bunsen_h

I had a game ad pop up while I was playing another game on my phone. There's a kind of "negging" that some of the ads use: "You can't handle this!" "What a loser!" "Only 0.008% of people can reach level 23!" and such. Presumably they're intending the viewers to get a feeling of superiority, trying to prove that they can do it. For me, such comments tell me that there's no way I want to try that game. If I "can't handle it" I'll only feel frustrated, and why would I voluntarily spend time with a person or thing that keeps insulting me?

But this ad was a little different. "Only left brain thinkers can handle this!"  The goal of the puzzle is to separate the rings by sliding them out in an order that lets them move freely.  But the sample shown has no solution.  The red, orange, and medium-green rings can't be detached from each other without cutting at least one, or resorting to a higher dimension.

It's the same configuration of rings that I made for myself as a "fiddle toy" many years ago.  It looks like a wire puzzle, with small gaps in the rings, as though the rings could be separated if one only manipulated the thing properly.  In reality, it's just a pretty symmetrical arrangement that makes a pleasant chiming if it's tossed in the air without spinning.  Occasionally, I hand it to people to play with, without comment, and watch them try to figure out what they assume is a puzzle.  Once, years ago at a convention in Minneapolis, I was chatting with some friends and pulled the thing out to fiddle with.  When I explained to Pamela Dean that it wasn't actually a puzzle, it only looked like one and had no "solution", etc., she said to Patricia C. Wrede, "Pat!  It's a Mike Ford toy!"

My brain is still much off-line.  Yesterday evening, I remembered that I'd been sleeping poorly due to ongoing sniffles, and took a decongestant before going to bed.  Unfortunately, I did not remember until after a couple of hours of lying awake that pseudoephedrine is a stimulant.

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There is some cognitive dissonance in seeing an ad for an upcoming pseudo-Greek-mythology movie immediately followed by an ad for a TV series called Sirens.

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"Your Honor, my client was in her kitchen, in her own home, having a pleasant discussion with her mother-in-law about her dishes.  Suddenly they were confronted by a stranger, a house-breaker, brandishing — threatening them — with a package.  My client was armed, as was her right, and acted to defend herself, her home, and her family from that self-styled 'kitchen counselor'.  It is hard to imagine a more reasonable application of the 'stand your ground' laws."

Not that I approve of the "stand your ground" laws, but I am terribly tired of the spate of "kitchen counselor" ads.
 

I have always been somewhat creeped out by commercials that feature animated food or animals urging people to eat them.  See also: Douglas Adams's "Dish of the Day", and Alice being introduced to Mutton and Plum Pudding on the other side of the Looking-Glass; not to mention Paul Gallico's charming children's book Manxmouse.

But recent commercials for M&Ms are even more troubling.  Red M&M doesn't want to be eaten, but people around him talk about eating him, start gnawing on him despite his objections, and eventually stuff him — kicking and yelling — into an oven.

In Larry Niven's World of Ptavvs, there's a line: "An intelligent food animal!  Hitler would have fled, retching."  I've always thought that Niven was a bit of an optimist on that point.

I don't watch much television; there are a couple of shows that I record, and play back while I'm using the exercise bike.  But ads for the "Axe Apollo Space Academy" have been saturating the air... so to speak.  All feature a Hot Babe encountering a Super Hunk (e.g. babe rescued from drowning by muscle guy), then Hot Babe sees a guy in a space suit and immediately spurns Super Hunk for Space Suit Guy.  Voice-over: "Nothing beats an astronaut."

Right.  Skyway Soap it ain't

I see from the contest website that the contest winners will go to Florida for "real astronaut training".  Final contestants "will win the chance to fly 103km up to space with space tourism company SXC".

Axe Apollo Space Academy.  Leave a man dweeb drenched in cologne.  Come back a hero dweeb encased in a space suit. (Most of us will appreciate the space suit. Really.)

Hmm.  "He had a faint sweetish musky odor.  Any crowded room smells worse on a hot day, but if I ever whiff that odor again, my skin will crawl and I'll be tongue-tied with fright." — Robert Heinlein, Have Space Suit, Will Travel.
 

There's a new CBC Radio program, "Type A".  Not about blood, unfortunately; it seems to be mostly about annoying pushy people.

Every time I hear the show's name, what I hear is "Taipei".
 

A few minutes ago, the ad-sponsored web game that I was playing served up an ad for deodorant.

Of course, the problem is that the folks playing the game don't see the need. It's the people around them who might be inspired to make a gift to the gamers.
 

I recently wrote about the dangers of accepting mysterious gifts of unknown natures from strange people.  Sometimes the danger is more explicit than usual.

Envelope waiting in my mailbox this afternoon:


Taking the first part as a syllogism: Therefore, this is not in life.

No, thanks.  I have enough problems.