The Fratellis – Chelsea Dagger
Even besides the catchiness of the song, I like the new Amstel Light commercials, which make Amsterdam look like a super fun and zany place without a single shot of prostitutes or drug lords. Now if only they’d export Amstel Gold!
Don’t you love when you get into a song and its chorus just happens to coincide with your resolution of the week? This hasn’t happened to me since I discovered Okkervil River’s The President’s Dead right before Gerald Ford passed, but the stars have aligned again.
One of the few drawbacks of working from home is that the line between work and home gets the ol’ Gaussian blur. My girlfriend identified this before I even started, but it didn’t bother me until recently. It turns out the benefit of not having to commute in the morning is erased by how easy it is to just wander to your computer and fire up the email before properly waking up. You get an early jump, but it’s canceled out by the lack of focus that haunts you throughout the rest of the day.
So, in the spirit of the Secular Sabbath, I’m going Analog in the AM. From 7-9am I’ll be awake but not using screens. Sorely needed triathlon training or cleaning are two areas I might spend this time on. So if you’re an early riser yourself and see me on Gchat, AIM, Facebook, Gmail, and so on, tell me to shut ‘er down.
But really the whole point of this post was to play this song a bunch of times.
Fun Fact: Port O’Brien apparently work in a cannery in Alaska. My friend Dave just started working as a Carnie in Alaska. Less gritty, but still wild.
No, really. Their new ad campaign flat-out admits that the word-of-mouth about Vista is that it’s terrible and slow. They actually show people saying this.
Microsoft’s clever spin is that these people haven’t really used Vista yet, and would actually love it if it weren’t for everyone they know and trust telling them not to buy it. So they disguise Vista and present it to these newbs as the next version of Windows (which, back in the real world, people are already clamoring for specifically because of how terrible Vista is).
And lo and behold, these people turn out to really like Vista when they look at it in a focus group setting for a few minutes on what is likely a souped up machine.
The ad then implies that even though these people couldn’t recognize Windows Vista after it’s been out for A YEAR AND A HALF, you should be swayed by their opinion that it’s “faster” and has “the newest features that I’ve seen“.
You can watch Microsoft’s valiant effort at the lamest hidden camera ad campaign of all time at http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, I used and enjoyed Windows for years, and up through XP found it superior to Mac. But Vista is just absolutely terrible. It is bloated, will bring decently fast computers to a crawl, and is completely off the charts when it comes to unneccessary frustration and annoying warnings and bubbles.
Looking around, it appears I’m not the only one who thinks this is terrible marketing and an affront to basic intelligence. And so the war between huge sums of money and basic truth continues.