Burger King French
Fry Chip Things
Fry Chip Things
If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something.
| BAD IDEA OF THE WEEK (a monthly feature) |
Burger King French
Fry Chip Things
|
As if the BK fries themselves weren't bad enough. If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Put It Down and
Walk Away 
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It happened a few years ago here in Chicago, but it’s still telling. A woman ran over a pedestrian while talking on a cell phone. Her car was actually
sitting on the pedestrian, but she wouldn’t get out of the car. Why? Because she was still on the cell phone. One witness heard her saying to the caller, “I think I just hit
somebody.” Of course it could be assumed that she was calling 911, but for two facts: (1) she hadn’t redialed, and (2) a policeman was on the scene, telling her to get off
the phone. People do a lot of dangerous things while driving. I drive about 2000 miles a month, so I’ve seen a lot: reading, shaving, playing drums, eating breakfast with real silverware and china. But there’s something about talking into a cell phone that is more distracting than all of them (okay, except maybe changing a t-shirt). So if you must talk while driving, step into the 21st Century and get Bluetooth technology. Okay. That addresses public safety, but still leaves public nuisance. Despite what you see on Ugly Betty and other fine programming, talking on your cell in public does not make you look sophisticated as often as it makes you an ass. Here are some simple rules of proper public cell phone behavior: (1) if you wouldn’t do it in a crowded elevator, don’t talk about it in a crowded elevator, (2) don’t act annoyed when someone else has the nerve to talk to a live person, (3) choose a respectable jingle, (4) never call friends or family when your plane lands (if your plane hadn’t landed, your relatives would have seen the burning wreckage on CNN, and, finally, (5) when you get to the cash register, put the @#$%@#!! phone down. If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Cars with Bows
 |
Amid the landfill of Christmas dreck pouring through our 60" plasma TVs each year, one type of commercial consistently offends more
than the rest. I speak of the luxury car with a bow on top. I have nothing against cars or gifts, but giving one's significant other (or whatever we're calling them nowadays)
a Lexus for Christmas is not so much a great gift as it is a sign of desperation. Every advertisement is answering a question. In this case, the pathetic query is, What can I possibly give my wife to make up for another year of insensitivity and neglect? and the deceitful answer, More car than I can afford. Unless you're Elvis, don't give expensive cars as presents. If your relationship is that far gone, make a down payment on counseling instead. If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Marathons
   |
Running is really good for you. Running 26.2 miles in two hours is not. But that’s not why marathons are a bad idea. I mean, people do lots of unhealthy
things. Eating doughnuts, for instance. I’m sure I’ve eaten 26.2 crullers in under 2 hours and 10 minutes (and my chest clutches at the thought). No, eating 2 dozen
doughnuts is no better for you than running 2 dozen miles. The difference is we don’t shut down major cities for doughnut binges. Major banking institutions don’t throw away millions of sponsorship dollars so 20,000 fat people can waddle down State St. or 6th Ave. with Dunkin Donuts bags (unless, of course, it’s St. Patrick’s Day). The obvious fact is that marathons are a waste of time and money. Worse than that, they get in my way. But marathons attract tourist dollars, say the pro-run lobby. Really? How much money are a bunch of skinny Nigerians going to pump into the local economy? My guess is t hey’re staying at the Super 8 and chowing down at the complimentary continental breakfast. At most, they’re grabbing some pasta before catching a plane to the next event. They don’t even have to buy a drink, for gosh sake—people give them free water along the race route. And what about all the commercial revenues and productivity lost by shutting down a major city for a day. You can’t tell me the latte-sipping spectators along the route even begin to make up for that financial hit. But don’t marathons also promote the city, some ask. Of course that’s the plan, but it just doesn’t play out that way. That’s because we don’t see the best parts of a city in during a marathon. Chicago, for instance, has poured billions of dollars into its downtown and lakefront. Millennium Park is an amazing new tourist attraction. Architecturally-stunning buildings are rising up at an amazing rate. The problem is the marathon goes through Pilsen and the West side. Nothing against those communities, but they’re not much to look at at street level. No, in any given marathon, the background is pretty much the same: pavement and viaducts. Neither of which are tourist destinations. And what about the foreground? It’s populated with undernourished athletes from other countries. How exactly does a herd of skinny Russian women and tiny Kenyan men raise the stature of a Boston or New York? Fortunately, I have a solution. It’s a win-win-win, simultaneously unclogging the city arteries, improving the television broadcast and lessening the physical damage to the runners. Put the marathon in a stadium. No more athletes snapping off their feet in potholes or slipping on decals. They can run on a nice, soft track designed for just that purpose. And it leaves the streets clear for traffic, which is what they’re designed for. And think of what a great race it would be--twenty thousand waifs jockeying for position on a quarter-mile track. Now that’s competition! And after the riff-raff gets weeded out, the broadcasts can kill the time by showing majestic views of the host city. And if the runners get bored of running in circles we can show movies for them on the stadium screen. Chariots or Fire, maybe. Or we could just combine the marathon and the doughnuts by requiring participants to down a bear claw and a cup of coffee every mile. Anybody who could do that in two hours would be a real athlete! If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Joan Cusack
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Had she been born a few decades earlier, she would have been a perennial gerning champion. Had she been born
a few centuries earlier, she'd have been a top-notch circus geek. As it is, she's just a fourth-rate Carol Burnett with no
discernable talent--unless simply being funny-looking is a talent. Dump your US Cellular stock before it's too late.
If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Homeland Security
Advisory System  |
With the possible exception of those eagle-eyed TSA employees at the airport, no sight inspires a more fleeting
sense of national security than the warm color bars shown at left. It may have cost billions to create, it may look like a last-minute
grade school art project--it may provide absolutely no actual information whatsoever--but nothing beats it for frightening the weak-minded. So grab your duct tape and plastic sheeting and rally 'round the Advisory System. Maybe together we can push that baby into the red. Or green--whichever is the good one. If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Tom Cruise/Scientology
 "Here's the problem. You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do." "Psychiatry is a pseudo science." "I don't talk about things I don't understand."  |
No Tom, the problem is that you don't know the history of Scientology, the source of your anti-psychiatry drivel.
If you did, you would know that it was the fabrication of sci-fi hack L. Ron Hubbard and first advertised in dime magazines next
to ads for X-Ray Specs and Charles Atlas courses. You would know that the whole cult was dreamed up as a way for old Ron to cheat
the weak-minded out of their life savings and avoid paying taxes on the ill-gotten gains. You would know that the Church of
Scientology is in constant legal trouble, and that 11 key leaders (including Hubbard's wife) spent time in jail for trying to
infiltrate the IRS. Finally, you would know that your whole fake religion involves ridding one's body of the pieces of confused
dead alien spirits who were blown up millions of years ago by an evil interstellar tyrant named Xenu
(xenu.com has all the crazy details). But then I'm guessing you don't even know the history of psychiatry, and wouldn't know a Freud from a Piaget... If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Firecrackers  |
What would Independence Day be without backyard firecrackers? A heck of a lot safer, according to the U.S. Consumer
Product Safety Commission. Some 9,300 cases of firecracker-related injuries were reported by emergency rooms in 2003, most
involving children and most occurring around the Fourth of July. Some gutless types would conclude from these statistics that
firecrackers are a bad idea. But this is America, darn it, and letting your kids fire off a brick of zebras was exactly what
Jefferson had in mind when he penned that line about “the pursuit of happiness.” I mean, nothing is happier than the look on a
young tike’s face when he lights that fuse—unless it’s the look of relief when the morphine kicks in during his subsequent
trip to the emergency room. Self-sacrifice what the Revolutionary War was all about. And setting off cherry bombs is the modern
American's way of reenacting, if only in a small way, the battles fought by those brave patriots at Lexington and Valley Forge.
Face it, the tossing of an M-80 is the modern patriot's way of proclaiming to his frightened pets and annoyed neighbors, “I regret
that I have but one digit to blow off for my country!” That or, “Me like go bang!” If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Self-Checkout Lanes  |
Call me a luddite, a technophobe or even -- gasp! -- pro-worker, but I just can't wrap my mind around the concept of self-checkout
lanes. Sure, I've heard the Wall Street blather about how automating and off-shoring American jobs is going to free people up
for more challenging careers--like being a greeter at WalMart. And maybe there's a milligram of truth in that idea. But what I
don't get is why the cashiers and baggers seem so anxious to lose their jobs by pushing people into the do-it-yourself lane.
After all, for most of them the job is their only link to affordable health insurance. Luckily, as with most technology, the @#$$#%&(!! things never work right. This means stores will always need someone standing by to hit the ESCAPE key every four seconds when the pleasant-sounding digital voice declares: "Unexpected item in bagging area. Please remove item before continuing." Any temptation I may have had to use these systems has been snuffed out by the fact that a stray piece of dandruff can sabotage the whole process. And heaven help you if you don't know the item number for your kale! If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Magnetic Car Ribbons   |
Show you care (very little). There are many good ways to support our troops or fight breast cancer. Buying a made-in-Taiwan ribbon magnet at a gas station isn’t one of them. These car decorations are the Beanie Babies of our decade. And like those cute little eyesores, if you see more than two of them on the back of a vehicle you know a dangerously distracted driver is at the wheel. If you want to actually do some good—instead of simply pretending to—visit the USO and/or the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and make a donation. Believe me, the Taiwanese won’t mind.... If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Tattoos  |
Tattoos. Uh...you know they don't come off, right?
If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Yikes!  |
While in the drug aisle of my local grocer (picking up some St. Joseph's Aspirin for an afternoon snack) I noticed this
appalling package. The problem with this product is not its function -- it's a hemorrhoid treatment if you couldn't guess -- but its offensively direct name. Medications for the nether regions are supposed to have innocuous names so as to avoid embarrassing the buyer and grossing out everyone else. That's why we have Viagra and Summer's Eve instead of "BonerAid" and "Krotch-Be-Clean." Why would a major pharmaceutical company settle on a product name that you couldn't even say on the radio without getting fined by the FCC? Surely they can do better. Hey, I got it -- how about "Happy Butt"? If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Hide-A-Key  |
The Hide-a-Key Rock is not just a bad idea, but a booby-trapped one as well. That's because the same feature that makes it hard for trespassers to find also makes it impossible for you to locate: it looks like every other rock in the yard! And if you put it somewhere where it's easy to locate that defeats the purpose, doesn't it? And what if some kid kicks your hide-a-key down the street or something? Somewhere there has to be a web site of hide-a-key horror stories, but I'm too lazy to look for it. If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Cleavage Creek Wine  |
I was going to make
many witty and ribald remarks about this new Sonoma Valley winery. But I can't because the owner's mother is a breast cancer
survivor and they donate 10% to the American Breast Cancer Society. So you'll just have to come up with your own boob jokes.
If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
The Segway   |
Too fast for the sidewalk, too slow for the street, too expensive to sell at Spencer’s Gifts. It’s been 2 years since Kamen, Spielberg, et al, unveiled this motorized gyroscope as the invention that would “revolutionize transportation.” Now they’re happy if they can get someone from FedEx to take a test drive. This $3,000 slinky is so useless it’s network news when someone actually finds a use for it. The problem with the Segway is it was invented by billionaires. Sure it would be nice if everyone abandoned their SUVs and tooled around our urban centers at a leisurely pace on two-wheel scooters. But the only people who can throw away several thousand dollars and tool around urban centers at a leisurely pace are billionaires. And once you’ve reached those 200 people, the market drops off precipitately. If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
GloFish™  |
Once again all the tax dollars we pour into scientific research have reaped a major benefit.
Just when the glory of the "astronaut pen" was beginning to wear thin, we have been blessed with a really, really shiny fish. That's right: the new year will usher in a genetically-altered Zebra danio that glows in the dark (at least until it gets sucked into the filter). Called the GloFish™, this fluorescent fish will be on sale at a pet shop near you beginning January 5, 2004, according to glofish.com. Unless you reside in California, where regulators have forbid the product due to ethical concerns. While the GloFish people "understand that the enormous potential of genetic technology carries with it an important responsibility," we at the BIC fear this glowing guppy will open a 40-gallon Pandora's box of trouble. Soon a tank full of glowing red fish just won't be enough. They'll have to glow different colors. Then blink in sequence. Then beep out melodies. In short, tropical fish will soon be exactly like Christmas lights, except that you'll have to replace them more often. And that's just wrong. If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |
Black, or with a Little Poison?  |
No matter how stupid we make our fake products, there's always a real product that puts us to shame.
This coffee creamer is a great example.
It's packaging features the thing you least want to see on any food product: a big red X. I found this product in the coffee nook of a catalog retailer where I was freelancing (writing catalog copy, natch). As the package design is rather crude, and it's a different brand than the regular creamer stock, I thought it might be a joke. But a quick web search shows it to be a real company. A real company in need of real package design. Yes, nothing says "poison" and "do not ingest" like a red X, and it was a few hours before anyone on the floor would use this creamer. If you spot a real Bad Idea, send us an email. If we use it, you'll get a free t-shirt or something. |