Monday, March 28, 2011

So... I melted my eyes the other day...

So... i just had laser eye surgery.  and right now i'm having trouble seeing... Literally, my screen is a white blur with a little bit of blue in it.  so i figured "ehh, who needs eyes... i'm just going write this one on emotion."  how am i doing so far? not too many misspelled words? l;kajsdfnwef adfl;jkasdl;fuj r.  how about now?

so... (yeah, i realize that i'm starting all the paragraphs the same... chalk one point up for the league of bad grammar... which i'll start as soon as i can see again)... there are 3 kinds of surgery you can have on your eyes. And I, obviously being an expert in everything, have been well informed of all three, and can reference various smart sounding medical journals to back up these tried and true FACTS.

The three types of procedures are 
1) Lasik. This is where everyone in the Eye-Blasting office floats around like angels, they touch your eyes with magical lasers, a bit of pixie dust, and in a couple hours you can see the earth's curvature and eat cookie dough to your hearts desire (or until you throw up... but generally these happen at the same time).  side effects include "eagle-eye-osis" and "awesome-x-ray-vision-itis")

2) PRK.  this involves surgically removing your eyelids for a short time, as you stare into the harnessed power of the sun for an extended period of time.  The procedure would also involve tears, but those were also burned away as they turn your eye sockets into blast furnaces.  side effects include desert-eyball-ness, Blindness, death-osis and people-laughing-at-you-for-choosing-the-wrong-procedure-itis.  


3) Scary man with icepick and hammer.  This procedure is done for free, and it also comes with complementary candy as you walk into his (the "Doctor's") van. I know you might be worried about this last one... but it's ok... it's a STERILE ice pick.  (what kind of idiot do you TAKE me for?)

What i find almost comical is that the common word around the office is "discomfort".  They were constantly telling me: "as we are destroying your cornea, you may experience some discomfort."  I couldnt help but wonder what THEY mean by discomfort?  To me, discomfort is "aww man! i've got this crazy wedgie, and i cant pick it, because i'm on a date". or "i'm playing video games and havent blinked for 3 hours".  THOSE things cause me discomfort.  i save the things like: removing my eyelids and using superman like eye lasers to melt my eyballs, to be classified under the category of: "this is what hell must be like". But it is a futuristic hell, because they implement the use of lasers to torture people.  

Let's juxtapose this with something we can all relate to.  a grain of sand in they eye, in the form of one of those annoying SAT questions.
A grain of sand in the eye is to torture as holding the wrong end of a lightsaber with your eyeball is to ______.
A) a bad juggling trick
B) saying "get away from me with that F*#@ing lightsaber you psycho"
C) Discomfort
D) Cruel and Unusual punishment (which you'd probably get 10 to life for)
E) removing your eyelids and watching a Paul Walker movie marathon

Everyone would get this answer right, because someone taking the SAT will ALWAYS choose C) when they dont know what the correct answer is.  But things that dont make logical sense like this (especially the ones that make it to those awesome standardized tests), are the types of questions that make those SAT- takers laugh with that maniacal  laugh that you'll laugh WITH, but simultaneously be a little scared for their (and your) mental and physical safety at the same time.

so... a long story short... I chose the worst kind of laser surgery.  i'm not eating cookie dough till i throw up and i'm starting to wish i would've taken the candy, and hopped into the ice-pick van.  After all, he DID tell me that he has operated on HUNDREDS of people before he'd probably be really good at it by now (if he's reading this: "borderline creepy dude: think you may want to also bribe with balloons... i definitely would've been convinced if you had balloons too).

Which brings us to the present... here i am, looking at an annoyingly bright computer screen, hitting what i believe are the right keys, feeling like i pissed off superman, and he blasted my eyes for me.  But it's ok, the lesson has been learned, and i have found the moral of the story. 
Perfect vision is worth going blind for.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

do marketing people ACTUALLY know what they are doing?

just saw a UPS commercial...
'UPS will be able to successfully turn Davids into Goliaths."
There is a small chance that someone fell asleep in their Sunday school class.  The last time i checked, David killed Goliath.  not only that, but If memory serves correctly, Davie didn't only kill him... but he decapitated him after putting a rock to his dome-piece.  He did that is after he called him a sissy in front of the two entire armies.  Am i to understand that UPS is trying to make me into a Goliath? Is this something I want?  Should i be scared of UPS? Are THEY the David? Are they going to decapitate me?

i can only assume that there are very smart marketing people with smart marketing science things that involve psychology-stuff and various case studies (which apparently the study of various cases is often important when you are trying to make an irrefutable point while arguing with someone). and these smart-case-studying people have determined that the commercials that i watch on TV are best suited to speak to me on a deeper level.  On this deeper level exists complicated emotions like "William WANT".  And by "deep" level, i just mean that there is a lot of it.

The demographic that I am a part of has been studied and scrutinized to an unhealthy level and we have been deemed to be idiots.  This explains, the steady stream of commercials that are so retarded, that it makes me question my own intelligence.  After a commercial, i find myself wondering "Maybe i AM stupid! I'm sitting here, waiting for the hidden/valuable meaning behind the 30 seconds of wasted life, maybe I'm just not smart enough to understand the "Go Daddy" commercials."

You may not have seen the commercials i'm talking about, but i'm sure you know what i'm talking about. These commercials are 30 seconds long (my demographic also has ADD), and for all i know, they are not even trying to sell me anything.  The sad part is that I honestly have no idea what the company "Go Daddy" does, and i have seen about 30 of their commercials.  The easiest conclusion i can come up with is that I MUST be an imbecile if a profitable company, which is in the upper echelon of companies (they do, after all have commercials on the super bowl), spends millions upon millions of dollars on a commercial, and i just don't get it.  I mean: someone REALLY wants to tell me something and i apparently don't even speak the same language as them. 

here is a classic example.  How could something so simple be so hard to understand? it's HEAD ON.  i know This because they said it about 49 times in 20 seconds.  it's like that had an auctioneer saying it for them.  I understand how to use it... you apparently apply it directly to the head, but should i feel awkward for wondering if anyone knows WHY i should be applying it directly to my head? If someone repeated that commercial, verbatim, on the street, i would actually start to wonder if they wanted to fight with me.  "alright, punk... let's go... head on! you just TRY to apply something directly to my forehead!"

i feel like a good next commercial, would immediately follow the "head on" commercial, and be tailored to all the people who are incredibly annoyed with "head on". 

"Milwaukee hammers! apply directly to forehead! You wont have to remember the "head on" commercial after use! So good, that it is the preferred tool of serial killers everywhere!"

commercials make me feel kinda like I'm in a foreign country, and someone is yelling at you in a language that I don't understand.  All I can do is sit there and wonder: am I an idiot for not being able to understand this? or is that person an idiot for continually yelling at me even though i have no idea what he's saying?