Previously on our Ad Vs Ad feature, we’ve shown beer ads and we’ve shown soda ads, but never have we gone so crazy as to try and show you ROOT BEER ads! I know, I know, I’m a madman. Please forgive me.

T&A&W

Watch it already!

Synopsis: This commercial is a series of fake takes of the commercial, but they keep getting ruined by mountains of jewelery falling onto the set. As it turns out, it’s Mr. T and he gets angry about the “director” calling his jewelry “silly”. I guess this is supposed to make you want to drink A&W.

Thoughts: I like Mr. T, he’s a cool guy. And because of this, I really hate this commercial. I mean, just what the fuck are you implying, A&W Root Beer? Are you saying that T can’t keep all that bling on just by standing still? That’s ridiculous! Fuck you, A&W.

IBC is Better Than Beer?!

Watch it already!

Synopsis: A man wakes up on a sidewalk with a party hat and a fake rubber novelty arm handcuffed to his own arm. This causes him to freak out, and for the ad to make the outrageous claim that “sometimes the best beer is a root beer”. You fucking wish, IBC.

Thoughts: Have you ever gotten really, really, REALLY blackout drunk from drinking a lot of beer? If so, you are 18 and probably an idiot. In that case, yes, you should be drinking IBC, because it’s awesome. Otherwise, no, beer will not cause you to wake up with a severed arm, unless you know somebody who throws the best parties in the world. Like maybe Mr. T.

Barqtoos? Seriously? That’s the name you came up with?

Watch it already!

Synopsis: Fuck trying to sell you root beer, Barq’s wants you to buy Barq’s Root Beer because it comes with free peel-off tattoos, or “Barqtoos” as they call them. They come in “cool” designs like the Barq’s logo or a retarded dog. Put them on your arm, your leg, or… BOING! Your head! Wacky!

Thoughts: As sad as it is, I remember this ad and I remember this product, but mostly I remember just throwing away these shitty “Barqtoos” and drinking the root beer because Barq’s was the root beer clinically proven to make you burp two or three times as much as any other root beer, and back in elementary school, that’s a big deal when it comes to choosing the right root beer. Ah, happy days.

Final Thoughts: So, from these ads I’ve learned that root beer is loved by Mr. T, alcoholics, and people who like tattoos. Man, root beer is way more grown-up than I thought.

(Awesome Lego art shamelessly stolen from awesome Lego artist Balakov)

There’s something I’ve been meaning to say for a long time: Drugs are Bad. You should not smoke any drugs, nor should you be snorting them with your nose. Drugs with needles are also Bad things. To make my point even clearer, I played an NES game today called NARC, in which you play as a gun-toting fast-car-driving narcotics agent who rids the streets of the evils of drugs… by just blowing the shit out of random people. Thank god for you, narcotics agents!

From what I can tell, you play as a character named “MAX I” and you’ve found the hideout of the “DAS LOAF GANG” thanks to your super-advanced computer, the “NARC 2000″. You race your way to the “PIPELINE” in your fancy car and jump out, guns a-blazing, unloading round after round of hot lead into the filthy drug-addled bellies of the evil German bread gang. Of drug dealers, obviously. Or… maybe not all that obviously. I mean, besides the use of the word “NARC” and the license plate on the car that says “JUST SAY NO”, there’s really no references to drugs at all in this game.

I suppose it could just be yet another my many faults that I couldn’t find any drug references in this game. I mean, I didn’t even manage to finish the first level of the game, which is pretty sad even for me. It’s probably because the gameplay consists of you walking back and forth shooting the shit out of a bunch of Belgian monks (sometimes blowing them up with rockets) as they return the favor and shoot the shit out of you. And, while sometimes they’ll drop ammo or more rockets for you to continue blowing the shit out of them, they never seem to drop any health. Or drugs. Because I’m bad at avoiding bullets both in video games and real life, I managed to die pretty spectacularly early on.

So… Let’s just assume for a moment that these hordes of guys in long, flasher-esque coats are drug dealers, or are at least in some way related to drugs. If that’s the case, why is the way of dealing with them to go out on the streets with machine guns and rocket launchers and murder them all in cold blood? I’m pretty sure that’s not how the “war on drugs” is actually supposed to go. Also, even though I suppose this game could get away with having an “anti-drug message” of some sort, doesn’t it have a profoundly “pro-mass-murder message” to counteract it? I dunno, maybe I’m just reading too much into this game. Anyway, until next time, Confusionauts! Remember, if you ever see somebody who may or may not be associated with drugs, shoot them on sight! Good night!

The problem with being dedicated to having a post up every day of a month is that it means I actually have to WRITE every once in a while to make it happen. And, obviously, the problem with that is that, after four years of this site, I’ve pretty much already written about every single thing there is to write about. It’s true, by now this site is a comprehensive tome of all things knowledge. Also, there are a lot of reviews of Dreamcast games (well, two, but that’s still more than MOST review sites!). So, in the spirit of writing something instead of just posting a wacky video, I’ll steal the topic of 80% of Syd’s articles and just rage dump for a bit. Hooray!

First off, this “vajazzling” business. Apparently it’s the “hottest rage” since some ex-famous person mentioned it on an off-brand late show, you can pay for someone to shave your privates and cover them in little shiny baubles. Okay, besides the fact that the very idea of “bedazzling” your crotch is idiotic at best and attempting to emulate some sort of disturbing children’s toy at worst, apparently the little things only last about a week, and I’d imagine they fall off even faster if you bathe or shower or something. And when they do start to fall off, where exactly do you think they go? Physics suggests that they would just roll down to the bottom of your underpants, collecting in a mountain of discarded glitter balls that would, after the first time you sat down in your tight pants, migrate upwards, giving you what I’m calling a “vulvajzzle”. And hey, what guy wouldn’t want to get in your pants once they learn that it’s like a fourth grade girl’s trapper keeper in there?

Secondly, in an even MORE esoteric field, there’s a new show on Cartoon Network (the only TV channel I watch, because I am apparently 6 and very easily entertained) called “Dude, What Would Happen?” It’s basically Mythbusters for retarded douchebags, only they don’t even pretend to have any sort of scientific reason behind the things they do. The show is full of segments in which the “dudes” will pose a fully idiotic question, then set out to half-assedly answer that question. I know I said I wasn’t going to include a video today, but if you don’t see these fucknuts in action, you just won’t understand my burning hatred.

Watch it already!

For those of you without the intestinal fortitude to sit through all two minutes of that fucking masterpiece of television, it’s just three idiots having a spitball fight in the middle of a “tornado,” which appears to be a fog machine and a fan combined in clever movie magic to sort of vaguely not really resemble a tornado. Also, we get commentary from the douchebags on just what was going through their minds as they did this… whatever they were doing. God damn it, Cartoon Network, why the fuck would you air this? It’s painfully moronic, and also, IT’S NOT A FUCKING CARTOON! FUCK!

Um… I think that’s all I’m angry about right now. Thank god tomorrow’s Friday and I won’t have to actually think of anything!

Have you ever heard a snippet of a conversation, just a little piece without any context, and its contents stymied you? A little chunk of dialogue that, without the benefit of more information, you have to jump to wild conclusions about? It’s a common phenomenon, common enough that films, television shows, plays and more are based entirely around it. Midsummer Night’s Dream hinges on this phenomenon. Frasier, Three’s Company and countless other sitcoms would not exist if not for the mis-informed eavesdropper effect, and Lewis Black based one of his most famous routines around just such a phrase. Every day we spend out in public we are bombarded by little bits and pieces of conversations, especially now that cellphones have created countless one-sided discussions as far as onlookers can tell, and every so often you hear one that sticks with you. Something that defies explanation and begs conjecture.

These are some of mine. I doubt I’ll ever forget any of them, let alone figure them out. If you have ANY information regarding what ANY of these things mean, please, for the love of god, tell me.

Look! Some paper things!

1- “No, it’s a paper thing, and all they have is this paper thing.”

I overheard this gem at a thrift store one day whilst out buying props for a film (or maybe Hawaiian shirts for me, I can’t really recall). An obese, confused looking woman was babbling into her tiny phone as she looked dumbly at what appeared to be a circle of brown paper in a cellophane bag. What was the paper thing she was looking for? Why didn’t this paper thing qualify? From what I could tell it was a flattened coffee filter being sold individually, so I guess I can understand it not being what you were looking for, but… what the hell lady?

2- “She’s got eyes everywhere, man. That’s too many eyes”.

This one came to be on a city bus, which I had just climbed onto and therefore had missed the beginning of the conversation between two extremely large men. I sat a few seats down from them, hoping against hopes that they would continue and I could figure out what exactly the line meant. Was one man’s ex-girlfriend a KGB spy, or perhaps a potato?  Sadly, I had apparently caught the absolute last tidbit of this one, as the two men sat uncomfortably for the rest of the ride, not saying a word and taking great pains to not look at each other. After ten uncomfortable minutes, the man who had said it disembarked without comment, a heavy sigh escaping him on the way out. Was he off to deal with his unbearable 1000-eyed wife? Was he nervous that cameras were watching his every move? I’ll never know.

Well, two out of five...

3- RED…DYNAMITE…ANTIQUE…FISH-FINDER.

Easily the greatest unexplainable thing I’ve ever heard, red dynamite antique fish-finder comes from Zach’s dentist’s office, of all places. Flash back to highschool, when he and I were out for a day of “fun” as he had promised, but which ended up with me waiting at his dentist’s office for an hour or two while he had a check-up. Woo fun, Zach. It wasn’t until the last few minutes before he came out again that I heard it- an elderly man had begun to say the words to (presumably) his daughter, first in a hushed tone, then regularly, and finally approaching yelling. “RED… DYNAMITE… ANTIQUE… FISH-FINDER” he crowed as we left, and the real tragedy of it all is that I didn’t realize how odd it was until after we had left. Sometimes things we hear peripherally are like that, they take a few minutes to set in, and it wasn’t until we were driving away that I realized “Wait. Wait, red… dynamite antique fish-finder? The fuck!?” Zach and I have spent years now trying to figure out what in hell a red dynamite antique fish-finder is- is it a brand name? Was there a Red Dynamite brand of fishing equipment in the 1930s? Or perhaps it’s a modern brand and they make devices that hunt down very old fish? Perhaps it’s a way to blow up old fish, or old explosives once used to GAAAAAAAAAAH MY BRAIN.

These are just a few of the odd snippets I’ve overheard- so sue me, I’m an eavesdropper. I’ll stop doing it once people stop saying ridiculous, stupid, hilarious things that fascinate me. So, if and when I’m the omega-man. Then I’ll stop.