Self-loathing nutjob James Lee stormed into the Discovery Channel offices Wednesday looking for justice. Instead, the environmental radical bumbled his way into a delicious pile of irony.
Lee’s apparent purpose was to serve as a sort of homicidal spokesperson for nature. The police obliged by shooting him down like a dog.
"Another Thing: Why Can't We Have 52 Weeks Of SHARK WEEK?" We Hear You, Brother.
Bonus: There’s one less nasty human messing up the planet. Way to take one for the team, Jim!
The Olive Garden has been crapping out adequate fare for nearly thirty years, all the while striving mightily to frame itself as the workingman’s access to continental dining. Targeting those customers for whom the Red Lobster is too provincial, the Olive Garden aspires to bring the charm of an idealized Old World Italy to such unlikely spots as Lexington, Kentucky or Elko, Nevada.
These Ample Eaters Are More Representative Of Olive Garden Customers Than Are The Beautiful People In The Commercials
No one begrudges Olive Garden’s right to pass off its inedible fare as authentic Italian. Americans have long been tolerant of such culinary bastardizations, preferring them in most cases to the authentic ethnic dishes from which they came. However, as understandable as Olive Garden’s right to make a profit from the insensate palates of gastronomically-benumbed Americans may be, their commercials venture into the realm of the unforgivable.
One familiar commercial features a laughing group of family members engaged in spirited non-stop conversation about the food set before them, thrusting lightly with their forks at one another’s plates, merrily sharing food.
Any real gathering of an American family that doesn’t include drunken recriminations and acidic passive-aggression is a sham. Moreover, in the current climate of bacterial paranoia coupled with orgiastic overeating, anyone foolish enough to attempt snatching food from a neighbor’s plate is most likely to end the encounter with a fork jutting from the back of his hand.
Another commercial features a similar assemblage, this time a group of upwardly mobile, physically fit and improbably racially diverse friends. Like the aforementioned family, the hot young pals can think of nothing better to discuss than the fine fare at Olive Garden, until one asshat kills the conversation by declaring his intention of “doing the alfredo.” Outside of their boorish behavior, these people bear very little resemblance to the mouth-breathing hominids one is likely to encounter within the stuccoed confines of this craptastic eatery.
Olive Garden’s most memorable campaign is also its most odious. It should be familiar by now: an unctuous voice, oozing with manufactured warmth, intones at the close of the commercial, “When you’re here, you’re family.”
Really? Unless it’s a tacit guarantee that the meal will be free, promising to treat the customer like family is cynical glibbery of the lowest order. It’s doubtful that many people will recall Mom charging $14.95 for a lackluster plate of spaghetti with the promise of unlimited salad and MSG-encrusted bread sticks.
And last is this commercial, which informs us breathlessly that “At Olive Garden, ‘generosity’ begins with a G,” clearly ignorant of the fact that the word also begins with a G throughout the United States and many parts of Canada. However, the unconvincingly accented narrator goes on to remind us that at Olive Garden, generosity ends “when you are happy,” which sounds a lot like this Chinese massage parlor that Smaktakula knows about.
Jay Bush, the balding, squishy spokesperson for Bush’s Original Baked Beans seems like a nice enough guy. With his rounded, non-threatening contours and schlumpy, vulnerable charm, Bush is an able enough pitchman for his family’s product.
Then there’s Duke, Bush’s golden retriever and sole confidant. Two details about Duke serve as a radical distinction from other dogs.
1) Duke speaks. This in itself is unusual, as human-like speech has previously only been evinced in some more advanced members of the Great Dane family. In most cases, those animals formed words with great difficulty, and no one was likely to confuse them with a human speaker. Duke speaks more eloquently than does his ostensible “master.”
2) Whereas dogs, and golden retrievers in particular, are prized for their loyalty, Duke is a treacherous cur. For reasons known only to the conniving canine, Duke is continually seeking to sell the Bush Family’s secret recipe to competitors. That the animal is compelled to do this despite the near impossibility that Duke would be able to utilize any money he received from betraying the Bush Family, points to an advanced–and dangerous–psychosis.
The fact that Duke, after several times nearly succeeding in selling the time-honored recipe, is still positioned so securely within the company should be troubling to stockholders.
If the public face of Bush’s baked beans can’t command even the loyalty of his own dog, while at the same time choosing to remain ignorant to the mounting evidence of Duke’s perfidy, how much faith can the public have in Bush Brothers and Company?
Accountability, and lack thereof, is a slippery slope. One day America loves you for your savory products, the next some little girl finds half a pinky finger in her chile con carne.
If Bush Brothers & Co. wishes to regain the trust of the baked beans buying public, they must take drastic and immediate action to reassure nervous shareholders that theirs is a company on the grow, free from internal distractions.
While BP’s ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico continues to spew crude like Charlie Sheen on a runaway Tilt-O-Whirl, the nefarious petroleum giant’s brain trust has run bone-dry.
This BP Researcher Asks: WWBD?
In the early days of the crisis, BP’s Idea Men knew that to realize workable solutions, they would need to ask new questions. Working at a fever-pitch, sometimes logging 20-hour days, it was less than two months later when BP scientists asked themselves the question which would prove their interrogative Rosetta Stone:
What if the rupture and resulting spill had occurred not in the Gulf of Mexico, but rather in Gotham Harbor?
In the simple elegance of the question, an answer quickly asserted itself: Giant Scissors!
Rolando Negrin, a TSA worker apparently hung like a larval mosquito, became increasingly upset by jeers about his economy-sized penis.
Rolando "Cashew Dick" Negrin
Instead of going out and buying himself a really big American truck, Rolando went apeshit and assaulted his annoying co-worker.
While Rolando may not relish the attention paid to his unimpressive meat-missile, he will hopefully take some satisfaction in the idea that by beating on his co-worker, he at least got to manhandle a prick that was much larger than a baby’s thumb.
Wal-Mart, never known for its benevolent business tactics or for treating its employees like human beings, has taken dickheadedness to new and exciting heights heretofore undreamed in the long and storied annals of corporate douchebaggery.
Joseph Casias was fired for violating Wal-Mart’s drug policy by using marijuana.
Was he toking up in the Wal-Mart?
No, it turned up in a blood test after he was injured at work.
Aha! Well, cannabis use is against policy.
Mr. Casias used marijuana for medical reasons.
No doubt. Did he get it for chronic insomnia?
Yeah, that–along with inoperable brain and sinus cancer.
. . .
A story so bathed in pathos would give almost pause to almost any other corporate juggernaut–even the most despicable and black-hearted. But the Great Beast Wal-Mart is not simply any corporate juggernaut; it is an entity unto itself and unlike anything known to man. Wal-Mart divested itself of compassion along with high prices a long time ago. The only time pathos can expect notice from Wal-Mart is when it comes with a price tag.
Wal-Mart said it had no plans to rehire Mr. Casias, but that it wished him the very best, from the bottom of its black and kitten skull-encrusted heart.
Impressed By Wal-Mart's Indifference To Human Suffering
