A new kind of predator ad?

The other day I talked about a special breed of advertising predator: the zombie. An ad so ancient you assume it‘s essentially lifeless, only to discover that it can still crawl inside your skull and take control of your brain.

Now I’m wondering what to make of this ad on the cover of my son’s manga magazine. (Technically it’s on the back cover, as manga is read back to front. But since he leaves it lying around the house in classic Western fashion, I see the ad much more than I see the cover.)

As you can see from the photo, this skater dude’s stomach has hijacked his brain, literally sprouting a big hairy arm to stuff a hot dog in his mouth. The message: “Hunger gets what hunger wants.” But what I don’t get is why the hot dog company’s logo, Ball Park brand franks, is such an afterthought on the page. I saw this ad dozens of times before I realized which brand of hot dog was being pushed. So is it just a poorly designed ad? Or is there some hidden component here that makes this a special breed of predator? I’m going to see if I can track down the authors of “Ad Nauseum” to see what they’ve got to say.

Weight Watchers cost-analysis update

After dropping 12 pounds in my first three weeks, I was down only .4 of a pound at last night’s weigh-in. (That’s what I get for having a second slice of pizza Sunday night at Grandma Linda’s). So I’m at just under $50 paid in, and still less than 13 pounds taken off. If it were just me, this might be the point where I say, see ya later, folks, I’m doing this on my own. (Though I could still make the argument that losing 12 pounds feels pretty good, maybe even $50 worth of good.)

The thing is, though, I agreed to do this with my mom, to help support her, and while this was my stalling-out week, it was her breakthrough week. After three weeks of negligible weight loss, she finally lost four pounds in a single week. And she’s so excited she’s planning to find a Weight Watchers meeting to go to while she’s in Florida the next couple of weeks.

She really wants me to keep doing this with her, and I guess I will. For now.

The Four Shirts and a Skirt Menu Planning System

Recently I ran into an old acquaintance at a library book sale, a scandalous housewife from a well-thumbed Judy Blume novel I got introduced to back in the 1980s.

She hadn’t changed a bit. But I could tell I‘d aged, because as she rehashed the monotony of her existence, harping about chicken on Wednesdays and something else grownups like a lot on Saturdays, I kept thinking, what’s wrong with a little structure in your life?

If that renegade housewife had wanted to spice up her kitchen repertoire, it might have helped if she thought of that chicken as a skirt in her wardrobe, to be matched up with four or five distinctive and alluring tops to create a different “look” for every Wednesday of the month. But why stop there? Google “chicken recipe” and you’ll find enough variations for a different chicken entree every Wednesday for the next five years.

We don’t eat much meat at our house, so rather than build our menu “wardrobe” around animal-flesh building blocks, we use themes. Mondays, for instance, are “breakfast night,” which can mean anything from a simple baked omelet or homemade waffles to a family favorite, Dr. Seuss-style green eggs and ham. (The green tint comes from chopped spinach or broccoli.)

We also have soup and homemade bread night, stir-fry night, casserole night, pizza night and pasta night. (We also do a meat-and-potatoes meal, except the “meat” is usually vegetarian, whether it’s store-bought Boca chicken patties or homemade TVP veggie burgers or meatloaf.)

Gently used valentines

It’s my belief that you can’t really cut the frugal life if you don’t plan ahead, and so I figured I was gonna get skunked on valentine’s gifts for the kids this year because I hadn’t really given it any thought until yesterday afternoon. Basically any themed present bought the day before a holiday is going to be at peak price. As I was gloomily pondering this conundrum, I suddenly thought of a gift Grandma Linda often gives -- red or pink shirts. Of course, hers usually come from The Children’s Place or Dick’s Sporting Goods or some other high-profile store. I decided to go see what I could find at Goodwill.

Sure enough, I found something for everybody, including a really nice pink-and-gray Columbia winter coat with a removable liner for whichever of the girls most needs it or it fits best. Total cost, for winter coat plus eight shirts (I bought two or three extra ones): $21. Now I need to go throw them in the washer so they‘re all comfy and ready to wear.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody!

Potato-orange experiment update

Nothing is happening with either bowl. Both potatoes, one paired with an orange and one with a grapefruit, look completely healthy. At this point, I‘m thinking that it wasn‘t the grapefruit that slimed my last bag of potatoes. But I‘ll go ahead and continue the experiment a few more days, just to make sure.

A reprieve? Or just a slower, more agonizing exit?

Turns out I’m not getting laid off. But my hours are getting severely “downsized.” I’m still sorting through my feelings on that, but one thing is clear: This marks the end of my all-expense-paid* weekly trip to the discount bread store. I’ll only be working on Saturdays now, and the bread store near the office is closed that day.

*By all-expense-paid, I mean that the gas to drive to the bread store was already covered by my commute to work. Because the bread there is so cheap, driving even a few blocks extra to get there would quickly eliminate any savings by the extra cost in gas.

Zombie ads

In their book “Ad Nauseum,“ Carrie McLaren, Jason Torchinsky and Rob Walker refer to advertisements as predators. In our experience, they can also turn into zombies, rising up from the grave to try to crawl into your skull via your eyeballs. (Or in some cases, your ears). Take this improbable but true story from our family archives:

Three or four years ago Bob brought home a library DVD of 1950s “Superman” episodes that happened to include a commercial in which Superman plugged the corn flakes made by the show’s sponsor, Kellogg’s. Now, this is a commercial that was made more than half a century ago. The man wearing the Superman suit in the commercial, George Reeves, has been dead since 1959. Nonetheless, the ad still managed to hypnotize three of our kids, because when movie time was over they dutifully filed out to the kitchen to pour themselves -- you guessed it -- heaping bowls of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.

What makes it even weirder is that this wasn’t a cereal in our regular rotation. Bob picked up a box on a whim a few days before because it happened to be on sale. When he first brought it home, the kids rolled their eyes. Nobody even bothered to open the box -- not until they saw the zombie commercial, that is.