It’s two, two TWO rants in one!
1. So, Christine the Curmudgeon is watching TV, the Saturday Early Show on CBS, in case anyone cares. And what should come on is my least favorite commercial currently running.
It’s that obnoxious commercial for Van De Kamp’s frozen fish sticks, where the little girl is complaining over being served “minced fish”. I absolutely hate commercials where they show kids being brats, and it disturbs me even more that in the real world, some parents actually DO let their kids run the house.
Besides, it’s FISH STICKS! Not whole fillets! Have you ever caught or even seen a fish that is shaped like a stick? It doesn’t matter if the fish was minced or not. It’s still fish, and it still has the same nutritional value.
The fish sticks made with minced fish are probably cheaper to buy. You see, they are made with scraps trimmed from whole fish, when they are trimming the fish to be sold as fresh fillets. But they don’t use any nasty parts, like gills or heads or eyeballs or fins. They are just parts of the fillet that get trimmed off, such as the thin parts near the tail. It’s just parts they trim off so that the fillet will cook evenly.
In these tough economic times, kids should be thankful they get any food at all. When I was a little rugrat, money was very tight, and I ate plenty of fish stick made with minced fish. And if I ever talked to my mother the way the kid in that commercial talked to her mom, I’d have gotten my butt paddled into next year. At our house, it was “eat what is put in front of you, or else starve”.
2. So Christine the Curmudgeon got very tired of Citibank hitting us for late fees with our Sears credit card bill. Yes, we’ve been mailing the payments on time, but we strongly suspect that they sometimes sit on our checks and not post them until the due date has passed. In fact, we KNOW that some banks do this, there was a piece on 60 Minutes a while back where people who used to work for these banks admitted to this.
As a way to avoid this, I tried signing up for an account to pay online, and got to do that exactly once. The next month, I tried logging in again to make the payment, and they kept saying my account did not exist. Funny, it always seems to exist when they mail out the monthly bill.
The only other thing I could do was to sign up for online banking and bill-pay via our bank. That is working just fine.
But I wish I could just go paperless here…because I HATE all of the junk ads and crap that come with the paper bill. It isn’t even anything I’d want to buy, it’s mostly cheap junk. This month they had a selection of jewelry and watches, they looked really nice in the pictures, like real Zenith watches. But, given the prices, there is no way that they are the real thing, and they are probably not good quality, either. They are probably kind of like jewelry you’d see at the dollar store.
I once made the mistake of buying a set of food storage containers from one of those Sears ads. Big mistake. The plastic was cheapy, a lot of the pieces cracked after a short time, ands I had to throw most of them out. Better to spend a little more and buy Rubbermaid or Tupperware, at least those hold up better.
However, it’s kind of hard to go paperless when you can’t log into the Sears/Citibank site to see the statements online. And we need to be able to see the statements to make sure we aren’t getting ripped off.
I hate Citibank.
I hate that fish stick commercial too. I just wanna reach through the TV screen and slap that child silly!
Another one I hate is for Pediasure, a nutritional kids’ drink. A mother is at the supermarket, with a little girl in the seat of the cart. Every time the mother puts something into the cart (chicken, broccoli, waffles), the kid states that she does not like that item. So she is not made to eat any of it, I guess she is living on nothing but junk food and Pediasure.
Mrs. Pauls and VandeKamps are brands both owned by the Pinnacle corporation. http://www.pinnaclefoodscorp.com/
In different parts of the country, they use a different brand but the same commercial, so you see her bitching about minced fish for VandeKamps, I see her bitching for Mrs. Pauls, but they the exact same product but in different boxes with different names.
This commercial pisses me off so much, I sent Pinnacle an email to let them know how much this bratty child’s rude and demanding behavior ensured that I would never buy their products again.
http://www.pinnaclefoodscorp.com/contactpinnacle/contactUs.asp?commentBrandName=%20mrspauls
I remember them being separate companies, years ago. I remember having Mrs. Paul’s in NY when I was a kid. It’s hard to keep track of all of these corporate buyouts.
I’d rather buy Gorton’s of Gloucester fish sticks, anyway. At least they don’t have obnoxious commercials. And now I know that if I ever see Mrs. Paul’s anyplace, not to buy that, either.
I think I’ll shoot them off an email, too, thanks for that link. It amazes me that some people actually find this commercial *cute*.