Counterproductive ads

Every day I hear ads on the radio that make me change the station. It makes me laugh when I think about how a company paid the radio station some money to repeatedly air an ad, which is so abnoxious to me that the company, the radio station, and all of the station's other advertisers lose a listener (and I would assume many others) every time the ad airs.

So, by playing these ads, not only will I never buy anything from the company, but I'm either switching to competing radio stations (until they play this type of ad), or listen to a CD. Now, the competing radio stations are probably not really competitors, since Clear Channel probably owns all of them, but when I listen to a CD it certainly doesn't help any of these companies.

Ads that grate on my nerves and make me want to go postal:
Shaw's Jewelers - painfully annoying singing, same singer and basically the same song for *at least* 7 years now, and I've been switching the station every single time I hear the first note for all of those years. When I have to buy jewelry someday, I will go anywhere except for this place, because they've been trying to torture me for so long.

Adelphia high-speed internet - abnoxious, infectious music.. some kind of wind instrument is the prominent and annoying sound. All it takes is one note from that instrument to make me switch the station. What's worse is that they're trying to torture me, but their service is something that's confined to particular geographic areas, which do not include my house. So I couldn't use their service even if I didn't hate them for their annoying ads.

Those are the two that have been pissing me off the most in the past week, since I started thinking about the phenomenon they cause (me changing station) and the repercussions that causes for the stations and their other advertisers. Of course there are always annoying ads everywhere, but certain ones just really get to me.

Safeway and Wind Energy

As I was getting gas last night at the new Safeway Fuel gas station in Bristow, VA, I noticed a sign posted saying that Safeway Fuel stations run on 100% Wind-generated electricity. How odd, I thought, for a petroleum dispenser to run off natural energy sources. Sounds good in theory, though. Seems like it's a good idea to use renewable, natural energy sources whenever possible, so I went ahead and checked out the website that was posted on the sign.

I wondered how they could get electricity from a different place than every other home, business, etc. around. It's not like there are any huge windmills in the vicinity, and it wouldn't be feasible to run a direct electric line from wherever they DO have huge windmills to this little gas station. According to the Safeway Green Power FAQ, they pay for the wind energy facilities to deliver an amount of electricity to the electricity grid (the power delivery grid that everyone is connected to), equal to the amount of electricity used by all of the Safeway Fuel stations, corporate offices, and San Francisco Stores.

I hope others will follow their lead, unless there's some negative aspect of this that their information website is neglecting to mention. I didn't find anything negative with a quick google search, though. For now, I'm just happy that they built a gas station closer to my house, which often has the cheapest gas around (especially with a 3 cents/gallon discount with your Safeway card, or a 6 cents/gallon discount with a prior grocery purchase of $50 or more). Not bad.

Republican National Committee census

My wife just got a "Republican Party Census Document" in the mail last week, and I thought something in it was kind of funny. It's a survey, supposedly getting opinions from registered Republicans on all sorts of issues. At the end, though, it says:

Will you join the RNC by making a contribution today?
( ) Yes, I support the RNC and am elcosing my most generous contribution of:
[ ( ) $500 ( ) $250 ( ) $100** ( ) $50 ( ) $25 ( ) Other $____ ]

** A gift in this amount pays to mail 250 more CENSUS DOCUMENTS to registered Republicans.
[...]
( ) Yes, I support the RNC, but am unable to participate at this time. However, I have enclosed $11 to cover the cost of tabulating my survey.

If they're spending $11 to process ~18 simple multiple choice questions (fill in bubbles.. Yes, No, or Undecided), they've got a lot more problems than I can help them with even with a $500 donation. They need to learn to spend their money more wisely, and if I sent them any money, it would only be encouraging them to continue their current unwise spending. No thanks, I think I'll help them out by doing my part to teach them to be more thrifty.

Of course, this may have just been a thinly veiled attempt to solicit contributions, with the survey not really gathering anything particularly enlightening. I did a quick google search to see if I could avoid typing that excerpt from the survey form above, but instead I found some other people's rants about these "census" forms from previous years. It was entertaining to read these:

The T. Rex Essay - The Official GOP CENSUS DOCUMENT

Entia Multiplicanda

Apparently they used to include a 3rd option in the section about making contributions:

( ) No, I favor electing liberal Democrats over the next ten years.

Can you imagine how many of those responses they must have gotten? Multiply that by their $11 processing costs, and it's easy to see why they no longer include that option.

Oh, and this last one is my favorite:

My Nefarious Strategy Keeps Sucking The Republicans Dry! Dry, I Tell Ya! OK, Thirsty, Maybe.

This last one actually went on to describe how sending a small donation to the RNC would actually cause them to LOSE much more than you sent them, because of the additional costs they'd incur by bombarding you with lots of additional Republican propaganda. I love the sheer spitefulness of it!