We didn't watch the Superbowl. I tried to find it online somewhere, but didn't have any luck with that. Not that I cared enough to try all that hard, but given that Arizona was playing, we would have watched it if it was easily available. But we did watch all the commercials on Hulu. One word: Lame. There were a couple funny ones and a couple OK ones, but mostly they sucked dead bunnies. So, for the ad agency people that I just know read this blog, here are some thoughts in no particular order.
Beer commercials used to be the creme de la creme, but somewhere around the Bud Bowl, they jumped the shark big time. Dorky guy has hot chicks swarming him because he has a beer. Wow. Just how many times do you think you can go back to that particular well? The only mildly amusing one was the guy getting tossed out the office window. The rest: wasteland.
Power grid ads? Really? Holy crap. The power grid. Just. Wow.
Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head were funny. That's a Superbowl ad. Something as boring as car tires, and they managed to make an ad that was clever and actually mentioned what is being advertised.
Speaking of which, the Clydesdale horse chasing after his unrequited love got an "Awwww!" Unfortunately, it never mentioned or showed the product, but at this point, Clydesdale = Bud, so I guess....
The Monster.com moose and Pepsi's "It's all good" ads were good enough for regular season football, but not really Superbowl material. The rest of the Pepsi ads were a waste of the 30 seconds of my life it took to watch them. And Coke, do the world a favor and fire your ad agency before they inflict any more pain on society.
The car ads universally sucked. The only redeeming feature was the wakicha wakicha music in the first 10 seconds of the Audi ad. The Careerbuilder.com ad was original, if somewhat disturbing. However, it did involve punching a koala, so that was cool.
I still don't have books for my class that starts next Monday, meaning that it really started today. When I called to give them another $1,000, I found out the books had been shipped on the 28th. Then he said, "Your in Wyoming, right?" Oh crap. Here we go again. Yea, buddy; Arizona, Wyoming; they're real close.
Speaking of problems in higher education, an accounting professor has a long rant about the decline in the preparedness of college students over the last 35 years. Most of this will sound familiar to anyone that has had the misfortune of using a customer "service" desk in the last 20 years.
Today’s students cannot read at what used to be a tenth-grade level....
I shouldn’t be surprised by the weakness in reading; after all, many students do not buy their text books....
Worst of all is attitude. Yesterday’s student was willing to work; today’s student is not. Past students thought of education as a privilege; current students view it as an entitlement. Earlier students took responsibility for their mistakes; contemporary students call mom and dad, who in turn call their attorneys. Previously, it was honorable to obtain a B and at least acceptable to receive a C, especially with the harder classes. Nowadays, students want at least a B for signing up for class and an A with any effort expended on the course, regardless of knowledge displayed in the classroom....
There is one item in which twenty-first century students excel—their self-esteem....
Universities share part of the responsibility. We accept some students who should not be admitted to a university. We employ teaching evaluations, so students can punish demanding faculty. We have administrators who are scared of lawyers, who kowtow to donors and potential donors, and who tell faculty that the grades they administer are too low....
Remember, this brain trust will be replacing the one that nearly destroyed the world financial system. This group, being even more confident in their incompetence, will likely succeed.
On the dead-flat-tree media front, a journalist did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and concluded that the New York Times could actually save money by giving a Kindle to every subscriber and shutting down the printing presses. Printed newspapers will soon go the way of the buggy whip. I can't imagine why anyone would want the nasty things in their house given that you can get them on a Kindle. If I still cared enough about anything to subscribe to the Times or Newsweek or whatever, they certainly would be electronic.
Well, I should get online and get moving on the new week at school. I actually managed to crank out a serious pile of words for one of the final 10-pagers today. I'm up to 8 pages already and am only 1/3 done. When I'm writing, I usually shoot for about double the word- or page-count, then chop it down. Makes for a tighter essay than trying to fluff up something weak.
Tomorrow, I'll do all the short right-ups and outline the weekly 500-word essay. I've finished all the reading for one class and hope to finish the reading for the second class tomorrow night. That leaves just the reading for the class I don't have books for yet. If you don't see me here for a day or two, my nose is probably buried in a book of some sort.
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