Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: eytanz on December 09, 2010, 11:27:54 PM
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EP270: Advertising at the End of the World (http://escapepod.org/2010/12/09/ep270-advertising-at-the-end-of-the-world/)
By Keffy R. M. Kehrli (http://www.keffy.com/)
Read by Dani Cutler of the Truth Seekers Podcast (http://audioaddict.libsyn.com/)
First appeared in Apex Online (http://www.apexbookcompany.com/apex-online/)
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Five years after her husband died, two years after she moved to a cabin in Montana, and six months after the world ended, Marie opened her curtains to discover her front garden overrun with roving, stumbling advertisements. Marie hadn’t seen one since she’d sold her condo and moved out to her isolated cabin. She shuddered.
There were at least twenty of the ads, and for all it seemed they were doing their damndest to step lightly, her red and yellow tulips were completely trampled. Marie had stubbornly continued to cultivate those flowers despite the certainty that she ought to be using the gardening space, and the captured rainwater, to grow food. Not that it mattered what she’d been growing there. It was all mud now.
The ad nearest her window looked quite a bit like a tall, lanky teenager. It moved like one as well, and might have fooled her except that its forehead was stuck in price scrolling mode. Faintly glowing red letters crawled across its forehead from right to left.
TOILET PAPER…2 FOR 1 SALE…RECYCLED….
Rated PG For language and adult topics of spousal death and demanding advertising.
Show Notes:
- Feedback for Episode 262: Cruciger
- Apologies to narrator Dani Cutler, whom I didn’t credit in the introduction. Shows what happens when I try to get ahead of the workload…
- There will be no epub this week; this was purchased before we started purchasing epub rights.
- Next week… The old west, and some dangerous happenings.
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/270_EP270__Advertising_at_the_End_of_the_World.mp3)
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;D I have now caught up to listening to over 5 years of Escape Pod episodes within the last 6 months! It has been a great time! Thank you, Escape Pod! This story is akin to a couple of other episodes where I could see all of these advertising methods being put to use in the not-so-far future. It is a little scary to think that with the speed at which technology travels, these advertisements might become realities within our lifetime. The reading was kind of "detached" for me, but at least it was clear and concise. Maybe I've just become a "pod-snob" after listening to all the other episodes, but I still think Escape Pod is the best!
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Loved the story.
However, I thought the person reading, sounded rush and as if she were just getting over a cold.
I, unlike the person above me, have not caught up as yet. I did do the math on how long it will take and I hope to do it in the same amount of time as they did.
Your stories are the best company and not as impolite as music can be. Getting so stuck, shouting at me with same small reframe repeating itself.
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The story kind of reminded me of the streak of stories on advertising on Escape Pod, including Smidgen, the Snack Cake. This one was a little less cynical in tone than the others and I found myself kind of getting scared by the notion that ads could go *that* far to take on the mannerisms of the dead people you know. That aspect was scarier than Smidgen the snack cake.
I can't quite remember, but there was an older Escape Pod on making one crave something.
This story kind of romanticized ads at the same time as kind of talking about death and hanging on--which went along with the other stories recently, Elan Vital and Raising Jenny.
So I kind of found it scary and sweet at the same time.
I can't help but feel that ads will die out, with the advertising person that was talking around my holiday table talking about how the internet is killing the advertising business. If that's true, we may have to deal with more sponsorship in television and a future more like The Truman show.
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Wow, did those ads ever give me the heebie-jeebies. Even if the story hadn't featured the near-extinction of the human race, the ads alone would have pushed this world towards mild dystopia for me.
I think it was the ad that shaped itself like the narrator's dead husband that did it for me. It was bad enough back when Facebook spent a couple of weeks gently chiding me for not re-connecting with a high school classmate of mine who happened to be dead. Imagine that kind of algorithmic snafu magnified by much more sophisticated technology, and... eeugh.
Very well-told story.
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When I run to the kitchen during commercials, is any advertizing taking place? If a tree falls in the woods.....? This story is like humanity on a giant collective snack run. Except everyone slipped and broke their necks when their socks hit the linoleum. And while we decompose the ads carry on as an embarrasing sort of walking-talking epitaph.
I hope somewhere someone is pulling these things apart and putting their batteries to better use.
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When the story began I said, 'hurrah, walking ads. It's been to long since we had a bit of absurdist fiction.'
then-
'oh, wait, the ads are a sort of android.' [images of slightly down-at-heels billboards peering mournfully in windows, pamphlets nipping around the ankles like persistent lapdogs and other such ephemera fade]
Otherwise this was a story much in the mold of old silver age robot stories and apocalypse stories (which sometimes were both, Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" being one of the definitive works.
I have to say, I looked at the story and, to stretch an analogy, said 'all the ingredients are there, and it has cooked long enough, but somehow it isn't soup...'
I think its the lack of an emotional inner life for the protagonist. Yes, she cries. Yes, there are emotions happening, but we don't what they are, and in a story without any real dialogue (speaking with the ads is sort of a totem to dialogue not actually happening) some peek inside just to give the reader a little world flavor would be good.
....Ah, that's it, needs more salt.
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Enjoyed the story.......wasn't sure where it was going at first but was happy that it took the apocolyptic path. I'm a sucker for the depressing stuff.
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This story was just weird. And the ads... Yeah, heebie-jeebies for me too. The whole thing about shaping themselves to look sort of like someone you know, but not exactly, is very creepy and I think very plausible. Companies are always looking to skirt the rules on what you can and cannot do in advertising.
Personally, I think the reason why it's "the end of the world" should have been left unsaid. She would know why. But the audience would be left to their own imagination. The reason is not pertinent to the actual storyline. Let the reader's mind run wild.
I think its the lack of an emotional inner life for the protagonist.
Completely agree. I never really got a grasp on the emotional aspect of the character. Given all the terrible things that have happened and the sorry state she may be in, I had no sense it had an effect. Did she see the in-house ad as a plaything? Did she get emotionally attached? The moment she cries actually feels out-of-place.
I thought this story was just okay. If the emotional side of the character was more fully presented, I would like this story more.
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I loved that final image of the increasingly hallucinatory life alone on the mountain, serving as a sort of elephant's burial ground for advertisements. Brilliant bit there.
I didn't have a problem figuring out the protagonist's internal life; her actions speak to her emotional state quite clearly, in my opinion. Not everything needs to be spelled out, y'know?
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I think its the lack of an emotional inner life for the protagonist.
Completely agree. I never really got a grasp on the emotional aspect of the character. Given all the terrible things that have happened and the sorry state she may be in, I had no sense it had an effect. Did she see the in-house ad as a plaything? Did she get emotionally attached? The moment she cries actually feels out-of-place.
I thought this story was just okay. If the emotional side of the character was more fully presented, I would like this story more.
I agree. This had the makings of a cracking story but it was let down by the archetypal 'older woman' as if the author had never met one and thought they all do embroidery, grow flowers, have wooden spoons or a broom handy with which to poke at intruders, and somehow come through an apocalypse without the toilets breaking down. There was no end-of-the world in this place, beyond the wombling ads. She even made and served (to whom?) tea and sandwiches. Running out of your meds if you're getting on a bit would be a crisis rather than a passing inconsequential observation. I would have loved to have seen a feisty survivor, longing for her lost Robert, torn over the replicas that kept arriving, and ready to shoot up marauders, un-block the cess pit, and skin the odd wolf to prepare for the coming winter. This story is worthy of an MC with a core strength even though I'll admit that's likely to be another archetype.
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Homo Sapiens are social creatures and they desire at a very deep level the benign companionship of others. Sometimes this longing takes very strange forms. But when you're starving you take what you can get ersatz or not.
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This is not a realistic survivor-porn story, though. It's fine to like that sort of story, but saying that this story should have had that kind of protagonist is a bit like saying that LOTR would have been better if Lara Croft had the One Ring instead of Frodo; such a story would be a very different animal and could be judged accordingly.
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This is not a realistic survivor-porn story, though. It's fine to like that sort of story, but saying that this story should have had that kind of protagonist is a bit like saying that LOTR would have been better if Lara Croft had the One Ring instead of Frodo; such a story would be a very different animal and could be judged accordingly.
Not sure I recognise the notion of survivor-porn although it does sound a little derogatory. My argument is for a less wrongly archetypal older female MC. It feels lazily ignorant to perpetuate a little-old-lady stereotype when a bit of grounding in reality could have livened her up and added some grit to an otherwise promising story. :-\
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"Hatchet" would probably be the archetypal survivor porn book, to my mind. This wasn't a story about how she survived; it was a story about loss and remembrance, and as such a slightly generic Old Lady with some habits from Central Casting suits it well enough, in my opinion.
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@scattercat
Now "survival porn" is genre of sci-fi? Who knew? :D
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Maybe it was my Mac and the none-too-pricey earphones, but the reader, Dani Cutler, sounded nasally, and was really concerned that each word be clear.
On to the story...
The only thing that didn't work for me was that when she said adverts, I thought of small robots and not something more akin to androids.
The tale was great. It's one of those things that seems like a natural out come of advertising and tec.
I think Robert was right, commercials can be art.
Also I didn't find the story depressing. I understand why others would, but for me, it was about her surveying and she had enough hope to plan for the days to come, and there probably are more people out there.
Not really sure why someone above me thought she was emotionless. I thought with all that she had been through, for emotional life was doing as well as her garden.
There she was wasting time and resources on growing flowers and doing embroidery and for no real reason other than she must have found joy and beauty in them. Along with surviving, that too is part of the human spirt, the need for art and beauty.
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@AliceNred
...commercials can be art.
So can political or commercial propaganda then. Oh, wait. That's why they call them "commercials". :D
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@AliceNred
...commercials can be art.
So can political or commercial propaganda then. Oh, wait. That's why they call them "commercials". :D
And what does that say about truth in advertising?
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I didn't really like the bit where we were told that the apocalypse had been caused by a disease - it just felt a bit unimaginative. It might have been better just to leave it up to the imagination, which would have been a lot more creepy for the readers/listeners.
I quite liked the concept of walking ads. well i didn't like it in the sense that I'd like to see that happen, but I liked it in the sense that it was a very interesting concept that worked well in the story.
I agree with many other comments that the protagonist's reaction to many of the things in the story seemed odd. I know it's probably happened to her many times before, but an android turning into a dead loved one would deeply anger and hurt me. I might end up inviting it in for tea out of loneliness and desperation, but not after getting very, very angry at them all and going nearly insane. Her frank acceptance seemed very unnatural.
I did like how she ended up having sympathy towards them in the end - perhaps betraying that she did agree with her husband that they were sentient, even if she refused to admit it to herself. The ad's reaction to this - to come to her to seek sanctuary in their dying days - was also very poignant and interesting.
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I really enjoyed this story. A lot.
But then, I'm a sucker for end of humanity stories (Yes, The Stand is my favorite Stephen King book) and especially the ones that ridicule humanity into the bargain.
I like the idea of humanity dying out and leaving behind some kind of progeny. It's sort of a twisted version of AI (terrible movie, I know) where the robots were left behind. But I like this one better. I can only imagine what it would be like in thousands of years when some other animal evolves intelligence or aliens discover Earth. They'd try to piece together the past, reanimate some of the ads, and get completely the wrong picture.
Or the right picture, depending on your own personal level of cynicism.
All in all slightly silly, but very enjoyable story. Well done.
As to the reading, so she had a cold! So what? I have one too!
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I really liked the premise of this. It had undertones of a zombie apocalypse, but with very different details. Instead of deadly flesh-eating humans who are your friends and family who are the cause of the end of the world, we have annoying but harmless humanoid robots who can sometimes look kind of like your friends and family who aren't the cause of the end of the world, they just happen to be what's left of humanity. I like the contrasts and the comparisons between the two.
I find the situation very interesting. She knows that most of humanity is dead, and that it's very likely that she'll never see another human being before she dies. And yet the last echoes of humanity still come and clamor for her attention. They're not human, but they look human and speak with human voices and will at least sit down to tea, even if they don't drink tea. She knows they're not human, yet they serve her as a sort of human-analog. They are a weak substitute yet they keep the loneliness from consuming her entirely, and every time she wonders if they are sentient she recalls her dead husband asking the same question. So by keeping them around, she keeps him alive in the smallest of ways, and keeps the loneliness from consuming her.
I thought it was quite well done.
I didn't really like the bit where we were told that the apocalypse had been caused by a disease - it just felt a bit unimaginative. It might have been better just to leave it up to the imagination, which would have been a lot more creepy for the readers/listeners.
Unimaginative perhaps, but it's the only thing that really would make much sense. Even if it had gone unsaid, that would've been the very first conclusion I came to. Nothing else works in quite the same way as deadly plague, an invisible self-propogating killer. It explains why everyone could die in short amount of time, compounded by our efficient transportation systems. It explains why she could be one of those who survive, because she lives like a hermit, not even visiting her neighbors and intentionally living way the hell in the middle of nowhere.
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What's that sci-fi film where the guy looses or possibly kills his shipmates and lives alone on a giant spaceship just him and a few non-sentient service droids for company? This reminded me of that, the slow spiralling off into loneliness-induced oddness.
I wonder what was killing off the ads in the end, had they made themselves vulnerable to whatever killed most of the humans by trying to become so much like humans to sell their products, or were they just running out of battery power? After the main advert died the story did seem to run it's own batteries down and grind to a halt rather than come to an end. That was a shame because I thought up to that point that it had been a very promising story.
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What's that sci-fi film where the guy looses or possibly kills his shipmates and lives alone on a giant spaceship just him and a few non-sentient service droids for company?
Silent Running
(http://www.thespacereview.com/archive/1315a.jpg)
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"Hatchet" would probably be the archetypal survivor porn book, to my mind.
"My Side Of The Mountain" was one of my favorite books as a kid...
calling something that beloved from childhood 'porn' just doesn't sit right, somehow.
I wonder if there can't be some cultural thread of the Back-To-The-Earth movement of the sixties and seventies in the new crop of post-apoc fiction. Perhaps it's just a natural consequence of most authors today having grown up during the cold war.
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"Hatchet" would probably be the archetypal survivor porn book, to my mind.
"My Side Of The Mountain" was one of my favorite books as a kid...
calling something that beloved from childhood 'porn' just doesn't sit right, somehow.
I wonder if there can't be some cultural thread of the Back-To-The-Earth movement of the sixties and seventies in the new crop of post-apoc fiction. Perhaps it's just a natural consequence of most authors today having grown up during the cold war.
My son is reading My Side of the Mountain right now! He loves it to pieces.
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I wonder if there can't be some cultural thread of the Back-To-The-Earth movement of the sixties and seventies in the new crop of post-apoc fiction. Perhaps it's just a natural consequence of most authors today having grown up during the cold war.
There is something undeniably compelling about the idea of reducing survival to the barest necessity. It's hardly a new thing; "The Mysterious Island" and "Robinson Crusoe" both have a mind-numbing level of detail about the methods of survival used by the protagonists. I suspect that part of the appeal is that part of our minds that is weary with the complexity and speed of modern life and would get a certain satisfaction from seeing all of that just stop. It's one solution to the Gordian Knot, after all.
BTW, if that whole "build up from scratch" trope appeals strongly, I must encourage you to avoid Minecraft at all costs because you will never stop playing it.
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@AliceNred
...commercials can be art.
So can political or commercial propaganda then. Oh, wait. That's why they call them "commercials". :D
And what does that say about truth in advertising?
Alice if you want find the "truth" consult a philosopher; if you want "accuracy" consult a philologist with a law degree. "Honesty in advertising" (http://www.excessvoice.com/article101.htm) is kinda of oxymoron in the real sense of the term IMHO. :D
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@AliceNred
...commercials can be art.
So can political or commercial propaganda then. Oh, wait. That's why they call them "commercials". :D
And what does that say about truth in advertising?
Alice if you want find the "truth" consult a philosopher; if you want "accuracy" consult a philologist with a law degree. "Honesty in advertising" (http://www.excessvoice.com/article101.htm) is kinda of oxymoron in the real sense of the term IMHO. :D
Sure there is. You just have to put you knees together and tap your heels together, and say, "I believe. I believe."
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Quite enjoyed this one. I personally would have been unhappy if the cause of the catastrophe wasn't included - I don't like to be left wondering.
I can't quite remember, but there was an older Escape Pod on making one crave something.
You'd be thinking of EP 98, 'Just Do It' by Heather Lindsley. (http://escapepod.org/2007/03/22/ep098-just-do-it/)
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I agree with many other comments that the protagonist's reaction to many of the things in the story seemed odd. I know it's probably happened to her many times before, but an android turning into a dead loved one would deeply anger and hurt me. I might end up inviting it in for tea out of loneliness and desperation, but not after getting very, very angry at them all and going nearly insane. Her frank acceptance seemed very unnatural.
I think that part of the reason that she didn't get as angry was because of what her husband said and pondered. In a way the ads connected her to her dead husband. I think she would have invited them to tea even if they weren't like her dead husband, but since they did, it added that last bit of connection she wanted.
The emotional core of the story seems to center around her missing her husband, but unlike some of the other recent offerings, it wasn't so much about hanging on, as kind of using it as a way to remember, kind of like a photograph. There wasn't a feeling of desperation with the story because the protagonist accepts that the ad is trying to sell her stuff. If she was desperate, I think that she wouldn't be growing a garden, going about happily and she wouldn't accept the fact so readily that the face of her dead husband is selling her stock options. She seems pretty content and in a way the ads seem to connect her to the world and remind her that there is a larger world out there... so she doesn't stay secluded--she makes references to trying to connect to the net. It's only when all the ads die and she loses that connection that she goes out into the world, in a way to reconnect again.
You'd be thinking of EP 98, 'Just Do It' by Heather Lindsley. (http://escapepod.org/2007/03/22/ep098-just-do-it/)
That's the one... that one was definitely more cynical towards advertising.
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As I was listening I was hoping the plague would turn out to be an ad-borne virus that people caught through contact with the ads. The MC was spared because she had been holed up since before the virus came into being, but then (irony of ironies) she got it as well because she finally invited one into her home. I thought the story was going this direction as she became "more tired" and started moving more slowly as she went about her chores. But I guess it was not to be :-\
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I liked the premise, and the rapid-fire exposition. Maybe a bit heavy-handed on the anti-advertisement social commentary.
Some word choice was very "writerly" and some of it was stated by the characters. Why would this cliche of an old lady know the word "Senchant?" Characterization was forced, and again, cliched. The ads themselves were too abstract, at least at first, and more "magical realist", reminiscent of Gogol.
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The creepiest, weirdest ads I've encountered were in a Philip K Dick story -- at least I think it was. The ads were kind of like bugs and I recall the MC driving along and ads splatting on the windscreen. Somehow, one crawled inside the car and started up its spiel, with the MC stamping on it to kill it.
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The weirdest creepiest ads I've encountered are all from Japan.
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We already have some pretty creepy adds.
The number of adds in your spam folder which pretend to be from people you know have a creepy element already.
But then whats where this story came from, isn't it...
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While I did enjoy the new twist on post-apocalyptic isolation, there were several inconsistencies that drove me up the wall.
1) I agree wih whoever wrote that this old lady was way to stereotypical
2) where is she gettig the gasoline for her truck?
3) soooo sandwich bread grows in gardens now? - this was a game changer for me. There was plenty of mentions of her garden-none of her wheat field.
4) argh. I felt flickering of lie for this one but they kept being mashed by my frustration.
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It seems that the creepier advertising gets the more useful it becomes. I like it that Amazon knows my purchase history and can send me notices of price reductions on products I might actually buy. But there's an uncanny valley of my friend's facebook pictures appearing on sites that have nothing to do with facebook.
What usually bothers me about The Future of Advertising stories is that the author seems to starts by thinking "I hate advertising, so how can I make a story with evil and destructive advertising" (exaggerating to make a point) rather than "based on technological trends, I wonder what advertising will be like in the future." The problem with the former approach is that it produces advertising technologies that I find unbelievable. They are too expensive and impractical, because the author's first concern is making them harmful, rather than making them effective. I think the zombie ads in this story sort of fall into this category. It seems like they would be incredibly expensive and people can simply not open their doors for them. But the story undermines my knee-jerk distaste in that the ads are operating without any guidance, so I don't know how they would actually behave. I would expect an ad that knows enough about a potential customer that it can morph into a copy of the customer's dead husband to also know what the customer is likely to be interested in buying. It would most likely be selling medicine or gardening tools. Ads in most stories that sell viagra or fastfood do so because if they sold specials on science fiction books or computer accessories it undermines the author's desire to present them as bad things. But again these ads were operating on their own, so who knows what they would do.
I also found the characterization of the MC to be a little bland. I thought her situation was interesting, but I didn't feel the impact of her reactions for some reason.
On the previous week's podcast Mur presented this story as one about the future of corporate America*, but I don't think it is. It's not even about advertising. It's about a woman coping with loneliness. And it's not particularly American. Other countries have corporations and advertising. I'm guessing this story took place in the former US, but it could have taken place anywhere. As has been alluded to above, anyone who implies that the United States has a monopoly on powerful corporations or intrusive advertising has never been to Japan.
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The weirdest creepiest ads I've encountered are all from Japan.
Was it the products/services being advertized or something else?
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The weirdest creepiest ads I've encountered are all from Japan.
Was it the products/services being advertized or something else?
Asked by someone who's never watched a Japanese ad. They can make selling coffee into a psychedelic experience.
As to this story - I quite liked it... but then, that's why I recommended it to Mur from the slush pile. :-)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_bgmnhqU8o&feature=related
Me, I'd rather die. :D
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_bgmnhqU8o&feature=related
More like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR-Iz1fts5M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFJfzmbt35M
Without a doubt, every single person participating in that last one had his ir her brains scooped out with a dull spoon and replaced with yellowish Jell-O.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_bgmnhqU8o&feature=related
More like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR-Iz1fts5M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFJfzmbt35M
Without a doubt, every single person participating in that last one had his ir her brains scooped out with a dull spoon and replaced with yellowish Jell-O.
Okay now imagine having the stinky footed girl, the sumo wrestlers & pretzel girl, and the pudding creatures following you around all the time. Maybe the older woman was in hell and didn't know it? :D
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_bgmnhqU8o&feature=related
More like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR-Iz1fts5M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFJfzmbt35M
Without a doubt, every single person participating in that last one had his ir her brains scooped out with a dull spoon and replaced with yellowish Jell-O.
Anyone still wondering where the aliens are? ;D
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I have to say, I looked at the story and, to stretch an analogy, said 'all the ingredients are there, and it has cooked long enough, but somehow it isn't soup...'
This was my impression of the story also. There were a lot of interesting bits, but it didn't quite gel for me.
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3) soooo sandwich bread grows in gardens now? - this was a game changer for me. There was plenty of mentions of her garden-none of her wheat field.
It's been a few weeks since I listened to the story, but I don't remember what details they gave about the bread. Did they say that it was wheat bread? Maybe it was corn bread or some other base ingredient.
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So the question comes down to "is 'virtual' companionship better than none at all?" I'm not sure. Being alone and being lonely don't have to be synonymous terms.
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Am I the only one who couldn't stop thinking of that Simpsons Treehouse of Terror episode "Attack of the 50-Food Eyesores" where the giant advertising mascots went on a rampage destroying the town as the zombie-ads stomped through the gardens?
Boy was this one disappointing. I think @wakela had it right. I'm not sure that it had anything to say other than going over the advertising age-old trope that sales pitches are getting intrusive and creepy. The whole story seemed to be cobbled together from recycled parts including an apocalyptic virus, using a robot as a replacement for a loved one, and even elements of countless zombie stories.
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The story itself fell a bit flat for me (mostly because of lack of action), but I did feel that the concept of a quiet apocalypse was interesting. It makes you think about we'd leave behind if our society just ended right now. What would later people think after digging up our magazines and billboards? Would they think we worshipped a dualistic god/goddess named Brangelina? Would they think that Calvin Kline, the Gap, Abercrombie, McDonalds, and Starbucks were powerful cults?
Also, my contribution to the weird commercial thread (from Thailand I think):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfxSWIBvEYE
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I thought the story was okay, but it never really hooked me, even though I love apocalypse stories. It seemed like a Twilight Zone episode, and in fact in my brain, the story was in black and white, now that I think about it. ??? Anyway, the writing was good, and the scenes well built, but there wasn't enough action or events for me to get that interested.
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Also, my contribution to the weird commercial thread (from Thailand I think):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfxSWIBvEYE
Too funny!!
Now I have to retaliate :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGFvcAM-nEg
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Also, my contribution to the weird commercial thread (from Thailand I think):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfxSWIBvEYE
Too funny!!
Now I have to retaliate :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGFvcAM-nEg
Ach! That needed a health warning!
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"There Will Come Soft Rains" - yes, that's the story it reminded me of, but throw in a bunch of spam messages that automatically downloaded themselves daily.
One thing that I thought was interesting was the notion that she came to fulfill the "needs" of all the surviving ads, and that they were drawn to her. She put up with them, and in return got a type of companionship. Was she a psychopomp (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopomp) to them?
More like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR-Iz1fts5M
Now, that one (oddly) reminds me of Butoh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butoh) dance performances, such as this one - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxT-v9cxf7g&feature=related - which is one of my favourites. I wouldn't be surprised if Butoh was one of the influences of the producer.
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I found this one more sad than creepy. The stereotype of the woman didn't bother me much. I found myself thinking that she would be one of those upper middle class white women who shop at Whole Foods stores, having a higher standard of education, and then taking off to do gourmet farming in the middle of nowhere at the first sign of trouble in the cities.
::blink:: Huh. That came out more bitter than I expected.
Anyway, I did like this story, only for the loneliness I felt exuding from her, and the apocalyptic feel of her possibly being the last person in the world with only broken ads to keep her company, and even that winding down. Sort of like the Discovery series "Life after death".
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consider my mind bent.