I have avoided talking too much about my work or what I do all day because frankly, work is boring. However, as with all jobs, eventually things begin to get under your skin, and since I have no employer who would be horrified about the thought of me complaining to the internet about my job, I think I might just start doing it.
Being unemployed at the moment, I’ve had the time, between frantic bouts of throwing away everything I own, to do some intense and serious internet research. And by that, I mean that I smash the crap out of my StumbleUpon button for a good bit of time every day.
Couple of weeks ago, I came across the videos of this woman, Sarah Haskins, on current.com. She does a bunch of things, but she has a series, her own little segment, called Target Women. It’s a whole bunch of short videos about advertising targeted at women.
Now, being a woman, and being the target of said advertising, I can’t say I’ve ever really thought about the particular marketing genius that goes into making women in particular want to buy things, but after watching a few of Sarah’s videos I can tell you two things:
1. Marketers have most likely never met an actual woman and
2. This shit is hilarious.
The videos are funny, and there’s one video in particular, the Target Women Special – it was the first one I saw – that combines segmnets from all of her best videos into one long epic on How to Be a Perfect Woman. I laughed out loud so many times that I watched all the rest of her videos as well.
But while Sarah’s scripts and tones are obviously meant to be humorous, at the same time they manage to make you realize how ridiculous marketing towards women really is. I have thought “Wait a second – this is the shit they sell to me, and THAT’S how they choose to sell it?” so many times since I’ve started watching her videos. But I also can’t think of a way to improve it. I mean, if I was a guy – show me electronics or women or beer or sports or some one getting hit in the nuts, hey, hilarious, I’ll buy that product. But as a female, not only do I find these commercials ridiculous (now that I’ve thought about them – it really never occurred to me before), I’ve realized that marketers must have a tough job because I can’t tell you what I want to see, what is likely to make we want to buy a product, but I can tell you that it’s certainly not PICTURES OF SCIENCE!
Anyway. Make sure you check her out for the pure hilarity factor, along with the “Holy crap, I never actually thought about that!” factor as well. And since I’ve been puzzling over it for a while, since I started watching her videos, I would also like to know what women (that would be some of you guys) think WOULD work for them as far as advertising goes. I suppose that somewhere some demographic research or something like that has indicated that I respond well to “sciencey words” and pictures of women laughing with their friends because their yogurt is so good. BUT DO I? DO I REALLY?
There are a whole bunch more, though. Check them out, Internet. Have I ever steered you wrong? Don’t you remember how I directed you with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer towards Julia Nunes? Trust me!
So I’ve been tagged for this about 782 times on various blogs and facebooks, so why the hell not.
25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me (and probably could have lived without knowing)
1. I do not eat sausage. At all. Period. Ever. If I suspect there might be sausage in a food item, no matter how many times I am assured there is none, I will not be able to eat it. Not any kind of sausage. Some people make the mistake of thinking that I just do not eat meat that is in a tubular shape, but it goes deeper than that. The same rule that I apply to sausage applies to bologna as well, which I also do not eat. See, sausage is a meat that can be made from numerous other meats and still be called sausage. Bologna is the same. Anything that falls into that category is something I will not eat. That is not WHY I do not eat those things, but it is a safe bet that if you come across such a food, it will not be eaten by me.
3. I am never naked. When it is time to shower, I have a mitten. I put the mitten on my right hand, stick my right hand out of the shower so the mitten does not get wet and gross, and wash my left side. When I am done with the left side, I switch the mitten to the left hand and stick my left hand out of the shower and repeat.
4. From age 16 to 18, I had three legal guardians.
5. I have seen Bon Jovi in concert 6 times. And it was awesome every time.
6. When I was in college, I came home for the weekend, 250 miles, specifically to see Shaun Klush – The Best Elvis This Side of Heaven. Seriously, check him out:
7. I have two callouses, one each at the base of my middle and ring fingers on the palm of my left hand, from opening diet soda bottles.
8. One time, to relieve summer boredom, my sister and two friends of ours bought a giant old school boombox from a good will store. The batteries for it cost more than it did. We then recorded the Rocky theme on a cassette tape and went out looking for joggers. We found a few, and we would hold the boom box up to the window and play the song for them. A couple were pissed, but at least one of them raised his fists and really got into it.
9. When I was in the 6th grade, my sister cut off the top of my finger with a pair of scissors.
10. Speaking of fingers, I might have mentioned this at one point when it was officially diagnosed, but I have a vasovagal syncope – basically, with certain triggers, I faint. For me, it happens when I pinch or crush my finger in something. The first time I remember it happening, I was sitting in a little wooden chair in kindergarten, holding the seat and bouncing up and down. The seat separated from the legs a bit and came down on my finger, and the next thing I knew I was in the nurse’s office with my feet in the air. Another time it happened, I was on a date and driving on the Scranton Expressway. I woke up to “YOU HAVE TO PUT YOUR FOOT ON THE BRAKE!!” I’m much more careful with my fingers these days, and also better at recognizing when I’m going to faint – I’m usually able to get down on the ground quickly and avoid the actual fainting part totally.
11. I have gotten a ridiculous number of people to believe #3 over the years.
12. The “Hi TJ!” signs are my favorite part about having this website.
13. I have never owned a dog, but I have owned 2 cats (that someone stole!), a guinea pig, 2 hamsters, and many fish. Two of the fish were named Aufbau and Avagadro. I am also a nerd.
14. There are certain feelings that I have only because after being told about them, I believe I am supposed to have them. For example, sentimental attachment to items. I do not truly feel any attatchment to physical items – when I think about it, the concept seems silly to me. However, over time I have learned that other people do, so I also do. It has lead to me holding on to a lot of junk because I think I am supposed to want to.
15. My nervous system does not work the same way yours does. Of course, I can’t truly know how yours works, but apparently mine is different. It hurts when my mother hugs me, I can’t really always localize where pain is coming from, and my skin can hear. Yeah, trying to explain this one and the previous one was a poorly thought out idea.
16. I’ve been blogging for 10 years. I used to be a LOT funnier.
17. I won a math competition and a spelling bee in the 4th grade.
18. I peaked in the 4th grade.
19. I applied to 8 colleges and got into 7. I was extremely apathetic my senior year of high school and let my guidance counsler send an application anywhere he wanted. I had never heard of the University of Maryland til I applied. My mother is still convinced I decided to go there because it was the last school we saw in an epic 5 day journey up and down the east coast looking at schools. I don’t truthfully know why I decided to go to UMD.
20. I find headlights in my rearview mirror to be ominous, no matter what the situation or circumstances.
21. I went through a 3 month phase of sleeping the short way across the foot of my bed about a year or so ago.
22. I look exactly like my maternal grandmother. Not a slight resemblance, but the exact same face, to the point that I was asked to step out of the nursing home where my great aunt lives, as she has Alzheimer’s and could only recognize me as her sister and it was upsetting her.
23. I am the shortest full grown person in my family, on all sides. I am about 5′2″. Cousins range as high as 6′7″.
24. People can tell my sister and I are sisters based simply on the WAY we talk. The rhythm and inflection of our speech is identical. I’ve been recognized as Kate’s sister in a record store I had never been in, when I had been living out of state for years, and she was not around, just because the clerk heard me ask my mother a question.
“I can’t come to your Super Bowl party, I have blurple hair.”
“Oh, I’d totally love to help you move, but I’ve got a serious case of blurple.”
If you’re intrigued and looking to find matching paint chips so you can do up your house in a similar “Yeah, I stopped giving a crap” fashion, you may also be able to find the color listed under “WTF” or “Someone Please Get This Woman to a Salon.”
The Fel Bangs, not pictured, are an as yet unnamed color that resembles nothing actually found in nature, on this planet and possibly others. A white-blonde with the vaguest purple tinge. I’m thinking “Recently Exposed to Radiation in Excessive Amounts” or possibly “No Wonder Your Mother Sighs Every Time She Sees You.”
… to distract you from a largely contentless post.
(You’ll thank me tomorrow, around 3pm. Everyone knows that Wednesdays at 3pm is when time slows down to an impossible crawl and you’d give the left side of your ribcage for a nap even though it would mean that you’d be walking around with half your chest caved in for the rest of your life and having to be really careful in crowded situations so as not to squish your lung and have to dramatically stab a giant needle into yourself like they do on TV to reinflate it, thus totally grossing out everyone around you even more than they were already grossed out by your oddly sunken chest and possibly ending up with not only a sunken half-chest but also a whole left side full of giant needle holes as you have not the good sense to stay away from crowded situations since you gave up the left side of your ribcage for a nap that one Wednesday afternoon at 3pm. THAT’S how bad you will need this on Wednesday afternoon at 3pm.)
(You’re WELCOME.)
10 Bizarre Deaths in History
- Basically, Internet, if we can learn anything from history, it is that 1, stubbing your toe always has and always will suck and 2, wear a coat.
One Lucky Guy
- Someone, please, for the love of God, be that obnoxious person who announces that this is a total photoshop, so my heart can crawl back down from where it is clinging to my tonsils for comfort.
My possible future
- This is pretty much the outcome I am imagining that will come from me meeting Phil’s family in two weeks.
Handmade Valentine’s Cards
- One of the downsides of being in a relationship is that I do not think he would find receiving one of these cards nearly as funny as I would find giving it to someone.
Perspective game
- I like this one because while I have absolutely no talent for it, I actually do get the hang of it the more I play. My record so far is a pathetic 19 images.
Caps Lock Trainer
- I’m too hardcore to get any use out of this. I use the shift key exclusively. Read back through a few months of the archives here and you’ll see how amazing I truly am.
States placement game
- I apparently have shamefully little knowledge of anything that isn’t the edges.
Free Information Society
- If the pearls of wisdom I’m doling out here daily are for some reason not ENOUGH for you, I SUPPOSE you could find something of interest here.
How TJs like to do things
- So efficient. So clear cut. Impossible to misinterpret. So easily fileable. That is my style, right there.
What’s Your Weather?
- Music channels sorted to suit what the weather is like. It’s actually remarkably fitting, the couple of occasions I’ve tried it.
Spin the Black Circle
- THIS GAME IS DUMB. DON’T PLAY IT. IT’S SO STUPID. (Translation: I suck at this, therefore must declare to hate it.)
