Terrible Analogies

All right now…if you’re going to show off your phone, at least shell out a few extra bucks for a hand model that doesn’t suffer from occupational dermatitis.

In one of the more anticipated chats at All Things Digital, Palm Executive Chairman Jon Rubinstein showed off the Palm Pre and talked about several features of the smartphone for the first time.

Yikes!  Those are the hands of Palm’s Executive Chairman?  Now, I know that Palm has hit hard times recently, but come on Jon, spring for a bottle of Jergens.  It’s called “moisturizing”, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of…

Tech, Unusual Sightings Tech, Unusual Sightings

…What kind of toys are kids playing with nowadays?

In the span of a single afternoon I happened to stumble upon:

Disgusting Anatomy Heart:  Have you ever found yourself standing in your darkened kitchen late at night, with the only light coming from the single dim frosted bulb inside your open refrigerator?  There you are, slouching into the open box, your arm draped heavily over the door as you slowly scan its chilled contents.  Unsure what you want to eat you’re suddenly overcome with an overwhelming, insatiable desire to hold a slick, pulsing, quivering human heart in your bare hands.  

No?  Strange…I can’t believe I’m the only one ever to have that feeling.  

+1 for the bonus eyeball kit.

Gabby Girl: High creep factor with this toy.  I’m not sure where the manufacturer was going with this doll, but the posable mouth, flickering tongue, beady, vacant eyes, and 80′s inspired clothes propels this toy into the high stratosphere of the uncomfortably abnormal.  

Recently I’ve been having this reoccurring nightmare of waking up in a cold sweat and seeing that sometime, in the dead of night, this life-sized doll had silently pulled up a chair next to my bed and has been patiently sitting there, in the dark, inches from my face, watching me sleep.  The only sound I hear is a sticky, rubbery *smack* *smack* as it gums it’s lips together, her dead eyes staring straight into my shivering, cowering soul.

This doll eerily resembles a cousin of mine who lives in San Francisco, but with fewer facial piercings, no chronic cough, and absence of strict vegan diet for “religious reasons”.

Gummy Tapeworm: Knowing that by eating this it’ll soon be working its way through my colon is enough to make me want to wash my hands after handling the package.  I wonder, if I ever had an opportunity to eat a real honest-to-gosh tapeworm, would it taste like apple?  Who knows what a tapeworm tastes like?

Okay…that’s enough disturbing thoughts for one night…

Strange Encounter, Unusual Sightings, food, toys strange, toys

I’m not sure when this practice started, but it has got to stop.  Right.  Now.

What I’m all up in arms about is the fact that cereal companies are getting into the habit of placing their prizes inside of the cereal boxes, but packaged and placed along side the interior cereal bag.  This, IMHO, completely strips away the thrill of digging into the cereal itself and hunting for the elusive toy.

We all had our own special ways of extracting the prize from inside a freshly opened box of cereal.  As a child I preferred the “hold the box at a 45° angle, push in against the box to create a hand space, then dig in from the bottom” method.  Others opted for the less refined “bum rush the box by slamming your arm up to the elbow and muscle the toy out” approach.  If you weren’t hip to either technique you could find a large bowl and dump the entire contents and simply pick out the prize.  This last approach was deemed the cowards way of obtaining the prize, and was considered bad form around our household

But I guess this is all becoming moot, with Kellogg’s now pre-separating the prize from the cereal itself, these and other self-taught prize extracting techniques might go the way of Pound Puppies, Speak & Spells, and “flesh” colored crayons.  We’re denying future generations of children by not allowing them the pleasure of digging deep into a box Froot Loops, bits and pieces of cereal oozing out of the box as they stare at the ceiling in total concentration, hoping to feel their way to the prize that looked so cool printed on the outside of the box.

*Sigh*  It’s an example of another small of piece of my childhood dying by carefully measured increments.

food, toys food, toys

We were watching television late last night when an advertisement caught my attention.  Apparently Playmates has a line of toys modeled after malicious man-killing machines from the movie Terminator Salvation that are being marketed directly to young children.  Now, I know that Terminator Salvation is rated PG-13, but it just feels odd to target young children like this with toys modeled after hyper-violent fictional characters from a movie aimed at mature audiences.  

I felt the same way when The Dark Knight was out in theaters.  The toy companies tried to shoehorn in toys tied to that film.  At best it felt like an awkward attempt at trying to cash in on such a somber, violent movie.  At worst, one could feel the greed that oozed from these toys.  The Dark Knight simply didn’t translate itself well to the toy market, and gifting a toy modeled after a serial killer or a machine hellbent on the destruction of mankind could send mixed messages to an impressionable mind.

But then again, I guess it all depends on the maturity level of the child.  Who am I to say?

Anyway, watching this commercial last night got me thinking; what other movies have the toy companies overlooked that could quite possibly be a cash cow for them?  Here are a few of my suggestions:

No Country For Old Men: Toy set comes complete with replica pump-air powered cattle gun, oversized “lucky” U.S. quarter, english-to-spanish dictionary, and miniature bag of money.

Death Race (2008): Includes a scaled version of Frankenstein’s customized ’72 Riviera with spring-loaded machine guns, Hector Grimm action figure with detachable head, temporary facial tattoos, and replica prison workout yard replete with miniature weight set and chain link fences.

Fight Club: Kit comes with bottle of lye, a slice of fatback, oils and salt, a $10 coupon for a Goodwill shirt, primer cord, and an imaginary loaded gun.  Kids, use with parental supervision. 

The Big Lebowski:  Inside a bowling ball shaped container your special snowflake will find a miniature pin set with roll-out bowling lane, a Jackie Treehorn coloring book, a The Dude action figure with removable sunglasses, roach clip, and glass beverage, and a rug inspired from the film that ties the whole set together.

Really, I think the toy companies are missing a huge opportunity here.  There’s a whole segment of the marketplace that hasn’t been exploited yet, and would be willing to pay big bucks for toy sets such as these.  Heck, the collector segment alone could bankroll this idea.

Funny, Movies Funny, Movies, Observation

…or is it Merry Memorial Day?  I can’t remember.  

Anyway, being a veteran myself (U.S. Air Force) I’m taking this unexpected free time to get my MAME arcade machine back up and running (thanks go out to House Of Husar for rekindling my long-smoldering classic arcade game obsession).  Its been in pieces ever since we moved into the new home, and lately I’ve been itchin’ to get in a few sessions of Robotron and Gauntlet 2.  

Usually I draw the short straw at work and am forced to put in a few hours on Memorial Day, so it’s nice to have these few fleeting days off of work

Computer, Game, Religion, holiday Computer, Game, holiday, Religion