Long time, part time or morphin’ time readers may know I have an ongoing feud with ducks. The Aflac duck, akadaka “The Aflac Duck” usually doesn’t factor into our dispute… I consider the rivalry to be of an honorable sort, or as closest a wretched scoundrel duck can come to that, but this duck is but a dirty uncouth rapscallion without even the minimal decency of its fethren. I’m sure some person, some place thinks it is comendable that advertisers attempt to make their filths tolerable to larger audiences then those who might have an immediate “need” to purchase insurance, but that ignores the fact that there’s no reason for anyone to watch ads or accept that they are shown. And insurance in general is a dire, dire dock scam against humanity. And also that that duck is a magnificent distance from tolerable.

It’s bad enough when every fumblewig who can afford ad time thinks they’re so clever commissioning wooden puppets of themselves roundabout December, but this is… slightly more bad than that.

I don’t even like stupid rudolph the dumb red idiot nosed moron reindeer and I think the recent aflac ad, which I can easily embed in this page but never will, is, was despicable. Like worse than the other ones. I suppose it’s good that the ad was “unauthorized,” meaning whoever owns the rights to the characters and situations and such gave no assistance or permission, but it’s also bad because that means anybody can make a cheap daft Winnie-the-pooh-job ad with any characters they want and get away with it. Not that anybody really “owns” Santa Claus, but I think we’re smart enough to know when something’s an obviously derivative work which exists exclusively to sell a product or service and only attempts to be entertaining to distract us from that while it takes our nostalgia behind a barn and shoots it in the head. Fortunately, the ad is so quick and crowded -and I knew it was coming! I was mentally prepared in advance when I watched it online- plus the addition of that tiresome duck which never wasn’t annoying that no one could possibly like or excuse it.

Also, am I the only person who’s bothered by these vague “smart dates” that show up all over the place now? That really messes with the accuracy of my screen grasps if I don’t use them right away; all my rudolph abuse occurs past immediate relevance so you know I mean bidness. I prefer to see a simple calendar figure. It doesn’t matter to me if you put the month number first or second. I’ll figure it out from the context the first time and remember it after that. I’m smarter than I eat.

Even at the moment the dates are generated, when they’re correct, I have no immediate concept of what “four weeks ago” means. Was that in November? Was that in… no, that’s twenty eight days, right? Almost a month. So what about “1 month ago,” then? And how do I know when something occurred beween 1 and 2 months ago? As far as this system is concerned everything happened on the same day. Grapety purple, I need to know these things! We aren’t talking about veoh comments, after all. Stop trying to make the past seem like uncertain memories of insubordinate importance which are worth knowing with decreasing specificness the older they get! We have the technology to know exactly when these messages were left! If I choose to say an event took place one month, two weeks, three days, back to back law and orders and a belt buckle ago, it should be my choice! And it won’t be! Screebidy deebidy!