McDonald’s Develops Sitophilia

In early 2005, McDonald’s began running banner ads featuring an incredulous-looking guy claiming he’d enjoy fucking a cheeseburger.  Apparently, McDonald’s misunderstood the meaning of the lingo, “I’d hit it.” This leads me to believe that the McDonald’s higher-ups don’t leave their gold-painted mansions long enough to know that “I’d hit it” alludes to sex, and not food. Either that, or McDonald’s executives are so bizarrely old and out of touch that they also think a shiny new buffalo nickel can get you a swell ferry ride. But I suppose sex with a sandwich can be done, provided the cheese was cooled off and ketchup was used as a lubricant. Notice that I didn’t include a special sauce joke, as that’s tired and boring. Take note.

According to McDonald's, Michael's use of this burger is highly inappropriate. Though that was probably already true.

The Fallout

McDonald’s immediately pulled the ad and embarrassed cheeseburger enthusiasts pulled their pants up and ran inside when they realized the revolution hadn’t quite started yet.  McDonald’s apologized and admitted they were unfamiliar with the way we young ruffians talk.  What with the slang, insults to mothers, and parachute pants.  Unfortunately for McDonald’s, once something is online, it’s always online, and the banner ad was copied and pasted into the depths of the series of tubes.  Interestingly enough, it spawned some pretty decent parody ads.

Walmart Subtly Introduces Their Final Solution

In November of 2006, a blogger noticed something a little strange about a t-shirt at her local Wal-Mart.  Besides the fact that it probably smelled like crushed animal crackers and the spirit of the American working man, it featured a skull logo that just so happened to also be used by the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf; or to those of us who aren’t better than everyone else with our infinite wealth of history trivia, a bunch of military Nazis.  It turned out that Wal-Mart was just copying the work of hack thieving douchebag “artist” Shep Fairey, the clothing designer who makes those OBEY GIANT shirts worn by those guys who skateboard in my empty pool and need haircuts.

GET A JOB

Anyway, it appears that the dude who ripped off Fairey while Fairey was ripping off the Nazis sold a shit-load of t-shirts to Wal-Mart, who being the paragon of business ethnics and superb customer service that they are, took 62 weeks to remove the shirts after being made aware of the origins of the skull logo.  Fairey, on the other hand decided that looking like an asshole is better than looking like an idiot and chose to pretend that he was aware of the skull’s meaning, but that’s just how edgy he is.  Man, you can’t keep a Fairey down.

Fairey-Douchemother

The Fallout

Wal-Mart issued the usual apology while Fairey quietly reported the shirts as being out of stock.  The OBEY executives went on to live a life of hair always being in their faces and Walmart tried to quietly sweep it under the rug, especially since they were just coming off of a advertisement debacle featuring Nazi book burnings.  Stay classy, Wal-Mart.

Bernard Madoff Tells His Kids His Dirty Secret

In late 2008 Bernard Madoff, who ran a… uh… money making… something-or-other was arrested for… ahh… something illegal.  From what my feeble female brain can gather, Madoff was running a giant Ponzi scheme, where previous investors were being payed from the monies of new investors, and Madoff Money Makers Company or something weren’t actually investing their money in anything. In all fairness, there were questions about Madoff’s methods as far back as 1999, and one of little feeder companies was investigated back in 1992, but I imagine Madoff distracted them with something shiny.  Apparently, nothing official happened until Madoff made a tearful and possibly drunken confession to his two sons (who both worked for Mad Madoff’s Money Mill) and they immediately went to the authorities to turn their dad in.  I’m trying to imagine what the Christmas card read like:

"Boy, what a year!"

The Fallout

Hard to say, being that it’s still going on.  Bernie’s Bullion Bakers, or whatever it’s called is in the process of being liquidated, and estimates of the money lost runs up to $50 billion.  Quite a few billionaires have lost a few million bucks, and sadly may have to settle for a cheaper jet lease this new year as a result of Madoff’s trickery.  And what is probably the only tragic part of all this is the fact that although Madoff was apparently a chode of the lowest order, his family did donate millions of dollars annually to various charities, which he of course convinced them to reinvest with him.  Hah, fuck you starving orphans and cancer victims!

FAGS

Viacom Tries To Destroy The Internet

As all of us pasty and overweight keyboard jockeys are aware of, Viacom- a gigantic TV conglomerate- tried to sue Google and Youtube for $1 billion back in 2007 and successfully had 100,000 videos taken down, much to the chagrin of Daily Show and Southpark fans everywhere.  Much like the Metallica vs. Napster debacle years before, Viacom tried to come off as humble artists and workers, just trying to protect their creative essence from being sucked out by the evil Skeksis-like Google.  But what Viacom failed to take note from what Metallica learned back in the day, the internet has made us not only more clever, but embittered and quick-witted.  We can now tell the difference between a lone artist and the group of suits who take over ownership of other people’s creations. And while Viacom demanded the IP addresses of these thieving users to track them down (presumably to feed them to lions or eat a banquet in the glow of their burning bodies), Google and several privacy advocates balked and called them fags.

Here's a fun game: go to Wikipedia, and look up "Skeksis." Then look up "Sitophilia." Then imagine a Skeksis with Sitophilia. Then vomit.

The Fallout

Google and Viacom are still in the works of a settlement, but from the perspective of Youtube users, the broo-ha-ha seems to be slowly fading away. There was an irritating few weeks where it was impossible to find a clip of the Daily Show and you were forced to go to ComedyCentral.com and put up with their advertising bullshit to watch a thirty second clip. And if you wanted to watch a full episode, you either had to own a Tivo or watch it when it aired. But, that involved sitting through commercials for Drawn Together and hearing the braying voice of the Comedy Central spokesman. The good news is that this lawsuit finally made several communication companies realize that this new fangled internet thing wasn’t going to go away, and more companies began putting more and more of their stuff online. You can now watch 30 Rock on both NBC.com and Hulu, and the Daily Show has it’s own website where you can watch months of episodes while quietly weeping to yourself for a lack of social life.