June 23, 2008

Note about a stupid advertisement

Last week I caught a commercial on television, and saw it again tonight, and was so blown away that I decided to write about it... I'll keep this short. The catch line was: "How do you get even better gas mileage out of a Suzuki? Free gas." A lot of companies have resorted to paying for customers' gas to stir up business, playing on the fear in each of us that the end of our auto-centric lives is near. Even a local mattress company is giving away gas cards with every purchase. This particular car company has taken it a step further to suggest that [by paying for a year's amount of gas] their car has better gas mileage (i.e. more miles per gallon; this is NOT the same as miles per dollar). A car with truly better gas mileage would, in effect, provide relatively better gas mileage over the life of the car, beyond the first year of ownership. Gimmicks like this one drive me crazy! All it is doing is subsidizing our dependence on non-renewable oil and keeping us from reaching renewable and sustainable energy resources. People are convinced to buy this particular car (which probably has shitty gas mileage) for the temporary, short-term "savings," instead of buying into a more efficient technology or an alternative altogether. They're stuck for a multitude of years paying off their loan and living with terrible gas mileage while better technologies come out every year afterwards. This isn't a really deep critique, so maybe all you can take away from it is that I am constantly disappointed with subversive marketing.

On a positive note, I am increasingly excited about biking and learning more and more about it. I got a compliment about my bike frame from a local bike mechanic over the weekend and learned that the irritating noise I've been hearing is superficial and not a real problem, which boosted my confidence in the whole ride. I'm trying to figure out what needs to be done next to convert my bike to a single-speed and I hope to get to a specialty shop downtown very soon...hint hint!

Other things of no particular interest to anyone:
-Jordan O' Jordan will be in Columbus on Wednesday! This guy is Niceness embodied
-Striped Cucumber Beetles have found our squash plants
-The tomatoes might survive, but the red bud is gonna die
-I hope to enter another big art contest very soon and get some cash-ola...
-I'm tired and dreaming about being a tattoo artist...jeah right
Stay up

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