Anyway, good luck on trying to tell kids not to do anything else that might be considered a bad habit or even impure, especially masturbation. John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of corn flakes, was so obsessed with such things that he took a note from Rev. Sylvester Graham, the inventor of the graham cracker. Bland foods supposedly prevent self-stimulation. I’m sure that’s not the image that Kellogg’s would want to portray.

Now, I know Graham’s stated purpose for the graham cracker was to curb masturbatory tendencies, but maybe graham crackers could have been used to keep Phelps off the bong. I’d pretty sure that Michael Phelps would probably want to eat one (or many more) boxes of graham crackers or corn flakes after smoking out. Maybe instead of letting him loose as a Wheaties shill, they should have made him eat a few bowls. Bowls of cereal, that is, not anything to do with Mary Jane. Heck, I’d bet that if they kept him on, Wheaties’ sales would go through the roof, making it the new stoner snack of choice. Move over, Baked Cheetos.

It’s times like this that I’m glad my preferred cereal is Original Fiber One by General Mills. Not only does each 60 calorie, 1/2 cup serving give you 57% of your daily fiber requirements, it still allows you to masturbate and enjoy a jay afterwards. Well, it doesn’t explicitly state that on the box, but I’m almost sure that’s the case. And better yet, a diet high in fiber may prevent ass cancer. So have an entire cup of Fiber One and give your health 114%. Avoiding ass cancer –I’d take that over a gold medal any day.

I learned shortly after beginning formal marketing studies that there’s more to marketing than promotions. It’s important to understand your company, customers, competitors and distribution channels (the 4 Cs). Only then can you concentrate on the 4 Ps of the product, pricing, place and (then and only then) promotion. I keep finding that there are extensions to this marketing mix. Services marketing adds three additional pieces (people, process and physical evidence), while Web 2.0 marketing adds four more (personalization, participation, peer-to-peer and predictive modeling). Anyway, the point of the matter is that there is more to marketing than quirky commercials and slick ads. My interest in commercials is how well they fit into the overall scheme of an entire marketing plan.

That’s not to say that I wasn’t interested in watching this year’s Superbowl commercials at all. It’s just that I was much more interested in the game itself. A few of the commercials this year stood out. Probably the most noteworthy one in my mind was the Doritos commercial that involved the guy and the snowglobe that he said was a fortune-telling crystal ball:

It was really quirky, and the Doritos people usually come up with something good every year.

I also thought that it was an important statement that some of the commercials capitalized on the current state of the economy. The ones I remembered included Hyundai…

…and Cash4Gold…

It was also good seeing Ed McMahon back in the pitch business after his recent bout of medical and money problems.

I also had the opportunity to get stoked for a couple of the upcoming movies. Particularly Angels & Demons…

…and the movie remake of The Land of the Lost…

Normally I don’t go for remakes, but I go for almost anything with Will Ferrell in it.

I’m sure there were some other good ones, but those are the ones that I particularly remembered. Correction, those are the ones that I remembered that I viewed favorably. I also remembered my disappointment in this year’s GoDaddy commercials. I’m a staunch GoDaddy loyalist, so I would be one of the ones to turn in just to see their commercials. I’m sure that part of it is due to the desire to push the limits butting heads with standards and practices. Kind of like the punchline to the standards and practices discussion in the Gee Whiz episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force — standards and practices ensures that a really funny idea is turned into a totally lame or mediocre end-product. But GoDaddy’s come out with a few good ones that are on their website (and a few that didn’t make it).

For the rest of the best Superbowl commercials, you can check out YouTube (or any number of sites whose commentators are blathering on-and-on about silly commercials).

And for those who weren’t able to keep us, here’s the transcript:

MATT MILLEN WAS PRESIDENT OF THE LIONS FOR THE WORST 8 YEAR RUN IN THE HISTORY OF THE NFL ♦ KNOWING HIS HISTORY WITH THE TEAM, IS THERE A CREDIBILITY ISSUE AS HE NOW SERVES AS AN ANALYST FOR NBC SPORTS? ♦ WILL DETROIT FANS EVER FORGIVE HIM FOR TURNING THE LIONS INTO THE WORST TEAM IN FOOTBALL?

WDIV also promised additional fan commentary on their regular news coverage. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, but Detroit Lions fans are the most loyal of any sports fans in the world. You jerk them around, they will never forgive you. This was apparently bad news for Matt Millen. It was especially bad since the lambasting came at the hands of a large media corporation. Dare I say that the days of the Ford family’s ownership of the Lions might be in jeopardy? As a fan who believes that the ownership needs to change before success can be achieved, I certainly hope so.

H/T: Pride of Detroit

Since I’m vastly more interested in politics and business than football, it’s entertaining to see the lambasting of the Lions cross-over into those genres. In the opening days of the President Obama administration, it was announced that Obama signed an executive order to disband the Lions. Another commentator used the Lions to describe how the Government Accountability Office describes “high risk” federal programs.

But being a Lions fan is a unique experience in the sports world. The start of every season, no matter how bad the previous season was, is filled with hope that we’ll make a big turnaround and get to the big game. And we have the joy of being really pissed off at our ownership team management, knowing there’s no chance that totally new people with new ideas will be brought in. The conspiracy-oriented side of me thinks that Ford declined to take bailout money in order to keep from getting rid of the Lions.

I’m not going to get into the specifics of draft picks or personnel beyond what I mentioned already. As I said, I don’t like football, but on the bright side, I’ll have something to watch Lions-wise next season since a single win (or even a tie) would be an improvement. I mean, they couldn’t go winless again next season too. Could they?

Today’s portion of our health quest started at 6:30 am at the Lifetime Family Fitness in Cary, North Carolina. We met with one of the trainers there. Hope learned new ways to flatten her abs, while I concentrated primarily on nutrition and getting better control of my metabolism. I walked away with a sample meal plan that went between 500 to 1,000 calories higher than what I typically consume in a day, so I’m a bit skeptical, but willing to give it a try. However, I did get some good insight into my regular diet’s lack of protein.

So I was a good boy diet-wise and exercise-wise today. I rounded it all out by downloading some new workout music. Now-a-days I’m spending a large part of my day listening to hardcore militant rap — the kind of stuff you can hear on my new favorite podcast, the Ghosts of the Republic anti-NWO weekly podcast. It’s definitely the perfect soundtrack to get ready for war and a year of solid, vigorous workouts.

Over the recent months, I’ve been hearing a great deal about a scandal rocking the football world termed “spygate“. For those who follow football even less than I do, this scandal involved some individuals associated with the New England Patriots football franchise taping opposing teams in order to steal defensive signals. That kind of puts a tarnish on claims of being undefeated or of creating a dynasty or doing anything deemed honorable, you know — worthy of being called a patriot. To make matters worse, this scandal has drawn the attention of U.S. Senators such as Arlen Specter. Yeah, they’re doing so well with the war that they could spare some extra effort on cleaning up the world of professional athletics.

But it goes beyond even that. The term “patriot” was tarnished since it’s original use in another unscrupulous spy program, the USA PATRIOT Act. Technically, the word may have been tarnished long before that as detailed in my classic post from June 23rd, 2006, “Blacks are Terrorists“. What do Spygate and the PATRIOT Act have in common? Two things — raising something unamerican to the status of a virtue and calling it being a “patriot” and being things the government should leave alone because they will screw it up.