You look lovely today, did you shave your landstrip with a Gillette Mach 8?

I tend to listen to talk radio while driving - but where I live in Florida, there is not a lot of choices. This pretty much leaves me with NPR, which isn't too bad if taken with a grain of salt. They had an interesting piece on today about "word of mouth' advertising and how it is the new "new" thing right now. It works like this: ad agency hires you to basically inject gleeful comments about a product into your every day discussion with, well anyone and everyone.

Me: "So, Bob, how are you doing today?"
Bob: "Well, I''m actually having a shitty day. My dog died and...."
Me: "Yeah. That's great. So, I notice your starting to go bald. Have you considered using Rogaine?"
Bob: "Uhm, what?"

Pretty easy, eh? And people get paid for this. In the NPR piece, they talked about a company called BzzAgent that is leading the way in this new and exciting advertising ploy. Sounds fucking annoying to me, but advertising in general is annoying to me. So - next time someone drops the innocuous reference to some product during a conversation with you - you now know that you're being schemed. Feel free to punch them in the side of the head.