The Shady Milkman

Stouffer's Redefines the Nuclear Family

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 14:12:55 -0500

I ran across this ad in a Family Circle magazine (was reading it at my Grandma’s house):

Better call Mike Sorrentino, because we have a situation on our hands:

Mom is recently divorced. She’s got a couple daughters, and wants to make sure that having dinners with the frat boy she met while out on the prowl, instead of their father, doesn’t turn them into some drug-abusing skanks with daddy issues. Her solution? “Easy Express” microwave dinners by Stouffer’s.

If mom’s idea of a ”home-cooked family meal” is a 2 lb frozen lasagna that sags its way out of the microwave after it’s been nuked for a brisk 18 minutes, then dad leaving should have come as no surprise.

However, I’ll hand out an E for effort to the ad agency responsible for this. At first glance, you wouldn’t think Family Circle is the ideal magazine in which to place an ad whose whole angle revolves around a family potentially being ruined by divorce. But with every other marriage ending in divorce these days, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the main readership of this magazine was a bunch of recent-divorcee cougars who need to prepare meals quickly so they can get back to trolling the clubs for young pieces of meat.

I see what they tried to do here. I get it. It was a valiant attempt at turning something predominantly negative, like divorce, and making it positive by using the advertised product: quality, microwavable meals.

Unfortunately, this ad was doomed the minute execs approved this idea, just like the your expectations are the moment you decide to pick up any microwavable meal while you’re starving:

You know the feeling:

You’re hungrily shopping for groceries late after work; you haven’t eaten since noon. You’re staring at the meat counter like a ravenous wolf as you venture towards the siren of the supermarket—frozen foods. Walking through this section on an empty stomach is like bringing a fat kid to a KFC buffet.

Appetizing images of gourmet meals surround you, five rows high, and they all come with the promise of being ready to eat in mere minutes. You try to rationalize, “They can’t possibly be as good as that picture on the box,” but their siren song is too strong. You settle for “Golden Honey-Glazed Chicken Breast on a bed of Rice Pilaf and Seasoned Autumn Harvest Vegetables—codename for processed chicken with white rice and broccoli.”

You cut a small slit in the plastic film covering the plastic tray that’s filled with a solid block of colorshapes and slide it into the microwave. Your hopes are still sky high, though—your stomach, not just your eyes, saw that picture on the box. You punch “5 0 0” into the keypad as your mouth salivates at the thought of complimenting the peppery vegetables with the sweet, succulent flavor of the chicken.

You stare at the rotating black tray through the mesh glass window as the timer counts down. You briefly worry about the radiation that may or may not be penetrating your skull, but not for long. The microwave beeps, and like Pavlov’s human, you swing open the door to grab your steaming food without any disregard for the warning on the back of the package that said “CAUTION! CONTENTS WILL BE HOT! Wait 1 to 2 minutes before removing the food from the microwave.” That giant plume of steam doesn’t intimidate you either. Your taste buds are ready for some wild honey autumn goodness.

You gather a portion of each food item onto your fork to assure you’ll get the “best of both worlds”, raise it to your mouth and sink your teeth into the molten-hot amorphous blob that is your meal.

It is at that moment that everyone finally realizes, no matter how good some ideas sound at the time, their outcomes will always be disappointing.

Samsung is apparently close friends with Bill Gates and Steve...

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 08:36:00 -0400

Samsung is apparently close friends with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs’ younger, Bill-Gates-doppleganger brother, Bill Jobs.

New Ad for Summer's Eve is Bringing Vintage Sexism Back

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:04:00 -0400

Summer’s Eve’s latest ad for feminine hygiene products is making its rounds on the internets, awkwardly connecting the dots between vaginal cleanliness and getting more money at work:

Now, I understand that advertising for this subject isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do in this world. It’s a taboo subject that most people don’t want to think about, let alone see advertising for. I mean, just think how many people still complain about TV commercials for tampons. But still, claiming that having a stanky vajayjay can ruin your chances to get a raise is a little ridiculous.

To add insult to injury, they also throw in that a woman should remind her boss of what the higher executives say about her with quotes like, “Great job on the XXX project! You made me look good!”

In other words, not only do women need to remember to keep their vaginas free from foul stench, they need to recall the time they degraded themselves by having a filthy sexual rendezvous in the corporate executive’s penthouse office just to get their job in the first place!

This is the worst attempt at subtle sexism I’ve ever seen. Shame on you, Summer’s Eve. If you’re going to be sexist, why not go in 100%, like the good ol’ days?

Pizza Hut decided to take a page out of KFC’s Double Down...

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:38:00 -0400

Pizza Hut decided to take a page out of KFC’s Double Down book and offer something for the American in all of us.

Facebook's Not-So-Subtle, Subtle Take on Foursquare

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:14:00 -0400

Apparently Facebook is beginning to roll out Facebook Places—their new location-based service that allows anyone to check themselves, and any of their friends, into anywhere. Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s Facebook Foursquare. But, competition is good for the consumer. I couldn’t care less that they want a piece of the Foursquare chalk. What I do find interesting, however, is the logo they created for it:

See anything interesting? How about now:

As legendary dino hunter Robert Muldoon would say, “Clever girl.”

What a blatant slap in the face by the king of all social media, Mark Zuckerberg. Not only is Facebook going directly after Foursquare, they decide to personalize a blood-stained message by saying, “Yeah, we see you over there. We’re moving in next door, and we’re building a bigger, better house than you’ll ever be able to afford. So start packing up, because we’re going to need your property to house our 500,000,000 guests”.

But, you don’t make so many friends, without making a few enemies, right?

Hipster Elixir

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:58:44 -0400

Hipster Elixir:

It’s time we take beer selection back to the basics.

One of the more convincing pieces of spam I’ve received....

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:23:34 -0400

One of the more convincing pieces of spam I’ve received. It got me to read it twice and log into my Chase account, just to be sure.

Jerry Hodak Has a 100% Chance of Retiring

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:56:00 -0400

Jerry Hodak Has a 100% Chance of Retiring:

He’s choosing to walk away during the Autumnal Equinox—the first day of fall—after helping metro Detroiters plan their days, nights, weekends and vacations by predicting the weather for 45 years. His calm, steadfast delivery of the forecast always made the weather seem better than it really was, even during the worst of storms. I guess that’s why they called him “The Chief”.

Winter in Detroit is going to be extra bitter this year.

The Death of a Greek God

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:00:00 -0400

Before July 23rd, I knew that there was one person in this world, other than my own mother, that cared more for my health and well-being more than his golf game or vacation time.

Before July 23rd, I don’t think I’ve ever been shocked by the results of a Google search. I usually know what I’m looking for, or have a general idea of what I might find.

Before July 23rd, the Greeks had their gods, and I had mine: a pediatrician named Dr. George J. Kouskoulas.

Miracle Worker

I’ve been a habitual nail-biter ever since I can remember. Years ago, around the time I was in Jr. High, I had a terrible case of warts on my fingers. I’m not talking about a little bump here or there. I’m talking about cracking, cauliflower-looking skin deformities:

I get sick just looking at that

It started on my right index finger, and spread to nearly every other finger, as well as my lips, because I couldn’t stop biting my nails and tearing at my skin. Even the bitter tasting nail paint couldn’t stop me.

My pediatrician, Dr. Kouskoulas (Dr. K as we affectionately called him), sent me to a dermatologist, as he would obviously be better-suited to tackle this skin atrocity. The dermatologist prescribed a barrage of standard methods to attack my warts: salicylic acid topical liquid, liquid nitrogen cryofreeze sessions, laser burn treatments and even experimental, highly-concentrated salicylic acid patches. Nothing seemed to work.

On a check-up visit back with Dr. K, my mom updated him on the progress made, or lack thereof, with my warts. Seeming a bit baffled, he offered to try something that he’d never really tried before: hypnosis. You see, the “M.D.” after Dr. K’s name wasn’t satisfying enough for him. He was always looking for new and innovative ways to improve his practice and help him treat the kids he cared for, such as hypnosis. Though he was relatively new to the field, still reading up on the subject and all, he said if I was OK with it, he’d give it a go. I figured, after all I’d been through, it couldn’t hurt to try.

As I sat on the butcher-paper that stretched across the exam room table, he had me close my eyes, breathe deeply and hold out my hands. His voice, which was already incredibly soothing, could have pacified a bull at a rodeo. I found myself listening to his pronunciation of every word as he explained that my body was an elite fighting force, and the warts were its enemy. He had me envision my body deploying thousands of soldiers (white blood cells) to attack and destroy the invaders, and told me to continue to view my body that way, even after he was done. Maybe he knew I had a fascination with war.

After Dr. K told me to open my eyes, both he and my mom asked me how I felt. “Relaxed,” I said, but in all actuality I wasn’t sure if I was really hypnotized, and I certainly knew that I didn’t feel any different. I thought it was a fruitless attempt. My mom and I went on our way, and for the next couple weeks, I continued with the experimental acid pads, but to no avail. And then, on a trip to Tennessee with a friend from school, the warts just started to fall off—literally.

There was no picking, cutting or freezing necessary. They just began to peel off, like sunburned skin, revealing fresh, unblemished fingertips beneath. I had never felt such relief and amazement in my life. It was at that moment that I knew Dr. K was a more than just a pediatrician. And to this day, I still gnaw on my fingers, yet they have never seen another wart. Like I said—miracle worker.

A Google of Life and Death

So here I am, some 10 to 15 years later, working on an “About Me” section of a website I want to create for myself, because, you know, us creatives have to put on a dog and pony show everywhere we go, just to get a whiff of an ad agency’s flatulence. During the writing of said bio, I begin to explain how I don’t really trust doctors or the health care industry. I go on to say that, if I could, I’d return to my pediatrician, the only doctor I’ve ever really trusted. This is where Google comes into play.

Since I couldn’t remember how to spell Dr. K’s name, I began to type it, or at least how I thought it was spelled, into the Google search bar. I type in the following characters: “D r . K o u s k”, and after I hit the letter “k”, Google had only one suggestion for me:

Now I love Google, even though I know they are slowly and methodically becoming Big Brother, but even I had to pause and think to myself, “how in the hell could they know the exact doctor I was looking for, when I had never searched for him before?” Well, I quickly got my answer:

An obituary.

“No way,” I blindly thought to myself, “There’s no way that’s my pediatrician. There has to be two Dr. Kouskoulas’ in the metro Detroit area.”

I knew that there was only one Dr. K, but I just couldn’t believe my eyes. A quick click through the links proved that it was indeed my trusted pediatrician. The god-like man that cured my seemingly incurable wart infestation, with nothing but the power of suggestion, and kept me in good health from birth until the age of 18, was proven to be a mere mortal in November of 2009. Eight months ago.

His impact on families throughout the community was evident, with over one hundred comments on the memorial site and only 4/5-star reviews on different medical websites. That tells me that there are a lot more “kids” out there who thought of Dr. K as more than just a doctor. They have their own personal stories of how a larger-than-life, gentle giant helped them triumph over an invasive illness.

What turned out to be the Achilles Heel of the last living Greek god? Aortic dissection—the tearing of the wall of the largest artery in the body, which causes massive internal bleeding and can cause death within minutes. Though emergency surgery can prevent death, aortic dissection has an 80% mortality rate.

Fitting, I guess, that only an incident as devastating as aortic dissection could take such an infallible man away from this Earth. So, rest in peace, Dr. K. Hopefully, I won’t be seeing you for a check-up for another 60+ years.

It takes a man to be a father.

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:26:41 -0400

It takes a man to be a father.

Witness.

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:27:55 -0400

Witness.

FBI Says Russian Spies Hid Messages on Public Websites

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:17:06 -0400

FBI Says Russian Spies Hid Messages on Public Websites:

It was just a joke!

—Russian spy

tj: Instructions from my Nokia 2320 which boil down to “avoid...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:49:23 -0400

tj:

Instructions from my Nokia 2320 which boil down to “avoid holding it that way.”

This stems from Nokia deciding to take a jab at Apple and say you can hold Nokia phones any way you damn well please, after Steve Jobs and Apple said to “avoid holding [the iPhone 4] that way.”

Hold the phone.

While it’s perfectly OK to show this and say that Nokia (and all phones, for that matter) are in the same boat as the iPhone 4 when it comes to antenna distortion, it’s not an even, apples-to-apples comparison. This manual comes from a basic cell phone, released in 2008, that’s light on the features compared to today’s standards. It is not the manual for a premium, highly touted smartphone like the iPhone 4.

The signal interruption isn’t even the main issue here for me.

All along, I’ve been saying that the problem is not that the iPhone 4 may lose reception by holding it a certain way; it’s that Steve Jobs decided to emphasize how the iPhone 4 had an antenna built into the framework:

This doesn’t look like Apple… what are these lines? They are part of the primary structural elements of the phone… this is part of brilliant engineering. It uses the band as part of the antenna system!

—Steve Jobs at WWDC 2010

Not only that, but instead of mentioning how holding the phone with a certain hand in a certain position could interrupt a signal, their promotional videos instead clearly contradict their instructions to “avoid holding it that way”:

The bottom line is that Apple “blew it” by not catching this issue in testing, maybe because their field testing was mostly conducted with the phone in a camouflage iPhone 3GS case, and now the Apple zealots are trying to ignore that fact by claiming it’s no big deal because it’s a common issue with any phone, when, in fact, this issue would not nearly get the airtime it has gotten (it was even predicted before hand) if Steve Jobs didn’t tout the “brilliant engineering” of putting the antenna outside the phone in the first place!

Cut the crap. Admit the oversight. Move on.

/end rant

It's official: The iPhone 4 has as much RAM as my PC

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:31:00 -0400

It's official: The iPhone 4 has as much RAM as my PC:

Nearly 7 years and still ticking…I really need a new computer.

You've Read This Before

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:51:04 -0400

After watching “The Story of Everything” episode of Stephen Hawking’s Into the Universe, I developed a radical new theory about déjà vu—that mysterious feeling of “haven’t I done this before?” It was like a small bit of his genius was transmitted through my TV and into my brain.

Before I jump ahead with my theory, I’ll quickly paraphrase and summarize Mr. Hawking’s theory on the Universe. He adheres to the Big Bang Theory, which says everything in the ENTIRE Universe has developed from one single point in space and time. After the Big Bang, the Universe expanded, and continues to expand, until, as Mr. Hawking believes, it reaches its limit, and then begins to contract. The Universe is cyclical, which is the fundamental idea behind my theory on déjà vu.

If every element, molecule, atom, quark and neutrino can trace its roots back to one single point in the Universe, then it is safe to say that everything on Earth, at the most basic level, is made up of the same matter. And if the Universe is cyclical, that means everything that has happened up to this point, will happen again in billions, maybe trillions of years. Our galaxy will form again, our solar system will form again, and our planet, Earth, will form again, as I believe this has happened countless times before.

So when the Earth is inevitably destroyed by the death of our own Sun, at the latest, all of our matter will be thrown back into the Universe, to eventually be recollected in that one single point in space. I believe that all of the memories we’ve gained over the thousands of years that humans have existed, will continue to remain forever, because I believe they are permanently imprinted into the matter that makes up our brains.

After the condensation of the Universe, and the Big Bang II occurs trillions of years from now, matter will again shoot to the edges of space, expanding the Universe and creating the many galaxies and nebulas we’ve come to know today, again. And when Earth is re-formed, and humans evolve once again, our brains have the chance to be made up of the many different pieces of memory-imprinted matter that existed in the former version of the Universe. And just as the Universe is cyclical, the Earth is too, so that everything that has happened in history—the building of the Great Pyramids, the Roman Empire, the discovery of America, World War II, etc.—will happen again.

Different people may achieve the legendary discoveries or execute the despicable injustices that have occurred in Earth’s history, but the actions themselves will remain the same—as they say, “history repeats itself”. So the next time you’re having a conversation and you get that incredibly odd feeling of “haven’t I don’t this before?”, you’ll know that haven’t, but that someone else has, and your action triggered that memory to be re-kindled, if only for a moment.

As humans, we only have the capability to think in the perspective of our time units, meaning one year equals the amount of time it takes for our Earth to complete one full revolution around the Sun, which makes it hard to grasp the sheer size of the Universe. But thinking from a Universe prospective, one billion years isn’t that long at all.

And if you think the odds of my theory being true are “a billion to one”, you could be right. But the chance that the Universe had to form the way it has had the same odds…and look where it is now.

"I tune in to watch a game, I get a three and a half hour Ricola commercial."

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 23:47:00 -0400

“I tune in to watch a game, I get a three and a half hour Ricola commercial.”

- Dennis Miller, on the vuvuzela epidemic in South Africa at the World Cup.

Wally’s fucking in, and you’re fucking...

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:14:08 -0400

Wally’s fucking in, and you’re fucking out.

mightyflynn:

wearesexbobomb:

This is the most amazing thing ever. It’s like Kenny Powers irl.

Wally Backman in action (NSFW audio)

Taken out of context, this easily could look like the start of...

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:40:49 -0400

Taken out of context, this easily could look like the start of World War III

“Washington challenges the British with 425...

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:47:13 -0400

“Washington challenges the British with 425 horses.”

I love this ad for so many reasons.

So many.

Rock Band 3 Instruments Revealed

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:44:29 -0400

Rock Band 3 Instruments Revealed:

The “pro” mode on Rock Band 3 looks like it’s going to be intense. There is definitely no debate on which music game you should play:

vs.

…I can’t fucking wait.