Some TP ads given a bum wrap

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 30 April 2013 11:58

Lately I’ve become increasingly alarmed by the explicitness of TV commercials for toilet paper. For example, the other day I Old-Faithfulled the soda I was drinking when this ad played: “This is one way to keep your underwear clean. This is another: Ta-da!”

That’s a recent plug for Charmin, the TP brand that uses animated bears to discuss bathroom tissue issues. The subjects range anywhere from needing less squares to the amount of tissue fragments get left behind on the bear’s bottoms.

It’s cute—until you start to think about the real-life implications the scenarios set up. And then it’s disturbing.

Whatever happened to the old-fashioned ads that simply spilled a blue fluid on a few squares, stacked a bunch of coins...

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A recipe for country song success

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 16 April 2013 12:50

You’ve probably heard the joke about what happens when you play a country song backwards: You get your truck back and your dog back and your girl back and your name gets erased out of the federal gun registry.

It implies that country music is written and sung by a bunch of whiny, sensitive, backwoods boys who wear their hearts on their sleeves like they wear their belt buckles on their pants.

But I’m convinced that stereotype is not the standard anymore.

Instead, if you tune to a country-playing station you’ll likely hear an upbeat, careless tune sung with abandon about a dusty personification of inspiration wearing a pair of Daisy Dukes. It will have clever phrases like, “Girl, you make my speakers go boom boom,” and...

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Free labor fueling Google’s growth

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 02 April 2013 11:54

oogle owes me money.

As you probably know, Google is the Internet search engine giant that is determined to stick its nose into every industry it possibly can. Maps, smartphones, calendars, social media, computers, apps, music, videos.... The list goes on.

And while each of Google’s products and services are valuable—if not ubiquitous—there’s one project that I find particularly interesting: the Google Books Library Project.

This is where Google photographically scans each and every book from the world’s largest libraries, digitizes the texts using “optical character recognition” software, and makes them searchable and available for the general public.

Or, in Google’s words, “to archive human knowledge and to make...

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Living lives for all the world to see

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 19 March 2013 13:36

All the world’s a stage. I think Shakespeare wrote that. Or Alan Alda.

At any rate, the line is as true today as it was when Jaques said it in, “As You Like It.” Or when Hawkeye put the toe tag on Frank. Whichever.

The meaning of the phrase, however, has changed. We are not all “merely players” as the monologue goes on to say, but stars in our own dramas, and we go to great lengths to make a spectacle for all to see.

(Pun alert.) My opthamologist makes a spectacle several times a day.

This may be true mostly for the 30-and-under demographic, but it seems that a lot of people go through their days putting on this production, like we’re broadcasting our lives for everyone around us.

I blame social media.

Take the simple...

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