Category — Rants and Raves

I sent out two lucky cats on the same day in March. One to T. and one to D. The one that was sent to T. arrived fine in a couple of days, the one to D. took much longer.

This is what it looked like when I sent it:

So it arrived at her local post office a few weeks later, but she could never pick it up, owing to the fact that the shithole post office in Brooklyn is only open weekdays from nine to five. Y’know, the same exact hours people are at work. So they informed her they sent it back. I had just about given up on seeing it again, being that it’s almost three MONTHS later, but today I got a package slip telling me to pick up my returned package at the post office. When I get there, they tell me I have to pay them another NINE DOLLARS to pick up the package I already paid them to fail to deliver.

They handed me a box that looked like it had been used for a game of soccer. Mind you, I had shipped this package in a Canada Post box that I bought for the purpose, so it wasn’t some crappy piece of weak cardboard. And I wrapped it and taped it and packaged it really well.

But this is what it looked like when it came back:

And this is what was left inside:

To say I’m upset is an understatement. It is hard work making those cats and it’s a labor of love. It takes me hours and hours and it’s not like I have a lot of free time. Y’know, I just wanted to do something nice for my friends and raise some money for charity and have some fun and this is just… so depressing and discouraging and miserable. And I had to pay $20 for the privilege.

I hate you, Canada Post.

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

I don’t think you’re a bad guy. Yeah, you’re big business and a Republican, a combination that would normally inspire a knee jerk reaction of the highest power from a pinko such as myself. You were the first, and probably last, Republican I ever voted for, and generally you’ve been okay. Maybe I’ve been fooled. Maybe you just seemed alright in comparison to the fascist rule of Rudy. Maybe I’ve misjudged you from the very beginning. But maybe I haven’t, maybe you’re not all bad. So Mayor Bloomberg, I’m begging you – if you really love New York and you want it to live forever as a place of importance and magic and inspiration, preserve and enforce the zoning laws that are keeping the city from becoming nothing more than a generic Midwestern mall.

When I was a kid, my mother would ask me if I knew why New York special. Her answer to this all important question was “Because no matter what you’re looking for, you can find it here.” It didn’t matter that other cities were growing in size or investing in fancy new waterfronts or shopping districts, they would never be New York, because none of them would ever have the diversity. My mother’s examples proving her theory were manifold. You want a rare orchid? The Flower District. Homemade ravioli? Little Italy. Rare books, Jewish deli, discount ballet tickets, imported Japanese mushrooms, the perfect cocktail dress or the best cheesecake you’ll ever eat? My mother knew where to get all these things. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, my mother was particularly fond of the Garment District. Did you break the button on your favorite coat? You could find an exact match to replace it in the Garment District, and while you were there you could marvel at the stores selling nothing but lace, nothing but buttons, nothing but zippers, nothing but bolts of satin in every color imaginable. New York, my mother intoned with gravity, was ten years ahead of everyone else in fashion. New York had things you couldn’t even imagine.

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When I checked for updates to the Shameless blog this morning, I was treated to a disgusting bit of misogyny via Mir’s post on the new Bacardi Breezer ad campaign. This campaign, with the tagline “Get Yourself An Ugly Girlfriend” is one of the most offensive, sexist attempt at promoting alcohol that I have ever seen, which is saying a lot, considering the general grossness of alcohol advertising. I’m not sure how Bacardi thought it could convince women to drink Breezers by insulting their looks, but, well… that’s what they’re trying to do. Certainly the best way to sell a product is to remind women of all the things they hate about their bodies, right? That makes total sense.

I have been looking for an excuse to do some more feminist adbusting since Your Mom Had Groupies, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Thus, I present a new ad campaign that I like to call Take A Beach Stroll With Sally (Click the image to make it bigger):

Once again, I’m putting out the call for contributions, because adbusting is more fun in groups! Who would you like to join you at the beach or at the mall? Make your own ad or just leave a comment telling me how you would bust this gross ad campaign. If you have a contribution, please submit it here and I’ll make a big post with all the responses!

Or, if you don’t feel like spending your day messing around with Photoshop, you can just tell Bacardi exactly how you feel about their new campaign.

EDIT: Sources in Israel (oooh, I love saying that) have informed me that this is an old campaign, dating from 2007 or 2008. They are not sure if it was dropped by the company or even if it was ever officially used by Bacardi. McCann Digital is an Internet exclusive ad agency known for its disgustingly offensive campaigns. McCann recently listed the ad campaign on Best TV Now, dating it as being from this month and listing the client that commissioned it as Tempo.

Possibly, and this is entirely my speculation, it was going to be submitted to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Does anyone else have any clues? I, for one, would love to hear from Bacardi on the matter. Adbusting remains very satisfying, whatever the response.

EDIT: McCann has pulled the promotional minisite down and removed it from their website! Heh, feminists either crashed their site or… they feared the bad press. I wonder…

EDIT: An apology (Corporations apologize? I have never heard of such a thing!) from Bacardi can be seen in the comments. Also, the lovely Mir submitted her own ad-busted version of this ad, which I think is hilarious (and suffering from far fewer rage issues than my own:

Amazon, already the scourge of small publishers and independent booksellers, has finally gone too far. No, I am not talking about the Kindle. That thing is just pointless. I am talking about Amazon’s new policy of labeling any and all LGBT printed matter as “Adult.” This policy strips the material of its sales rank, excluding it from bestseller lists and certain search results, and basically destroys its sales. This policy has not just been applied to erotica, but to general fiction, young adult novels, academic theory, political treatises, history books, dictionaries, and self-help books. Books that have not suffered the same fate include heterosexual romance novels by authors like Jackie Collins or even pornographic books published by Playboy.

Here is a constantly expanding list of books that have been stripped of their rank, classified as “Adult” for daring to contain mentions of the horrible, deviant behavior that is same sex love. Examples include classics such as Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, and Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Also marginalized are Brokeback Mountain, Stone Butch Blues, books by respected fiction authors like Sarah Waters and Christopher Isherwood, as well as non-fiction (and completely non-erotic) works by Kate Bornstein and Randy Shilts, including The Mayor of Castro Street, which certainly must have received a boost in sales after the release of the Oscar winning film, “Milk.”

Thank you Amazon, for first putting all my favorite bookstores out of business, and now trying to make it so that no one will ever publish gay books ever again. Because with profit margins tight and a terrible economy, why bother sinking money into a book that will never sell, because the largest bookseller in the world will declare it to be shameful porn and hide it on a dusty shelf behind a beaded curtain at the back of the store?

Pissed off about this new policy?
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Several months ago I read a truly inane article about the Proposition 8 debate on Huffington Post. The author claimed he just couldn’t determine if he was for or against Prop 8 because the two sides refused to discuss the matter in a calm and measure manner, and that somehow his Jewish belief in intellectual rigor prevented him from making a decision. The comment section limited the length of my response, so I chose to write the author instead. The following is the full text of my response:
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