Did you know that what they used to call “marital relations” is entirely dependent on the quality of what’s in your cup? No, really. Check out this “educational film” from the Folgers company:

So, let’s review: hubby is so disgusted by his morning ration of battery acid that he’s apparently decided he never wants to have sex again, at least not with his wife. (There is that veiled threat about the girls at the office and their “hot plates,” the implication obviously being that he’s ready to throw the missus over for somebody who really knows how to brew some good joe.) Fortunately, she’s not the sort to throw crockery at the jerk and move back in with her mother; instead, she wisely identifies the source of her husband’s discontent and takes steps to remediate the problem. And sure enough, by nighttime he’s all hepped up on go-juice and ready to rock her world.

Which of these two is the more foolish, the shallow man who is obviously on a caffeine-fueled emotional rollercoaster, or his doormat of a wife who’ll do anything — even turn to convenient, cheap, processed, better-living-through-modern-chemistry food substitutes — just to avoid revealing that she flunked her Home Ec class three times in a row?

Did these quaintly ridiculous ad campaigns really work back in the day? Do they even still make Folgers Crystals, and is anyone dumb enough to use them? And what would happen to this guy if he someone served him some freshly ground French-press coffee, i.e., real coffee? Based on the evidence presented here, I imagine the sexual release would probably kill everyone within five feet of the sap…

Psst… heard about that “Cart Whisperer” video that everybody’s been talking about over on YouTube? How about the corresponding web site, NoMoreAbandonedCarts.com?

Go have a look and see what my overlords have been up to lately…

The Internet amazes me. Here we have a technology that is as revolutionary a means of storing and disseminating information as anything we’ve come up with in a couple of centuries, and what do we mostly use it for? Preserving the media detritus of our childhoods in the 1970s and ’80s. Case in point: I mentioned pirates in the previous entry, which started me thinking about other pirate-y things I have loved in the past, which called up a dusty old file somewhere in the adolescent stratum of my personal wetware memory bank (that’d be my brain, kids). I did a bit of searching on Ye Olde YouTube, and behold, a Budweiser commercial that I saw at some point in high school and which has remained lodged in my head ever since:

As best I can recall, this ad only ran during Friday Night Videos and other late-night programs, and I don’t remember that it ran for very long… a few weeks maybe. I’ve thought about it from time to time over the years, and tried to describe it to friends who have invariably responded with blank looks. But now, thanks to this wondrous, science-fiction thing we call the Internet, I can finally shout to the heavens, “You see? It did exist! I’m not mad! I’m not!”

Seriously, though, isn’t that a weird commercial? I don’t know about you guys, but it doesn’t make me want to go for a Budweiser… maybe go plunder some booty or something, but not drink beer.

Uber-cool B-movie star Bruce Campbell has done another Old Spice ad in the viral-video medium, and this one is even funnier than the first one:

From today’s exciting chapter of Adventures in Proofreading, a question: do you think we can successfully guess the favorite movie of the copywriter who describes a particular product as “…one management console to bind all solutions?”

And do you suppose this console ever sends out messages that say, in a dark and creepy voice, “I seeeeee youuuuu….”?

It’s Friday morning… congratulations on making it through another week! If you’re like me, you’re probably sitting at your desk sipping a nice beverage and wondering how you’re going to pass the rest of the day until the weekend begins. I know! You could watch some amusing videos on the Internet! Yes, that’s the ticket… but before you click off to YouTube for the same old/same old, why don’t you try something new? Something fresh? Something that you, a fellow office-bound information worker, can really relate to…I’m talking about a new web site that just launched yesterday, TheCubeFarm.com, which features funny video clips set in the modern corporate environment.

Full disclosure: this site was created by the company I work for. Yes, it’s a marketing thing, but the sales pitch is pretty subtle and the videos are reasonably funny. No, I didn’t work on this project myself, but if you watch carefully, you’ll a glimpse of the room where I spend my days, the Proofreaders’ Cave, which, as observant readers of this blog know, is located high atop one of the glorious metropolitan skyscrapers in fabulous downtown Salt Lake City. We’re pretty proud of The Cube Farm around here, and are hoping for some good word of mouth on it, so tell your friends if you like what you see.

One mild warning, however: several of these clips would probably qualify for a PG-13 rating. What can I say? We’ve got a lot of young guys working for my company…