Tim's journal

Before I post anything suggesting that an advertisement might be funny or interesting, this quotation is prophylactically required:

"An ad that pretends to be art is -- at absolute best -- like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair."

--David Foster Wallace

With that said, this article about a new ad campaign for feminine protection products (or, paraphrasing a Bloom County cartoon, powderpuff-pink machine guns) is hella funny:

Another spot, which will make its debut next month, opens with a woman strolling confidently toward the camera. “I’m a believably attractive 18- to 24-year-old female,” she says. “You can relate to me because I’m racially ambiguous. Market research shows that girls like you love girls like me.”

"A woman engineer is like a pearl in the shell. Treat her carefully, and she will blossom." -- from a reader survey on "what would you tell employers about women engineers?" in a copy of _Woman Engineer_ magazine that was lying around the CS department (no, I'm not making up that magazine title, either).

I guess by the same token, a male engineer is like a quartz crystal, or possibly like a cactus plant?