Tell The Invisible Chimp I Can’t See Him Today
[ Comments Off ]Posted on August 16, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Monday, August 16th, 2010In the bizarre and bloody PR battle of carnivores vs vegetarians, things can take strange turns, like when this PETA campaign against Dodge backfires.
The carnivore vs vegetarian conflict is a bloody battleground. In a marketing war being waged with weapons like cologne that smells like meat (see the commercial here), things can often take an unexpected turn. A couple of PETA’s most reliable weapons of mass distraction are nudity or scantily clad celebrities, which was for instance effective when PETA was the winner and the American Hot Dog Association was the wiener last year when PETA dogged the AHDA by suggesting you stick something different between your buns on National Hot Dog Day. You can’t win ALL the battles though, and we think a US automaker Dodged the bullet pretty cleverly recently when PETA complained about the exploding chimp in this commercial (also below), and Dodge responded by digitally making the chimp invisible, but otherwise leaving the commercial intact. Not surprisingly, Dodge got exponentially more ad views with their strategy. We tried to contact the invisible chimp for comment, and although his agent insisted we couldn’t see him, he did say in a phone interview that he expected to be bigger than Trunk Monkey. We also had the still grieving Bubbles the Chimp on the line, who disagreed, saying “Invisible Chimp, I knew Trunk Monkey, Trunk Monkey was a friend of mine. And sir, you’re no Trunk Monkey”. Decide for yourself. Both versions of the ad below. With a bonus Trunk Monkey clip. Read the rest of this entry »
Nepal’s Gadhimai Mela: World’s Most Massive Pointless Animal Slaughter?
[ 5 Comments ]Posted on November 23, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Monday, November 23rd, 2009No my friends, the United States still has firm grasp on THAT title.
I think PETA’s gonna have to come up with a better marketing strategy than wieners and boobs if they want to do anything to stop the annual slaughter of half a million animals in Nepal November 24th and 25th. I say “slaughter”, but this is apparently a ritual sacrifice to the Hindu deity Gadhimai. I usually restrain myself a bit when offering any opinions on the spiritual beliefs of others, but I think in this case I might make an exception, much like I might in the case of Mormons, Scientologists, and atheists. All I’ll say is that if the animals are being slaughtered in honor of a goddess of power, the devotees might want to find a new goddess of power. The last time I checked, the people of Nepal weren’t popping up on the first few pages of Google search results for “powerful people”. So, does the whole idea of this mass slaughter disturb you? Well get a grip. Granted, 500,000 animals is a lot of animals (if they were all three feet long and you lined them up nose-to-tail, they’d form a line 284 miles long) but before you get your PETA panties in a bunch, ponder the fact that in the US, we slaughter more cows than that every week of the year. In fact, about 90,000 cows or calves per day. Of course, we sacrifice ours to greed, gluttony, and capitalism, so our results seem to be a little more tangible than theirs. But in my opinion, these numbers make this year’s sudden international outrage seem a little silly. C’mon PETA, sort your priorities. I mean, just because Buddha Boy was a no-show, doesn’t mean you have to pick up all the slack. If you’d like to learn more about the “Gadhimai Mela”, see this rather informative HimalMag piece, and if you just want to wallow in the gore of it all, see this France24 piece or this Himalayan Beacon piece. Read the rest of this entry »
You May Already Be A Wiener
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on July 21, 2009 by admin in Holidays
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009It’s National Hot Dog Month, but frankly, I think PETA’s winning the PR battle with their suggestion to put something different between your buns
 Lettuce pause for a moment to ponder PETA’s tofu tube steak suggestions |
Whenever someone asks me if there are any foods I don’t eat, I always forget to mention hot dogs, because, er, frankly, I don’t think of them as food. Although I’ll eat one once in awhile, I put them in the same category as Twinkies or a McMeal Deal: a thing I will chew and taste and swallow if there’s no actual organic matter around. But ignore my foodie pretensions. This is America, and it’s National Hot Dog Month, for cryin’ out loud. So grab a white bread bun, some French’s mustard, and stick a wiener in your mouth. To make sure you’re doing it up right, download a copy of the 2009 Hot Dog Month Planning Guide (6.1MB PDF), and to satisfy your appetite for tube steak knowledge, grab a copy of Frank Facts About Hot Dogs while you’re at it. They use appetizing phrases like “meat trimmings”, “stainless steel choppers blend the meat”, and “processed intestines” to further seduce you. And did you know that Americans will eat about 2 billion hot dogs this month? If we did our math correctly, those hot dogs laid end-to-end would reach 189,393 miles, which is about 4/5 of the way to the moon. So, while July 22 is National Hot Dog Day, I think the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council needs to hire a new PR firm. Although they had enough savvy to create a Facebook Fan Page and a YouTube channel PETA already seems to have stolen their thunder by protesting on Capitol Hill July 16. And since we’ve given so much time to wieners and dogs today, let’s give equal time to breasts and monkeys with the Breasts Not Animal Tests game. I scored 33,375 points, but the breasts just came too fast at the end. Got any interesting hot dog or sausage links to share?
Best & Worst Green Celebrities
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on May 5, 2009 by admin in Clean & Green, Popular Media
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009Aside from the Jolly Green Giant, which celebrities are really living green?
 Honourable Mention |
A friend of mine told me the other day about how U2 guitarist The Edge is putting celebrity residents of Malibu, CA in a tizzy by building five mansions on a local mountaintop for an estimated $15 million. Although The Edge claims the building project is taking a completely green approach, locals point out that this is irrelevant, as it will create a “permanently scarred mountainside” (I’m giving the “Best Headline of 2009 Award” to the Irish Tribune News for “Richest nimbys in US row with Edge over plans“). So this got me wondering: aside from the Jolly Green Giant and a few hot Sci-Fi chicks, which celebrities are really living green? Well, PETA has once again picked the sexiest vegetarians alive, Natalie Portman has a line of eco-friendly footwear, and a lot of celebs drive green cars. Let’s face it, it’s kind of a given that a celebity’s publicist will make sure that there a lots of green photo ops, like George Clooney posing with his Tango, but how green can you really be if you have to take jets, limos, and security teams with you everywhere you go? The Chicago Tribune has a slide show of not green celebrities, where we learn that Celine Dion, for instance, uses 18,000 gallons of water a day for a home she doesn’t live in, and Treehugger.com informs us that when Woody Harrelson forgets to pack his favorite vegan belt and shoes, he has them flown by jet to Cannes. Our pick for best green celebrity? Green Day’s partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council. You’ve gotta be a little punk to really be green.
Purrfectly Good Reasons To Miss Your Monday Meatings
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on May 4, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, May 4th, 2009Our usual Monday morning Flash game distractions, with an especially daunting challenge for our American readers: GEOGRAPHY.
Our Monday Demotivators have previously explored the mystery of why there are so many Flash games in which you do mean things to helpless animals, but you seem to enjoy this stuff so much we’re back with more. First up: Meowcenaries. Like so many of these games, it takes so long to load you’ll be ready to kill by the time it’s ready to play. This game is a little different, by the way, in that the violence is all cat-on-cat. If you’re looking for completely pointless human-inflicted cruelty, you’ll have to go shoot a puppy or something. Don’t get the wrong impression here though, I personally love animals. That’s why this week we’ll give equal time to PETA’s Cooking Mama Kills Animals game, designed to protest Nintendo’s Cooking Mama