Who could be so twisted as to tempt her wrath by breeding a giant tuna?!?!?!?! What villainy and mayhem! To spit upon the very face of Mother Nature by tampering with her most unholy of craftwork!
I've decided to become an actuary. As far as I know, every insurance employee is unbelievably cute. In case you're unlike me (hormonal, unemployed, glued to daytime TV), let me give you a rundown of adorable insurance peddlers:
Progressive Flo
Yes, they actually named her "Progressive Flo", I suppose to symbolize that their insurance company is at the bleeding-edge of progress.
She's textbook crazy putty. You know you should keep her distance, because she'd be a high-maintenance disaster, but you're drawn to her like flies to a bug zapper. The more you think about her, the more she keeps flirting with the Vicky Mendoza diagonal on Barney Stinson's crazy-hot graph.
I don't know the first thing about insurance, and I'd never found it interesting before. And yet I know I could sit for hours and let her bubble on endlessly about how I need to buy mortage-backed securities or whatever. And I'm not the only person to theorize about this:
Is it her fabulous comic timing, her over-the-top facial expressions, her cute-as-a-button retro flip? Or is it the slight hint of a bad girl that lies just under the surface? The promise of a tattoo under that checkout girl uniform? The possibility of a motorcycle parked out back? -- Jennifer Mathieu
Even though Progressive doesn’t actually have any “Apple store” style retail outlets, they created one for this lady to work in, just to target the everyman’s “Starbucks Girl” fantasy. You know the one: the girl who you see every day, who—for sixty precious seconds—is concerned only with whatever it is you want, and how she can help you get it. The full-service female who you see every day but don’t really know; making it a guilt-free process to project all of your sexual desires unto her, believing that she’s as eager to please in bed as she is with a price-gun in her hand. -- Ruchador
Erin Esurance
At some point, animators figured out that a few well-sketched lines could drive guys into a frenzy no real woman could achieve. My hunch is that some lonely male animator decided that if he was going to get carpal tunnel syndrome anyway, he may as well get it by bringing his idealized fantasy woman into existence. Then fan art, like above, took over.
But there's more to Erin Esurance than her stunning body and plush lips. She happens to be the perfect incarnation of what a dude hopes a hip, modern feminist will be. She spends her days as a highly capable, butt-kicking, robot-fighting, snowboarding, gun-slinging, fast-driving secret agent, which has something to do with insurance for some reason. And yet every time the thoroughly useless, dim-witted, 6'2" lump of male mediocrity walks into frame, she casts him a flirty glance that says she's ready for fun. Why him, Erin? You can do so much better! This mimbo gets flustered tying his own shoes. And yet that's the beauty of the ad campaign... it gives hope to us useless mimbos that maybe, one day, we can score our own cartoon renaissance woman.
The Geico Gecko
OK, am I the only one who thinks Erin Esurance should get together with the Geico Gecko? Just like the Esurance guy, the gecko is totally useless and boring, so we know he's her type. Plus, he's kind of adorable, cleans up well, and OH MY, that ACCENT!
And unlike Erin, the Gecko actually enjoys talking about the various facets of insurance, and we all know that opposites attract. The Gecko plus Erin. With Flo watching.
If only there was an online utility that settled the timeless MFK question. Aha!
Oh, I would definitely marry progressive because Progressive education, which emphasizes a "hands-on" approach to learning
Oh, I would definitely fuck geico because A dominant figure in GEICO’s history is David Lloyd Kreeger , who became president of the company in 1964 and helped to steer it into a major insurance enterprise
Oh, I would definitely kill esurance because Esurance was founded in 1998 under the name of SiliconSierra Holdings Inc
The other week I was grabbing a tasty sub at City Sub. I was browsing their wall of business cards. For those who lack context, a wall of business cards is essentially the offline equivalent of Twitter.
This one caught my eye:
Although these ichythyologists did list their contact information in a public forum, I've nonetheless opted to censor it out of respect
I can brainstorm a number of valid business reasons in which their tuna-related services could come in handy:
You need to pen a sensitive memo, but have ran out of paper. The nearest Staples is too far away. The only vendors nearby are the fishers at the wharf hocking their latest catch. You opt to write on tuna, but need expert help to do so.
A co-worker has penned a sensitive memo on the scales of a fresh catch of albacore. You must dispose of said memo, but fear it could cause your paper shredder to smell. You need a lover of tuna to dispose of the evidence.
Bwa ha ha ha ha! The smoke has cleared, and the getaway car is already out of sight. You thought us lefties were too incompetent to pull off a heist of this magnitude, but who's laughing now?!?
Very well, now that the check has already cleared, I'll go ahead and divulge our diabolical scheme.
We first got the idea when we saw the Republicans do it. A trillion dollar "stimulus," laundered by the largest financial institutions and currently being disbursed in the form of record bonuses. We asked ourselves, why is it only Republicans can pull off this sort of caper?
So what did we lefties do? We concocted a meticulously detailed plan. The plan was to simply copy exactly what the Republicans did, but launder it through noble causes instead of giveaways to the rich.
Think about it, we couldn't have just asked for money to build a long overdue state-of-the-art mass transit network, or providing funding to education. No, no, no... even with a supermajority in the Senate, and we'd still just vote against ourselves because we're Democrats. No... we needed a way to rub Republicans noses in it the entire time. So we just did exactly what they did and cloak it under the voodoo guise of "protecting the economy."
Now comes the delicious part. People are starting to catch on to the fact that the stimulus had absolutely nothing to do with helping the economy... especially since the economy's already recovering and barely any of it has been spent. And yet we'll keep spending it right in front of your faces for the next four years. The trigger's already been pulled, suckers. It's too big to stop now.
And that's the diabolical genius of it. We took four years worth of ambitions... Medicare, scientific research, energy investments, etc., and knocked it out in the first couple of months. And the more you squirm and complain about it, the more you realize we just used your own trick against you. Meanwhile, us lefties get to toast ourselves, watch our country get progressively better AND get the satisfaction of driving Republicans crazy in the process. The perfect crime.
And for our next trick... well, you'll just have to wait and see. Bwa ha ha ha ha.
I'm getting such a kick out of the expansion of Google Maps Street View. In order to earn their fancy lunches, some poor Google employees at the bottom of the totem pole are forced to drive around some of the worst neighborhoods in America in a dorky camera car.
Myron! We need more pictures of Compton. I don't care how late it is... hop into the poorly shielded sedan and get us some pictures. Careful, it drives real slow because it's weighed down by valuable and easily pawnable equipment. Remember it's against company policy to carry a gun.
Thanks to the needless bravery of these terrified Ivy-Leaguers, 2log can present a street view tour of the worst neighborhoods in the USA.
The Google van refused to go any further into this Tulsa street, which contains one of the city's highest concentration of meth labs (for which there was unfortunately lots of competition):
The so-called "Iron Triangle" in Richmond is one of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the world, such that the city council appealed to the Californian government to declare a state of emergency. Over the past 50 days, the five block radius of the "community center" below has seen six drug charges, four counts of battery, four counts of assault, four acts of vandalism, a weapons charge, and an arson.
Of course, this is the "nice" part of Richmond compared with the more unincorporated North Richmond, where the Richmond police department has no jurisdiction.
Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota has been the poorest area in America for the past 30 years. Unemployment was at 73% before the recession, and life expectancy for men is only 48. Main problems include domestic violence, alcoholism, and a diabetes epidemic.
Of course, there's plenty more impoverished regions in America but Google Street View dared not to enter neighborhoods like Birmingham Alabama, Gary Indiana, or Wasilla Alaska.
Have... ya met Chris? He's needed to take a break from professin' Comparative Literature at Pratt, advocating a return to radical socialism, and cleaning up poo from his puggle, so he bounced to the Mediterranean.
Chris has kindly volunteered to be 2log's foreign correspondent and post updates on the trip for us from countries we know nothing about, like Morocco and Spain. Like... did you know Pau Gasol is Spanish? What a country!
So watch out! He may try to pull some crap like converting his 2log points to Euros.
