I have another post I’ll finish when I’ve gotten a few more hours of sleep.

Until then, here is the coolest video I’ve ever seen.

It’s official: I have to go purchase an SUV, a prison jump suit, a video camera and 30 riled-up teenagers.




This doesn’t have anything to do with the final score of the Broncos week 1 game. I just thought that I would point it out.

Today I worked at a local middle school. The kids had to take standardized tests all day, so I just sat in a computer lab with them and recorded their scores. In some ways, days like this are awesome; The usual stresses of subbing aren’t there. None of the kids really try to screw with me and I don’t have to remember a subject that I haven’t even thought of in 10 years well enough to teach it. I just hang out in the computer lab while the students stare at the screen and click buttons.

In other ways, it really sucks. It’s really boring and time tends to drag. I’m never doing much, but I do have to be aware of kids who need to go to the bathroom, kids having computer problems, kids who are done with their tests, etc. The result is that I’m mostly standing around doing nothing, but there are enough things going on that I’m forced to stay engaged enough that I can’t really read a book or completely space out.

Because of this, I had eight hours to sit in a computer lab and think today.

And I came up with something alarming.

Let me start with a little back story.

A few weeks ago, I was watching television.

A commercial came on with a handful of women sitting by the pool in white swimsuits.

One of the women asked the others if they’d like to go swimming.

At this point in the ad, I thought I had it figured out. Whenever there’s an advertisement that features a group of women having fun and wearing white, you can always be positive of one thing: Somebody is menstruating. I didn’t think that this one was any different, and so I assumed that one of two things would happen:

A: The woman would decline the invitation, sheepishly admitting that it was a “Heavy flow day”. One of her friends would produce a brand of tampon that would allow her to swim in her white swimming suit, and girls day out would keep rolling without a hitch.
B: The woman would hop in the pool without so much as batting an eye. One of her friends would say something like “But I thought you told me that it was that ‘special time of the month’,” to which the woman being visited by Aunt Flow would reply “It is, but I’m using Hearty brand tampons! Hearty’s special space-age polymers can absorb up to seven gallons of liquid! Being a woman means that I can go with the flow – shouldn’t I be able to expect the same of my tampon?”
Then everyone laughs, the ad ends, and my show comes back on.

Back to the ad that I was watching: the woman politely declines the invitation to swim. So far, this is going about how I thought it would.

Then, I get thrown a curve ball.

“I can’t,” she says, “Lately, I’ve been kind of ‘irregular’”.

Irreguwhat?

Suddenly, the picture switches to Jaime Lee Curtis. She informs the audience that if they are feeling “irregular”, the solution may be Dannon’s Activia yogurt, which will help cure that bloated feeling caused by digestive tract irregularity.

The picture then switches back to the three women, who are now having a great time in the swimming pool in their white swimsuits.

At first, I didn’t think much of this ad. The “Girl’s are having fun until one of them has a problem with their body” is a tried and true formula. As I thought about it more, however, I started to get confused. According to the ad, Activia yogurt helps you make sure that your digestive system is more regular. Unless I’m missing something, if one is having trouble with digestive system irregularities, it has to do with pooping. Is there anything else that can mean? I don’t think there is.

I did another quick review of the facts.
- The woman in question refused to get into the pool because she was “irregular”
- Activia allegedly fixes that
- After eating some Activia, she was comfortable with getting into the pool.

Based on that information, the only conclusion that I was able to come up with was a little bit strange: The woman in the Activia ad was unwilling to go swimming because she was afraid that if she did, she might accidentally take a dump in the pool.

On one level, this isn’t strange at all; If I was afraid that if I got into a swimming pool I would crap in it (Which is a very real risk given my irrational fear of sharks), I would stay the fuck out of the pool too (and I do).

On another level, that level being that Dannon thought that this was a wise way to market their yogurt to people, this ad seems completely insane to me.

First of all, how often is this a problem? There are plenty of women out there, and there are also plenty of incontinent people, but how many people are both? How many women are simultaneously young and vital enough to go swimming, but also so completely out of control of their bodies that their is a very real risk of crapping in the pool if they do? Sure, this ad is in the exact same format as most tampon ads, but tampons are a product that just about every woman between puberty and before menopause uses. It seems like you’re limiting your customer base and wasting your money if you’re trying to hit the “incontinent swimmer” demographic. It’s like marketing a product to paraplegic ballroom dancers.

Second of all, let’s suppose that I’m wrong, and there IS a significant population of these poor, poor women that have a real problem with leaving it all in the pool, including some fresh baked brownies. Is this going to be an effective solution to their problem? I mean, if you’re at the point where getting in a swimming pool will probably cause you to fill up the back of your swimming suit, is that the kind of thing that you can fix with a couple of spoonfuls of yogurt? There have been some times in my life where I’ve really had to go. I mean, really had to go. Regardless of this fact, I can’t remember the last time that I crapped my pants. I’m fairly certain that I was under ten years old, probably under 6. Every time since then, no matter how badly I have had to go, I have always managed to find a place to go before my systems fail on me. I’m not saying that I don’t have compassion for incontinent people, or think that they’re just pussies. What I AM saying is that if you’re at the point where you realize that you have to dump and are physically unable to find the women’s restroom or even manage to get out of the pool before it happens, it seems highly unlikely to me that you’re looking at the kind of problem that can be solved with yogurt.

Third of all, suppose that I’m wrong again, and not only is there a gigantic untapped market of women who want to swim but can’t do it without pinching a few off in the pool and their problem CAN be solved with 6 low-fat ounces of delicious Activia brand yogurt. Assuming all of this is true, isn’t this STILL a stupid ad? Is this really the best way to sell your product to people? Pepto Bismal is a product that helps with upset stomach and diarrhea. Regardless of this, I’ve yet to see the ad where “Mean” Joe Green is about to take the field for the Pittsburgh Steelers, but is unable to because of his loose bowels, at least until Jamie Lee Curtis tosses him some Pepto Bismal. Pepto Bismal ads just feature people dancing around and reciting the things that the product cures, which is still a little bit weird, but not quite as uncomfortable for the viewer.

I came to all of these conclusions a few months ago. After thinking about all of this more than I probably should have, I wrote it off as a bad advertisement that was also unintentionally really funny. The idea of two women (or two anyone, for that matter) having a conversation that essentially boils down to

“Hey, want to go swimming?”
“No thanks, I might accidentally shit in the pool.”

Is the kind of scatological humor that I go crazy for.

Seriously. Can you imagine being on either side of that conversation with one of your friends?

What do you do if your friend says that to you? What if you were the one who was “irregular”? Wouldn’t you come up with some other excuse? I know I would.

Tell them that you just ate. Tell them that you can’t swim. Tell them that you hurt your back. Just don’t tell them that you’re probably going to end up duking in the pool if you go in there.

Which brings me back to today at school. I was sitting in the computer lab, and for reasons I am unclear on, I remembered this ad. I was chuckling about it, when suddenly, I was hit by something odd.

Activia STOPS bloating and irregularity.

If you’re bloated, doesn’t that mean that you’re having trouble crapping?

If you eat something that fixes that, doesn’t that mean that you’ll be crapping more?

If you take those two facts into account, it changes everything about that ad.

Think about this: The woman was feeling bloated and irregular. She ate some Activia, which makes it easier to poop. Then, she willingly hopped in the pool. When she was bloated, she wouldn’t go in, but once that was fixed, she was completely comfortable in the pool.

This changes everything, and it leads me to an alarming conclusion:

The woman in question wasn’t unwilling to get in the pool at first because she was afraid that she might take a dump in the pool.

She was unwilling to get in because she was afraid that she WOULDN’T be able to take a dump in the pool.

What kind of fucked up ad is this?

Then, I realized something else:

This is why I will never amount to anything. When I have time to think, I think about things like this, and then I spend an hour writing about it on the Internet.

The worst thing about all of this is that I can’t find the actual ad anywhere online. I can find references to it, but the actual ad is nowhere to be found. I feel like this seems too bizarre to write about without some proof that an ad this fucked up even exists.

The best I could come up with is a SNL skit parodying a different Activia ad. It’s not the kind of thing that would hold up in a court of law, but I hope it helps make me seem a little bit more credible.




One last thing: I stumbled on a youtube video of Bert and Ernie singing “Ante Up” by M.O.P.

Awesome.

From the streets, cousin. You know the drill. I’m nine hundred and ninety nine thou short of a mil.