I find it odd that people will complain loudly and violently at the pumps about paying three dollars a gallon for gas, then go inside and drop two-fifty on a 64-oz Coke without batting an eye.

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So I’m getting ready to microwave up a Healthy Choice french bread pizza for lunch and, before pulling back the top of the box as per instructions, I notice something. Next to the large picture of a cooked pizza on the front of the box, in small type near the bottom, were the words “Serving Suggestion.” Serving suggestion? What exactly are they suggesting? I mean, I’m appreciative that the Healthy Choice food company is looking out for me, offering helpful suggestions as to how I should serve their products, but I’m not sure what the suggestion is. It’s just a picture of a pizza. What’s the suggestion? Cook it first? That seems like more of a necessity than a suggestion. Put it on a plate? There’s no plate in the picture. Use a fork? Slice off small pieces? Serve cheese side up? Do not sprinkle with broken glass? What?

I briefly considered calling their consumer hotline, but I was afraid that asking an underpaid person who had to deal with stupid people all day long “What should do I do with this pizza?” would lead to all sorts of unsavory answers. Besides, I was hungry, so I just cooked it up and ate it my normal way: bare-handed and standing over the sink. I would offer that’s an equally valid serving suggestion, but I’ll agree it wouldn’t look as good on the box.

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OK, someone explain this ad for Göt2b hair care to me. I mean, I get the basic gist of it. Dr. Mannequin there in the middle has slathered his hair with weasel entrails or whatever they put into this hair gunk to make it give off pheromones, and the surrounding women are so overcome with lust and passion because of it that they’re all battling to be the first to gain his greasy affections. Makes sense in a Madison Avenue sort of mentality. But what is the deal with these women? How do you explain this?

First, you have the dolled-up contractor there on the floor, who has apparently broken through the wall with her solid-gold sledge hammer, and now is too exhausted to walk over to our unguent-slathered Romeo and is reduced to crawling the rest of the distance.

Meanwhile, Punk-Girl appears to be throwing a seven-dollar latte onto Prep-Girl (dressed in her practical horse-riding attire) who is fighting back with a riding crop, both of them so intent of battling each other that they appear to have forgotten the oily reason for their duel, or even how they came to be in a laboratory environment in the first place. Behind them, Classic 1960s Barbie Doll Girl is rappelling into the lab on tied-together bedsheets from, I assume, her bedroom, which through a truly bizarre set of architectural errors is located directly above the lab.

Then we have the, I don’t know, Native American twins who have somehow managed to beat all the other girls to the punch and are already rubbing the doctor’s beefy luxuriousness. Maybe they’re lab assistants who forgot their coats today.

And he’s oblivious to it all, despite having concocted this goo to generate exactly this sort of response.

Now, I’m all for odd ads. You have to step out of the mainstream sometime to cut through the rest of the advertising clutter and make your message heard. But shouldn’t you actually have a message? Or at least one that makes sense? Sure, when you’re starting from a premise that involves smearing your head with squirrel offal, you’re going to have a rough time of it, but you could try a little harder than just packing some models into push-up bras and lo-rise shorts and calling it a day. I mean, they obviously put some forethought into this photo shoot. You don’t just have gold-plated sledge hammers lying around; that’s a custom job right there. And I doubt these girls just happened to show up for the shoot dressed like this. Women don’t wander around in outfits like this anywhere outside of my imagination. So they planned for the ad to turn out like this, and I’m just trying to figure out why.

And yes, I do demand a coherent plot from my hair-care ads. I feel it makes me a savvy consumer.

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So, I was at Starbucks the other day, as the fiancee wanted a frappucino. I don’t know, she likes ‘em. Anyway, they have a display by the front counter, full of plastic bottles of their Ethos water. On the display is a picture of a grimy child squatting next to a trickle of water running out of a pipe. The display then informs you that over a billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water, but you can help! By buying a bottle of Ethos water for only $2.50, Starbucks will then donate five cents of that purchase to helping these poor unfortunate souls get fresh water.

This, to me, seems inefficient. Starbucks is going to have to wait for fifty people to buy a bottle of water before they even have enough to buy the thirsty urchins a single bottle of their own product. And based on the layer of dust on the bottles, the Ethos isn’t exactly flying off the shelves, meaning poor little Ngutu is going to die of thirst long before she gets a sip of the stuff. So here’s what I’m thinking: Starbucks has a bunch of overpriced water they’re not selling. A bunch of people need water. Why not just, oh, I don’t know, send them the bottled water? I mean, if Starbucks is truly, deeply concerned with the welfare of the poor thirsty masses, why not step up and airlift over a couple hundred cases of the stuff? I mean, they must be concerned with the well-being of these poor souls, right? They wouldn’t just be exploiting unfortunate children to guilt us into paying an exorbitant mark-up on tap water, thereby lining their pockets ever deeper in large-denomination bills, would they?

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Seen the ads for the new Gatorade product, G2? They’re billing it as “the low-calorie, off-field hydrator.”

So… water, then?

That’s all it is: flavored water, and all the whiz-bang special effects adding grass under Derek Jeter’s feet aren’t going to change that fact, any more than drinking the stuff is going to make someone into an athlete “even when off the field.”

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