deimler's blog http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:07:29 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1 en hourly 1 commercials resurrecting http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=572 http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=572#comments Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:34:25 +0000 deimler http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=572 so it’s nearly the holidays, and since kmart says its okay to put out their decorations, i’m going to talk about a semi-related holiday occurrence that comes around every year. i guess it saves companies a few thousand dollars to just keep recycling commercials every year and they think that people either a) won’t notice the m&m’s meeting santa over and over again for the first time or b) they think people look forward to their commercial each year. either way, i think i can make a fairly accurate prediction of a handful of commercials we’ll see starting the second thanksgiving has ended.

campbell’s soup kid doesn’t get hypothermia and makes a mess for his mom to clean up, but she’s happy to see him so she gives him campbell’s soup.

this was the first one i thought of. the thing that bothers me the most, why was this kid standing outside in the snow like this? my guess is that his “friends” were like “dude, we should totally build you into a snowman, then you can pop out and scare someone when they walk by!” then they bury him in the snow and leave him for dead. and when the kid realizes he has been left behind again, he begrudgingly drags his low-self esteemed body into his kitchen where he dines on a dollar can of soup alone and reflects on his friendless existence. now i may be exaggerating a bit, but after seeing the commercial every year since i was about 5, i need to elaborate on the story of this kid/snowman hybrid. anyways, i think their marketing department can come up with something new now. i get it. soup warm, snow cold, soup melt snow, kid eat soup, kid no die.

m&m’s are putting out their own kind to sacrifice to santa claus

i mentioned this one briefly in the opening. the m&m’s are in someone’s house and they’re going to leave their species out for santa claus to help his diabetes. i’m guessing the m&m’s are in someone else’s house because as i recall from this commercial, they aren’t paid anything. so i guess they were hired by upper class rich people to watch over the house/entertain small children for the holidays as a sort of odd job to make money for the holidays. and if you’ve read my blog before, you know i have issues with personified food, which the m&m’s wholly embody. they’re setting out exactly what they are to be eaten by someone else.

hershey’s kisses are bells i guess

this one shows up every year. hershey kisses we wish you a merry christmas as bells. now i’m sure when this came out, it was revolutionary 3d modeling techniques. however, since it’s 2011 and not 1996, i think it would be a good idea for hershey to maybe do a different song. they could even be really daring and do something even more elaborate. do a ballsy trans-siberian song that has guitars and lights and a choir. your commercial is moldy.

pennsylvanians make an elaborate song about lottery tickets so desperate people can pray for a million-to-one chance of winning 1,000 dollars

this one only shows up in or near pa, for obvious reasons. so the people are singing the 12 days of x-mas, but using lottery names in a more horrible remake than the 12 things i hate about x-mas. they start off at 7 because i guess they realize no one under the age of 60 would want to buy more than 7 lottery tickets. i feel bad for the choir group that is getting paid to stand out in this blizzard to promote the lottery. they could be making better money doing actual caroling. then this guy goes around and gives some people lottery tickets as a gift. i get lottery tickets sometimes as a gift, but it’s never the only gift. whoever gives lottery tickets as a singular gift is lazy. i’d rather have the cash value that was paid for the lottery tickets than a bunch of paper i’m going to have to throw away. he doesn’t even give them a card. it was like “oh shit i forgot to get rita a present for christmas. hmm i’ll just stop to get gas and grab a few dollar scratch offs.” and the bastard only bought tickets for rita and not the other guy there. i guess they’re just meeting each other for the first time or something.

fruity pebbles are awesome

alright and lastly, we have this commercial. i actually forgot about this one, and found it when i did a search to see if there were similar blog posts like this. it’s for fruity pebbles. they might have stopped running it but i remember i used to see it every year. this is the only commercial that is allowed to play every year because fruity pebbles are awesome and i felt my childhood whoosh back after watching this. in fact, i’d rather watch this commercial on repeat instead of the stupid christmas story movie.

]]> http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=572 comcast again http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=547 http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=547#comments Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:52:43 +0000 deimler http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=547 i recently moved, therefore my girlfriend and i had to go through the process of getting our tv and internet set up. i go in with doubts of course judging by their track record with me, but i try to remain optimistic. we get the setup time of 7-10 on a sunday. guy shows up at 9:55. not complaining, but i thought he would show up earlier, not a big deal. once he arrives, he says “okay so setting up tv and internet” and i say “yes, with wireless” to which replies “ooh…uhh…the job didn’t say anything about wireless, i don’t have the equipment for that.” fortunately we thought ahead and brought all old equipment from our previous residence (relevant to the remainder of this rant) and the guy can use it to do the install. he finishes without a problem, and i ask “since you’re using our old equipment, are you going to let your company know so they do not call us asking to return old equipment?” to which he replies “oh yeah, i’ll mark it down, they shouldn’t bother you for it.” of course i’m skeptical, it’s all smoke and mirrors with comcast. so he leaves and we have our stuff set up and things were fine for a few days. first annoyance: my girlfriend gets a call saying that our “signal is too high, and it will cause issues, we need to send someone out to look at this.” which to me, sounds silly. don’t you want a high signal? so she gets a time for them to come and lets me know. ideally, if i did not care about consequences in life, i would like to never be here when they try to show up. then call them back and be like “well i should be here between 12 and 3″ and do that whole thing with them, but ultimately i decide not to recreate an episode of seinfeld and be the bigger man. so 2 people show up to check the signal. they come in, literally look at the box and where the cable is plugged in, look at each other and say “oh well that’s why, nothing we can do about that” and leave. they were here for no longer than 30 seconds. it took me longer to sign the paperwork than it did for them to do anything. they didn’t even touch the equipment, just looked. so it’s awesome that they came and then left so quickly, but i think: what if i didn’t work from home? someone would have had to burn their lunch hour or take time off to have this company, who insisted on coming by, come and do absolutely nothing. second annoyance: i get a phone call 2 days later from comcast “hello, this is derp, we see you recently had services installed. we’re concerned with your signal peakage (?) and think your signal is too high, would it be okay if we send someone out to take a look at your signal?” so i mop up the blood that starts pouring from my ears and say “someone already did this a couple days ago.” and there is a pause with some mumbling and then “can you hold please?” so i do, though in retrospect i wish i didn’t seeing as they called me. she comes back “okay sorry for the inconvenience” and hangs up. so i guess that is resolved as we have yet to get more calls about that issue. third annoyance: my girlfriend gets a missed call and message from comcast (i’m not 100% sure what they said, but here is most likely what it was) “heyy this is buttcast, we need that equipment back that you have yo, when you moved, we need you to bring it to us yo, we need it. holllaaaaa!” then they call again and leave basically the same message a couple days later, so she talks to them via chat and they say we have to call a number to report the serial numbers. so, a task that should take 5 seconds, proceeds to waste 45 minutes of my time. here is what happens: i call the number and talk to their robot that takes 10 minutes to actually get to their whole “enter acct number, etc” sequence. i give my acct info, and go to the “if you moved” section thinking logically, this is where i would go since it concerns a move. there, none of the options match so i wait to talk to human #1, and explain that we moved, used same equipment, and were asked to call in. she says “oh well dummy, you need to go to the merging and transferring dept” or something like that so she transfers me. i then talk to the most useless robot ever, basically it asks a bunch of frequently asked questions and then tells me to recite the one that is closest to my issue. so therefore, i press “22222222222222222222222222222222″ so it stops and transfers me to human being #2. i explain the situation the exact same way as i did before, and they’re like “you dummy, you need collectionz for that, lolz roflcopter, transferz??” so i say “ok” and they transfer me. i get robot #3 and then wait to talk to human #3 who i explain, again, the same situation. she goes “ohs, okays, cans is has yours addressesss. ands pleases holds” so i go on hold. then i get hung up on. i say again, I GET HUNG UP ON. god knows what part of the fucking labyrinth i was in, i don’t even know if hoggle (reference) can help me when i have to go back in. fortunately, human #2 had given me the number to collections (or so he says) so i call it. talk to robot #4, wait til i can talk to human #4. i explain, AGAIN, the situation to human #4, and they say “DOH YOU NEED COLLECTIONS, I’LL TRANSFERSSSSSSSSSSS YOUSSSSSSSS!” so i get transferred to human #5. i then explain, for the final time, the situation. #5 puts me on hold, at which i swear if i get hung up on, i will carve my iphone into a tomahawk blade and start scalping people. #5 comes back, says “ok, fixed.” she doesn’t ask for the serial numbers that they said i would need, which bodes ill for us i’m sure. i say “so we won’t get any more calls about the equipment?” and they say “no, they won’t call you anymore.” so after 45 minutes of nonsense, the issue is fixed for now. all our old paperwork says that they used the old equipment including the serial numbers, so i guess the paperwork is used for furnace fuel or birdcage lining or something at the comcast plant because they obviously don’t read it. so there you go, they continue to be my arch enemy in life. i never thought i’d have a real nemesis, but there you go.]]> http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=547 why movies annoy me http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=482 http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=482#comments Tue, 22 Feb 2011 03:06:04 +0000 deimler http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=482
#1 let’s split up.
always happens in pretty much any thriller. the characters say “oh we’ll cover more ground if we split up.” like they’re on some sort of schedule. they go looking for the killer in the various rooms of the house one by one, or in pairs or something. pairs is equally as dumb because 1 person in the pairing may be the killer. and if i know i’m not the killer, why would i want to get paired off with someone who might be? that’s just not logical. okay here is the scenario common in scary movies (i think i remember it from one of the scream movies, yes i know they’re terrible): the group of potential victims is stuck in a house where they know the killer is. they cannot use the phones because of course the killer took an itt tech class and learned how to turn off the phones. side note, would you know how to “snip” the phone line? i wouldn’t. anyways, they decide “hey let’s finish this and go look for this person who has managed to kill off a bunch our group already.” they go off alone or in groups and usually all but the protagonist are killed, and then 1 or 2 characters are stabbed then barely live in the end. dumb stuff like that.

now, my simple plan for beating this killer: don’t move. stay in the living room near the kitchen. camp out with your remaining group. get a large blunt object, something heavy that you can swing or hey, exercise your 2nd amendment rights and sit there with a gun (if you own one). have a wall to your back, and just wait. the killer will have to come into your view. you’ll have a fighting chance, especially if you’re in a group. now you’re thinking, “well what if the killer burns down the house?” okay so you will probably have to go somewhere. but if you’re in your group, just stay in that collective group. now worse case scenario, you are alone, and the killer has started to burn your house town. then fucking book it! run dude. just decide okay, in 10 seconds i’m going to burst out the front door and just sprint until i find someone somewhere. now unless you’re killer is freaking usain bolt or you’re in the middle of nowhere, you should probably be able to get away. or, forget all this stuff, realize its 2011, and call the police with your cell phone.

#2 oh man i can’t shoot you with my machine gun.
 a common one but it happens in pretty much any movie that has a gun.  the protagonist (for example, john mclain. don’t get me wrong, i love die hard, but seriously) runs all over and never gets shot, or he gets shot and can still function just fine. no one can hit him, ever. i think if i have a machine gun and just kind of make a “Z” pattern in your general direction, and everyone else does the same thing, then i’m probably going to hit you. or, similarly, the protagonist finds a lovely wood door to hide behind. yes, the bulletproof door. no way my gun can shoot through that. i’m no gun expert, but i’m thinking in 75% of the movie situations, the bullets will go through wood. for example, in beverly hills cop 3, eddie murphy is in wonderworld having a shootout with 2 guys that have machine guns, and he has that dumb gun that the guy from perfect strangers gave him and he cant figure it out. he needs to take cover. oh sweet, a park bench. a bench?? the guys are unloading on him and this bench keeps him safe?? its a bench! there’s no bottom protecting his legs. theres freaking holes in between the wood! i could kick a hole through this bench!  i know this movie was no academy award winner, but seriously, he couldnt have hid behind a trash can or something. that would have at least been a solid object that blocked his entire body.

#3 oh i fell, but i’m fine.
kind of obscure, but i always notice it. the main character falls from some height, walks away unscathed. i can think of 2 examples immediately. 1 from the terrible indiana jones 4. indy needs to get away from the nuclear test that he finds himself in. oh sweet, an iron fridge. nevermind the hotter-than-the-sun temperatures for now, he gets blasted through the air from miles away, smashes to the ground, gets out, oh hey i’m fine. the other example is from a movie i like alot, ironman. he sets all the bad guys on fire, miraculously doesn’t get hit once (see above, he has open spots all over his armor, he could get hit atleast once), then shoots off to make a final escape.he then walks away with a broken arm or something. the armor protected him? i guess? i’m willing to let it slide i guess, but just because it’s ironman. still, there are dozens of movies where the protagonist falls from some ridiculous height and lives. they often do the whole “oh we’ll have him fall into water, people jump into water all the time”. yes but off a high dive and out of an airplane are different.

no no no no no no no no no.

i get that sometimes people live falling from very high heights, but you probably aren’t walking away from it, let alone getting back into the action of the movie. yeah harrison ford, even you.

#4 government agency x will never work with government agency y
oh no, the local cops want to totally bust this criminal, but the feds are sticking their stupid dumb heads in and screwing up everything. screw it, the local cops are going to handle this on their own. forget all the resources or experience these so-called “feds” have. the local beat will put out all 12 guys they have in their department to get this handled. you take your “technology” and your “manpower” and get out of here.

then the rebel cops will usually go behind this interfering agency to solve the case or whatever. this scenario can also be seen on a smaller scale where a rebellious detective/officer/security guard decides that they wont listen to their superior when they’re taken off the case/fired/etc. forget that, no way they’re listening to “the man”. case solved/bad guy killed/building un-blown-up. then the guy that totally just gave the finger to their superior gets commended for a job well done, like nothing happened before. here is your gun and badge back.

#5 oh no, the fuzz. lose ‘em…..done.
i like to watch cops and all those police chase car shows. seems to me that running from the cops would be the wrong thing to do. lets look at the match up. you have yourself, maybe a wingman passenger, and your (probably) jalopy of a car. now for the cops lineup. right there, they have you beat. see that “s” after “cop”, that means there are more than 1 of them, usually many more. therefore, when you run out of gas, you’re screwed. also, cops have helicopters. i am aware that every now and then one might get away, but what are the chances of that?

well in the movies, everyone is getting away. these are the most incompetent police officers ever. they make it look easy. oh wait, no car to get away? easy, hotwire one. apparently thats simple to do. usually never takes longer than 3 seconds. pop out those wires, cross a few, bam car is started. oh no the road is blocked, oh theres one of those trucks with a ramp on the back for some reason. later douches, i’ll just ramp all these cars here. then the cops are like “well he jumped all those cars, i guess we can’t chase him anymore. all our cops are over on this side of the bridge. guess we cant use our sirens or anything to move traffic either.”

your car would fall apart, douche.
#6 knock-out punch
i blame james bond for a lot of these, though they’re all over most other action movies. some blow to the face and the guy is out cold. i’ve never been punched unconscious before, but i think it would be a lot harder than james bond makes it seem. problem guard? 1 punch, out of the way.

but then again, on the other end of the spectrum, the protagonist gets hit by a fucking pipe or a 2×4 and is barely stunned. id rather they dodge the blow than have them treated like a fucking tank. i’m all for beatings, but save it for the supporting roles.

#7 alright henchmen, there are 8 of us, 1 of them. all attack 1 by 1. keep it fair.
this happens all the time in fighting movies. the protagonist has enemies coming at them, totally out-numbered. but for some reason, the henchmen want to keep things fair and only attack 1 at a time. fucking go at them all at once. what are you waiting for, your turn? if there are 2 of you, one go for the front, 1 from the back. if it takes you longer than 10 minutes to subdue them, you are either 80 year old women or 4 year old boys. mayyybe a person could take on 2 people, but in most cases i don’t think so.
okay its ninja turtles, but relevant none-the-less. also, now that you can see them just standing around, you can never not see it.


#8 antagonist just catches protagonist, tells entire plan, doesn’t kill protagonist
this is by far my biggest annoyance. the protagonist gets captured by the antagonist but is never harmed! it usually goes like this: i know we just shot at you for an hour, but yes, you screwed up/turned yourself in and we’re going to tie you up/put you in some precarious maybe-death position and recite to you our entire plan of action. what’s the point? why tell them. just shoot them. is there some alternative better thing to do? torture them i guess, but why waste the man hours?

here’s what would really happen: “aha, we got you now mr. protagonist.” says the antagonist. “yeah, well i’m going to…” starts the protagonist but he stops talking because he was just shot in the fucking head and has expired. the end.

okay i understand that these things don’t happen in every single movie, but they do happen a lot. my point is that if i can think of these obvious points, why don’t the writers? i really just want a movie where the antagonist fucking destroys the protagonist. one where they totally outsmart the protagonist. sure the audience will be pissed, but it will be the most original movie ever. and in the end, the antagonist wins.

]]> http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=482 comcast is a big fat liar. http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=469 http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=469#comments Mon, 03 Jan 2011 23:39:07 +0000 deimler http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=469 comcast sucks, i instantly jumped on comcast chat instead of dragging through their idiotic phone system. i also went into this knowing that this time i was probably going to not get what i wanted and that i had milked their system too its limit (or to my own limit of complaining, which i don’t really do too much for my own sanity).

comcast-liar


i miss agnes. she was more helpful. this time i get sariah (i don’t know). sariah is what i always expected an internet chat support person to be like: dismissive, plowing through her phone queue as quickly as she can to get back to looking up crap on facebook/myspace/etc. so here goes my translation of what our chat was like. i warn you now, it’s not as good as my other one.

sariah: yoooooooooo, thanks for holding.
me: hello
sariah: thank you for contacting comcast live crap, my name is sariah. gimme a minute to check your shit.
me: k.
sariah: while you’re waiting, check out this super cool interwebs music site comcast.com/music. (not a joke, she really was plugging some shitty comcast internet service.)
me: …. (i decide saying nothing is my best course of action, thinking that saying “stop trying to sell me shit and fix my shit” would probably make her mad and even less likely to help me.)
sariah: how are you doing today??!!!! (same bubbly as agnes)
me: fine, thanks
sariah: glad to know your doing well (again, typos the “your”, apparently comcast does not feel this is relevant as agnes did this too)
sariah: so you say your being over charged (you’rrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee)
me: yes, this happened before a few months ago, i was told it was fixed and that it wouldn’t happen anymore. it seems my previous tech support was mistaken and it has happened again.
sariah: yes well it looks like your promotion is up.
me: what promotion? (i ask with vague curiosity. i guess i had been on the startup promotion for over year now, well over the 6 month mark. however, i figure since i was told via agnes that my bill would not change again, i feel an inquiry couldn’t hurt.)
sariah: you were under the start up promotion that only was supposed to last for 6 months. you got an extension when you asked about it before.
me: i was not told i got an extension. i have all the chat logs. i was told that this wouldn’t happen again.
sariah: lolz sorry, i can transfer you to promotions/sales to see if there are any other super promotions that are applicable to you! (notice the immediate pushing of me to another department so she can get back to doing whatever.)
sariah: would you like me to transfer you?
me: …..(i left the chat idle and went to make spaghetti because i was irritated.)
chat ended about 10 minutes later.

i have to say that i was not nearly as mad as i was before, mostly because i didn’t have to jump through hoops to get an answer. at least this time, my bill didn’t say some stupid “hsd bump” that doesn’t even fucking exist. now it just says “internet service charge” and the actual amount im being charged.

so now, to direct my fuck you. i’m not sure who it should go to. probably comcast because i still hate them. maybe sariah, but honestly she really just did her job and told me the truth, my promotion was up. agnes? i think some could go back to agnes because she basically lied. i read through her chat with me a bunch and i specifically asked her that “so this will never come back?” to which she said “that is correct”.

but wait…wait……..i just realized something as i typed. she found a loop hole! that sneaky bitch! what “didn’t come back” was the stupid hsd charge! AHHHH, AGNES!! DAMN YOU!!! so yes, fuck you agnes, and the umbrella fuck you goes to comcast.

i looked into verizon in my momentary frustration and saw they were charging only 19.99 for their lowest internet package. however, its at the turtle speed of 1-3 mbps which would make me want to pull my eyelids off. plus i’d have to go through the hassle of switching, getting the equipment, etc. so i guess i’ll stay with comcast out of necessity. if only i could make my own internet…]]> http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=469 words that don’t help http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=463 http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=463#comments Sat, 20 Nov 2010 01:50:26 +0000 deimler http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?p=463 click the image below to see the large version.
]]> http://www.nickdeimler.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=463