the critics, to think this show is a good documentary. It makes teen motherhood look like hell. I am soooo glad I waited. It’s so much easier when you’re older and the child’s father is older. I suppose it’s possible that some teen somewhere got pregnant on purpose just to get on this show. I’d have to question this teen’s ability to make any kind of good decision in general. Even if you’re a pregnant teen in the right age group, what are the odds you’d get on this show? Anyway, now I’ve publicly admitted my guilty TV watching habit (one of them). Now I’m going to watch the deleted scenes on MTV.com and count down the days until the next episode.
Crossposted from bbqcornnuts.typepad.com
2 million fish were found dead in The Chesapeake Bay. 100,000 fish went belly up in Northwest Arkansas. Thousands of birds died in Arkansas, Louisiana and Sweden. They just fell out of the sky.
WTF?
Naturally, I turned to The Rapture Index (www.raptureready.com) for answers. Is it Armageddon? Is it Rapture Time? If you’ve missed my blog posts on the issue, The Rapture Index is self-defined as “the prophetic speedometer of end-time activity”. The Index measures a variety of categories including false christs, liberalism, plagues, droughts, and the occult. The record Index high was 182 on Sept 24, 2001. The record low of 57 was recorded on December 12, 1993.
There is no specific Index measure for dying birds or fish, but if I remember correctly from the movie The Seventh Sign, dying fish and birds falling from the sky are definitely a bad sign. I went right to The Rapture Index for answers and what do you think I found? Nothing! The Index has not been updated since January 3rd and it’s sitting steady at 173. That’s pretty high but there is no mention whatsoever of the bird/fish death plague and how it might affect the rapture. Should I pack for the rapture? Should I find heathens to watch my pets after the rapture? Should I bother to send in a check for this month’s mortgage? Dammit, I need answers. If I can’t turn to The Rapture Index, where can I turn?
Crossposted from bbqcornnuts.typepad.com
Crossposted from bbqcornnuts.typepad.com
My four year old son is so wound up about Christmas that I’m somewhat concerned that he will spontaneously combust from his own excitement. It is extremely cute and Christmas morning is definitely one of the best times to be a parent. It’s particularly rewarding with my son, who is easily pleased and is thrilled when someone gives him a new pencil.
But how on earth are we going to get our children to sleep on Christmas Eve? We’ve got presents to put together and we’d like to set it up to look like Santa Claus made an effort. I’ve got to find some way to get the kids to bed and make them stay there.
I’m fortunate enough to have fairly mellow children for the most part. They’re small so they get into plenty of nonsense but they’re generally well-behaved. However, in the last few days, they have turned into manic little elves. My son is almost hysterical with Christmas spirit. We’ve had nonstop tantrums and I swear my son has regressed into a two year old. He’s also been puking a lot. My 2 year old daughter doesn’t remember last year but she knows something is up and is excited by default.
I’ve decided that my best bet is to completely exhaust them on Christmas Eve. Here’s a preliminary schedule I’ve worked up:
5 am: Let’s get up early!
7-10 am: Wind sprints in the park
10-noon: High impact hide and seek
1-3: Extreme Gymnastics
3-6 pm: As much running as possible
7-8 pm: Mainlining Sleepytime tea
8 pm: Straitjackets and locked bedroom doors
I was kidding around on a past post about how I will punish my children when (I know it’s not an if, they’ll try it) I catch them drinking. Someone pointed out in the comments that not much will stop a teenager from drinking. That’s almost universally true. But there is one glaring exception and that exception is my mother.
My mother has been a teacher for something like 45 years and when I was in high school, she taught at a Catholic high school (she still teaches there at the age of 80 and any of her current students will tell you that she’s still as scary as ever). The nuns have nothing on my mom in terms of intimidation. Mildred has it down to a science. I didn’t actually attend my mother’s high school. She mercifully allowed me to attend the public high school. My brother got into trouble and had to go to my mom’s school and actually had her as a teacher. But I was allowed off the hook.
Like every other teenager on the planet, I tried drinking. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at it and made a huge strategic error early on in my drinking career. I and two of my friends got drunk at a high school dance. When I say “drunk”, I mean “annihilated”. With typical teenage savvy, we decided that we would split two full bottles of vodka between the three of us. Clearly this proves that we were not experienced drinkers because no one who has ever had a red wine headache would consider drinking that much alcohol. We got busted almost immediately, probably because none of us could walk and at least 2 of us were in the bathroom puking up pure alcohol.
They called our parents who had the privilege of picking up their shitfaced daughters at a high school on Friday night. My two friends were told that the raging hangovers were their punishments. However, things went a bit differently for me.
Here are some of the procedures Mildred put in place to dissuade me from doing any more underage drinking:
- A 3 hour lecture at 6 am the following morning while I had what is still the worst hangover of my life (and that includes college)
- Grounding for a full month and in Mildred’s house, that meant no tv, no phone, no leaving the house other than for school and church
- Many, many Catholic masses
- An AA meeting
- A detailed report on alcoholism (researched at the library)
- I was suspended and had to spend the time working for my grandfather. Sweatshop owners have nothing on my grandfather when it came to making people work.
- During the week of Christmas break, I had to report to the janitor at the high school and help clean graffiti off the walls. I also got to clean toilets in the gym.
- I had to attend counseling meetings with two dimwitted teachers at the high school. They’d each taken a psychology class in college and felt qualified to diagnose my family as dysfunctional based on the fact that I, a teenager, had drank alcohol.
- Sniff tests every time I walked through the door for the next year.
Now, I’m not going to lie and say that I never again did any underage drinking, but I cut waaaaaaaay back after that incident. Especially in high school. College is another story entirely.
When we were expecting our first child, my husband read several books about parenting. He was worried that he didn’t know much about babies. He did, however, know a lot about research so he put those skills to work.
After many hours of reading, he concluded that parenting books are of no help whatsoever. Here is the problem, as he described it to me:
If you want to engage in an exercise in futility, take a book by Doctor Sears, famous for his attachment parenting theories, and compare it to a book by Doctor Buckman and Gary Ezzo, famous for their Babywise method. Read a chapter on a specific topic in one book, and then read the corresponding chapter in the other. The differences in their advice will drive you insane.
I would like to hear a debate between these two self-proclaimed experts. I think it would go something like this:
Moderator: Let’s start with feeding:
Buckman: Put him on a schedule so he’ll sleep through the night
Sears: Feed him on demand because babies know when they’re hungry.
Buckham: Babies who are fed on demand become fussy and will never sleep well.
Sears: Babies who are not fed on demand become dehydrated and malnourished.
Buckman: You’re spoiling the baby
Sears: You’re trying to starve the baby
Buckman: Now you’re being melodramatic
Sears: That’s because you’re being a baby nazi
Moderator: Alright, that deteriorated fast. Let’s try a more neutral topic, like co-sleeping
Sears: I recommend a family bed. Denying the child attention will make him anxious which will screw him up for life.
Buckman: You shouldn’t let the baby into the adults’ bed. Learn to recognize the baby’s cries and let him cry we should learn to recognize his cries and let him cry himself to sleep if he doesn’t sound agitated. To give him too much attention will make him needy, which will screw him up for life.
Sears: That baby will have an anxiety disorder and feel unloved.
Buckman: Oh yeah? Well, the baby in the family bed will grow up to be a huge p….
Moderator: Alright, let’s move on. How about a parental date night?
Buckman: Parents creating a “date night,” a time to leave the kid with someone else and reconnect as a couple.
Sears: I strongly disagree. Parents should wear the child in a sling and take him everywhere they go for the first two years of the child’s life.
Buckman: That’s insane. Parents to spend at least 15 minutes each night talking solely to each other, ignoring the child so that they can connect as a couple. It’s important to show the child that the parents have a strong marriage so the child understands his role in the family.
Sears: In some primitive cultures, the child doesn’t even touch the ground until he’s two-years-old, at which time they have a historic “ground breaking ceremony,” declaring the child ready to touch the ground. Systems like this make our children feel loved and safe, which will stop us from screwing them up for life.
Buckman: That’s the craziest piece of hippie nonsense I’ve ever heard. Children should not be running the family life. Parents need time alone or they’ll go insane.
Sears: Children are equal members of the family. You want to run the family like a military camp. Do you even like children?
Moderator: Okay, let’s talking about sleeping. Lots of parents worry about getting the child to sleep.
Sears: If your child has trouble sleeping, try putting him in a car seat on top of a running clothes dryer or rocking him to sleep.
Buckman: No, don’t do that. Ever. It’s dangerous to put a baby on a clothes dryer. If you rock the baby to sleep, it will become dependent on rocking to get to sleep.
Sears: So it’s wrong to rock a baby to sleep? Is that what you’re saying?
Buckman: I’m saying that babies need to learn to fall asleep on their own. You can’t rock to them to sleep every time.
Sears: Oh, I see. Just let them scream until they pass out. That’s the loving way to handle it. Why don’t you just let them stay in the crib all day and just throw them a ham bone every once in a while?
Buckman: I suppose you want to run around naked in a field with the baby in a sling singing songs about nature? That’s how you’d like to raise a baby, you crazy hippie.
Moderator: Guys, we’re just trying to help out the parents.
Buckman: I can’t talk to him. He called me a baby nazi.
Sears: You called me a hippie.
Moderator: That’s IT! I have had enough of this! If you two doctors don’t stop fighting, I’m going send both of you to time out.
I think this is an overly optimistic view of how said debate would go.
The birth process has changed a lot since I was born. My mom just went to the hospital and had me. It was pretty cut and dried. Today, she’d be known as a terrible mother. Birth has evolved. It’s become a defining act. It tells the world what kind of mother you are and many believe it sets the tone for the relationship you will have with your child.
If you are newly pregnant or someone close to you is having their first child, you will probably hear a lot of new concepts thrown around. Mothers-to-be have to decide where to have their baby, how to have it, whether drugs or interventions should be involved and how to deal with the baby immediately after the birth. There are lots of decisions to be made. However, to start off with, it’s important to understand the terminology. Here are some terms you might not be familiar with if you are new to the modern birth era:
Birth plan: Birth plans are a fictional document a mother writes before the birth which outlines how she would like the birth to proceed. The plan often contains her wishes to use or avoid medication, induction or c-sections. The mother gives this plan to the doctors and nurses who laugh themselves sick because we all know how cooperative babies are. Yes, babies come on time, on schedule, in exactly the way you want them to be born. That happens all the time.
Doula: Doulas like to say that while the father or doctor catches the baby, the doula catches the mother. The Doula is there to mediate between the mother and the doctor and make sure the mother doesn’t make any rash decisions such as deciding at the last moment that she will take any and all drugs and she doesn’t care what she said yesterday about medication, dammit, she wants an epidural now.
Midwife: Midwives are superior to doctors in that they are considered more natural and holistic and will make you feel like a wimp if you whine about drugs or beg for pain medicine. Midwives are often earthy, granola type women who gave birth after two pushes and buried their placenta under a tree. They are the kinds of women who glowed during pregnancy and have magical birth experiences. Clearly, they are either aliens or part of a secret superhuman race. They speak in coded language that only other superhuman women understand. They use code words like “surges” and “orgasmic birth” that will attract other superhuman women and allow them to give birth to their superhuman babies in the midwife environment.
Homebirth: Instead of going to the hospital and bringing the baby home, you have your baby at home. Then, you get to deal with the mess and bodily fluids yourself or assign your husband and/or any onlookers to clean up the biohazards. This is a great way to involve them in the birth process. Nothing makes a new father happier than cleaning up uterine fluid and blood. Also, if you live in an apartment complex, you will be able to alert your neighbors immediately to the fact that a baby is on the way so they can go shopping for baby gifts asap.
Unassisted childbirth: This is for the balls to the wall crowd. Midwives and doctors be damned – in this case, you are going it alone. There are lots and lots of helpful videos and stories on the internet about people who birth without out any medical intervention whatsoever. Sometimes the mother even catches the baby by herself. This requires the kind of woman who is very vigilant during labor as the baby definitely needs to be caught if the mother is standing or squatting. A fresh baby covered in bodily fluid can go flying pretty far. It’s probably a good idea to have a catcher’s mitt on hand.
Orgasmic birth: A contradiction in terms. Attempt to keep a straight when you hear this term. Some first time mothers think this is possible during childbirth. You never hear experienced mothers talk about it.
I’m going to try to do a feature on parenting, Crasstalk style. Here’s my first post. If you are one of the four people who read my blog, you might recognize it. It should be fresh for 99.7% of readers.
Do People Judge New Moms about Breastfeeding?
The other day, I read the cutest comment on the internet by a mom-to-be. Let’s call her Marge. Marge was worried that people would judge her based on her decision whether to breastfeed exclusively or not.
Boy did I roll on the floor laughing until my eyes bled.
Marge, you’re worried that people will judge you based on whether or not you breastfeed? Marge, you need to back the hell up and start all over because you have completely misconstrued the situation. You are worried about #80 on the list of 7,856,912 things people will judge you about as a parent.
Marge, are you just now catching on to the judgment vibe? Where the heck have you been your entire pregnancy? What about the pre-pregnancy phase? If you were any kind of mother, you would have started taking folic acid a minimum of 6 months before you started trying to conceive. You really should have started taking a prenatal vitamin and started eating organic. Were you reading “What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Expect in the Expectant Future?” last year and purging your house of lead-based paint and cat dander? Did your husband switch from briefs to boxers and eat a raw food diet so that only the healthiest sperm got out of the gates?
If not, you’re probably already dealing with a sub-standard fetus. Well, you’re going to have to do the best you can with what you’ve got. Maybe there’s a chance that the child’s life hasn’t been completely mangled. Try not to screw up the rest of the pregnancy. Listen to only classical music and avoid processed meats but eat only processed cheese. No caffeine and drink organic teas but be careful what herbs are in the teas because some herbs can cause birth defects. If a sip of alcohol passes your lips, expect Child Protective Services to show up and demand the infant in the delivery room. Also, it goes without saying that no one in your area code should be allowed to smoke, fart, exhale, or drive a car that runs on diesel fuel. If you can follow these simple rules, your child may have a chance at getting in to community college, at least on a conditional basis.
Your child might have a shot if you don’t mangle the birth process. Marge, it’s important to understand that birth is a process. You don’t just have a baby. You have to plan. There are midwives and doctors to consult, birth plans to write, delivery environments to choose, birth philosophies to embrace and pain management techniques to absorb. But we can’t get into any of that yet because first and foremost, you have to enroll in a Pregnancy Yoga class. When you’ve accomplished that, we will move to all the things you’ll be judged about during baby delivery and then, and only then, will we discuss how you’ll be judged during baby feeding. We’ve got a long way to go, Marge.