D:

.... You're scaring me...

Commercials drive me into a blind rage for some reason. Especially when they're stupid, pointless, over-the-top commercials about how AWESOME their company supposedly is.

Makes me think of how on PBS's corporate bumpers the animals all clap and cheer for the energy corporations destroying them and their living space forever...

Then there's the ads of the SUVs and other cars driving through lush planes and woodlands that they are helping destroy...

Or how about the commercials where the (so cool to baby boomers and gen x, y and z) INDIGINOUS PERSON (or de facto authentic pastoral european peasant) is enamored with some vehicle or handheld technological gadget and either nods sagely in approval or gloms onto it, forgetting the meaning and purpose of their entire lives...

Oh man, those ones put my dad into a rant. The ones where all the happy little forest creatures are living in the frame of a car because it's apparently radiating ecology-friendly beams ... Any car commercial that boasts 32 MPG!!, and then runs off to tear up a forest in celebration ... or how Tibetan monks ALWAYS have the latest technology, a big group of them perched on the steps of the temple, watching the Three Stooges, or some kid making a fool of himself on Youtube ... Always with the Tibetan monks ...

ahhhh don't worry about it. everyone knows ExxonMobil and GE rules the world ;p not that silly Shell and their dinosaur poo gas

But first, you should run out and buy more gas than you can safely carry in order to encourage Shell to find.... just a wee bit more oil. *puppy dog eyes* "Help us find the last drop. Pwease!"

Yeah, that sounds like total BS.

This is the first I've heard of it........but I don't watch TV. I don't have cable, so I don't even bother. I haven't even tried--I have no idea if I can even get any TV stations here (I probably can). I doubt there'd be anything on I wanted to see, tho.

Anyway, for those of you in most of the US, want to get an idea of how much you're being ripped off for gas? (States like Texas and others in the south excluded, as they tend to have cheaper stuff.) In New Jersey, you can still get regular gas for just under $3.00/gallon...this is cheaper than Pennsylvania and Maryland, two states to which I travel through or two relatively often, AND New Jersey is Full Service gas ONLY. That's right--the almost $3 per gallon you pay in Jersey is enough to get the product, pay some corporate fucks, AND a couple of guys minimum wage...and make a profit for the guy who owns the gas station. Minimum wage is, I think about $7 here, or set to go up to it soon. Maybe it's still $6 or $6.50.

Oh, and that price includes gas tax, as well (which admittedly is very low, since the republican-instated gas taxes have been reduced as gas prices have gorged themselves).

I really don't watch much TV ... Science Channel, Discovery, Animal Planet ... but what infuriates me the most is that this festering piece of advertising dreck has found it's way EVEN TO THESE. Science Channel especially has entire SHOWS dedicated to alternative fuels. The Discover magazine I just got in the mail had at LEAST two full-pagers, plus a sidebar. I just ... I don't know. I expected BETTER from them, is all. Seeing them accept advertising money for something with such an obvious agenda hurts.

Well ... I know Discover magazine does. I don't know which of those TV stations do. I usually end up going on too big a rant to remember what channel it was on.

It sounds like more intelligent TV than I'd watch... If I had cable, I'd watch the Cartoon Network (for Adult Swim, mainly, although I like some of the "kid" shows, too), Sci-Fi, and...um...maybe the Weather Channel. Probably the Commedy channel, since they have the only two news shows that I trust. Plus, of the two most likely presentations of the news, I like theirs better--I'd rather laugh, than think about how horribly fucked most of this world is :)

I haven't watched Cartoon Network in forever ... Seems like their daytime lineup is nothing but Naruto or Pokemon anymore. I'll sometimes catch an episode of Billy and Mandy or Camp Lazlo, but ... eh.
My dad's a masochist when it comes to Sci-Fi ... he'll only watch it on Saturdays, when they play their god-awful self-produced movies. I remember one that was about a particle accelerator creating a black hole. I was thinking it'd be awesome, because I'd heard theories that it might actually occur in real-life, however slim the chance may be. So you can imagine my disappointment when the movie in question was NOT about a group of scientists trying to stop a microscopic black hole from devouring the Earth, but about a black hole that was actually a portal to another dimension where a LIGHTNING MONSTER lived!! Aaaah, scary! True terror, this one!

BENDY FUCKING STRAWS |:[

Ahhh this is why i have TiVo. Commercials...i remember those... :3

And i cant wait to see what happens when we finally drain all the worlds oil supply. its a shame ill likely be long dead by the time that happens but i presume that stuff is there for a reason, perhaps the same effect as if you just drained all the oil out of your car and continued to drive it, or like when fresh cut wood starts to seep all the sap from every pore and the wood eventually dries out and becomes unusable....but i digress.

Not true, you'll be here for all of it unless you die in the next year or so. Pick up Out of Gas by David Goodstein for the math behind it, but we're going to hit peak oil in the next three or four years, in all likelyhood.

Did I hear someone say Mad Max?

KICKASS, post apocolyptic madness! Im totaly gonna put a cowcatcher on the front of my Hyundai :D:D:D:D XD

Isn't TiVo crippled now? I heard some big media company bought it out, and now it's impossible to skip through certain commercials, and you can only watch recorded shows a certain amount of times, etc. At any rate, the latest commercials I've seen for it scream "CORPORATE THINK-TANK". I don't even get what's going on. Some old lady is watching a clip of ... someone? Her late husband, maybe, teaching their daughter to walk. And ... aww, she's crying! Heart strings are pulled! And then, AWWW, the TiVo antennae sprouting from her head wipe the tear away. D'aww. But what's that have to do with TiVo? Any DVD player can show you home movies. Or were her home movies being broadcast on TV? Did she have her TiVo record it while she was on the crapper?

As far as i know Tivo is still going strong i havent heard any mention of something fishy going on with their corporation, i have several friends who work at the TiVo HQ here in cali, plus i listen to tons of radio news and that would have come up in teh local stuff :3

As to the last part its a funny kinda thing that with Tivo i easily miss their own commercials as well XD

i swear by Tivo or even any other DVR that comes with cable TV these days, its totaly convinient in ways you'd never have imagioned.

Heh, preach on man.

Though.. I didn't know it wasn't 'all' out yet.. I think I've already seen the whole thing.

His kid's an ugly zitbag who will forever be picked on as a craterface.

Yeah, I was pretty sure they'd shown everything over the PAST SEVERAL MONTHS. Maybe the finished product will all be in ONE PIECE, and not a seizure-inducing miasma of random clips! I can't wait to watch the same thing I've been constantly subjected to, except LONGER and MORE INFURIATING.

SAGJAQPvkxzbwszbfrgl.

I actually saw it all in one string.. was like 2 minutes long, no less annoying.

I do find it funny though, that the Japanese engineer is telling "Jap" that they're screwed.

I'm sensing some anger here.

HFRGL

Turbine hybrids, please. Turbines will run on anything that burns with little to no modification, and having an actual engine means you won't need a literal ton of expensive, heavy, short-lived batteries, as with a traditional electric car. Diesel trains have worked this way for decades! Why not cars?

Battery technology hasn't changed much in the last 50 years, and fuel cells probably won't, either. The whole design principle behind fuel cells is pretty silly.

Wouldn't emissions be a problem?

The main problem with piston-driven engines is that they don't burn the fuel thoroughly. Some unburned fuel is exhausted, and both carbon soot and oxides are produced (such as carbon monoxide). A turbine is extremely efficient by comparison, burning almost everything (which is why the power efficiency is so high). It can also run on many types of fuels that don't contain hydrocarbons, and thus will not produce carbon dioxide gas.

The problem is that turbines run very hot and need to be made out of exotic metals. Ceramics are also possible, but they are brittle and difficult to mass produce with a high level of precision. If heat exchangers are used, it adds weight and bulk. As a result, turbines are costly. However, they could still be cheaper than fully electric cars. A small turbine can produce a LOT of power, weighs very little, and electric motors deliver maximum power at all RPMs. A turbine hybrid would make an awesome exotic sport car. Getting something on the market, even at high cost, would give the technology a chance to prove itself. Practical mass production and cost reduction are much lower hurdles than invention.

Fully electric cars may never catch on. Our national power grid is completely unable to supply that level of current, power "leaks" over electric lines, and the power does have to be produced somehow -- usually by very dirty methods, like coal. Coal is cheap and WILL be used by power plants for a very long time. Ironically, liquid fuel in an internal combustion engine could be more environmentally friendly than a more efficient, but dirtier, power plant.

Alternative power plants are tricky, too. Water power kills plant life by altering water temperatures, and promotes land erosion. Wind power requires specialized locations and very tall mounting points, and is highly dependent on weather conditions. Solar panels cost millions per acre, and must be properly mounted on movable platforms. As costly as it is, oil is still one of our most practical power sources.

I've heard there's a new type of battery being developed ... it's basically a capacitor, but the two plates are covered in microscopic ridges that greatly increase the usable surface area. It would supposedly have about the same capacity as a normal battery, but it wouldn't use chemicals and could charge in minutes.
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Direct.....uper_Capacitor

It's even better than the trendy kids taking a pause from doing their homework to tell us how totally rad coal companies are.

... Or the smokin' hot babes working down in the coal mines.

"Think 19th century. Think coal."

Ha. I didn't see that one.

T_T;... they found more oil? Weren't we sapposed to be working on alternative fuel supplies incase of wars and oh I don't know... Few explosive deaths? Baah.... We living are so fragile these days... Mentally and physically...:P.. It's hard to find something that dosen't end up killing us in the end. And just shell pulling more oil from places that will colapse cause of it in the future dosen't help much...

Heh, that reminds me of some weird arguments I've hears against alternative energy. Like, "You can't fuel cars with hydrogen! Hydrogen is EXPLOSIVE!" YEAH! That's, uh, kind of the point! So is gasoline! Cars run on small explosions, not sunshine and lollipops! Or hey, how about, "You can't use wind power plants! They KILL BIRDS!" Yeah, they do! About 1 death per year per 30 power plants! So does my cat! He's killed enough birds this year to power a major city!

True to that! ^^;... if they are really worried about killing other things then why don't we all just kill everything living! Seems that one thing that lkives means another usually dies... so more or less if we want to save a mass we have to hurt a partical. *sighs* I don't like that argument but that's the usual math... Can't save them all but can work a smaller toll. :P

Gasoline is actually not explosive in liquid form. Only the vapor is explosive. You can snuff out a cigarette by submerging it in gasoline! Automobiles also use recirculation to keep the vapor contained, instead of "sealing" the fuel in.

Hydrogen... now that's a ticking time bomb, since the tank has to be completely sealed. The BIG problem is transporting liquid hydrogen. Ever heard of a BLEVE?

*sigh* Yeah, I suppose you're right.

i got that CD it burned up reaaaaaal good

I snapped it in half in a fit of rage. It's laying on the dining table, now, still in its sleeve, sad and crumpled.

i got another one later on cause they spy on me so i gave it to my uncle who turns AOL disks into X-mas ornaments =D

pick your poison, you probably still drive a car almost every day, at least these oil companies are giving you an idea of what they want their public image to be like so you can make up your mind what gas station -not- to get it from.

I've stopped going to ExxonMobil based stations, I'm sorta neutral to shell but may be switching off them cause of these commercials, etc. BP is my gas of choice currently, citgo second

There used to be a Shell station a couple miles up the road from where I live. I hated it. I don't now what they did to their gasoline, but that stuff was NOXIOUS. I'd fill my lawnmower up with it, mow the lawn, and I'd be sick for the next couple of days from the fumes. Then Chevron bought the station, and the gas stopped being poisonous.

So, yeah. It's usually either Chevron or Conoco. They aren't blissfully arrogant and they don't poison their fuel, as far as I know.

I wonder if some fuel additives make not all gas-station gas safe to use in stuff like chainsaws and your lawn mower :V

Tcheh. I can just imagine some poor fool chopping his arm off because the fumes made him dizzy while he was using his chainsaw. I'd love to see that lawsuit.

speaking of chainsaws, have you seen the new breed of consumer chainsaws? They're like safety scissors, man. I forgot what they called them but I heard people calling them 'gators' .... two blades which you basically use like scissors to cut most of the things you'd normally use a chainsaw for in your back yard :0

Haha, cool.

... Somehow, that seems even more disturbing than a chainsaw. Can you imagine one of them in a horror movie? The victim tied to a chair, with the murderer slowly advancing with these things like a giant pair of scissors, and then SNIP! Off goes one leg, then the other ... And then the LAWSUITS! Fired off from every direction, accusing the director of slander! Then the REAL horror begins!

they don't have that same horror grungy look as traditional chainsaws. They look more like... a weapon in TFC or something with the safety bits and cleanliness, etc

But, when you think about it, wouldn't that make them even MORE horrific? Something whose very appearance denotes safety, twisted somehow into a killing machine, the splattered blood not quite covering the safety instructions ...

nah, that's a stretch. I think "cool sci fi weapon"

Hmm, good point.

The first thirty times I saw those commercials I was wondering what the hell it was about. Then finally once I saw them string all of them together into a story instead of the 30 second bits that don't make any sense. Then my reaction was, "what was the point of all of that?"

I go with Chevron gasoline almost exclusively. I can be a little more than other places around here but I can tell by how my car runs that the gas is worth the extra pennies per gallon. :P

Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction.

Remember back in the late '90s, before the dot-com bubble burst, when every major company seemed to be producing pointless commercials? Commercials that were never for a particular product, or showcased technology that didn't yet exist and probably never would, or were just one big non sequitur? We seem to be falling back into that trend: commercials designed to make investors happy.

There's a LUKoil station next to where I live. I just looked at the company's web site, and the first thing that came up was a Java applet showing their current stock information and latest investor news.

WELL, THAT WAS SUBTLE.

Commercials on TV? What's that?

:O

You mock me, sir!