Just sitting here now browsing and a Motel 6 ad came on the radio. To LOOSELY paraphrase:

"Since Y2K is going throw the world into chaos on Jan 1, why not enjoy it is a room at Motel 6? (insert plug info). "After all, we all know the new mellinium is going to bring about the end of civilization. Or not..."

They did not end with the usual "we'll keep the light on for you". :)

Nationwide ad campaign? Anyone else hear it? Again, I'm in Charlotte, NC.

R.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), May 08, 1999

Answers

Heard it here in Southern California. They did, however, end with the "We'll keep the light on foryou."

-- smfdoc (smfdoc@aol.com), May 08, 1999.

Heard in DFW TX. It's really pretty hilarious. The guy (you know that laid back "Tom" fellow who narrates their radio ads) goes on in great deal about watching the end of civilization spiral to the end as the world is plunged into total darkness, and so on. Then there's a pause and he throws in the, "Or not." (He does say 'we'll leave the light on for you' at the end.) Granted, it's typically extreme, but it's still pretty funny.

PJ in TX

-- PJ Gaenir (fire@firedocs.com), May 08, 1999.

I also heard it in the Dallas, TX area. They did say "we'll leave the light on for you". I though it would have been better if they had said they would "leave a candle burning".

Gerald

-- Gerald R. Cox (grcox@internetwork.net), May 08, 1999.

I do remember reading a article in a Marketing magazine several months back, think it was a December issue, and they were talking about how many firms were readying ad campaigns for playing off of Year 2000 fears. They only cited the campaign that was supposed to take off in April for Absolut Vodka that was going to have a picture of the adult beverage bottle, and millions of numbers inside of it.

I like the new Kia commercials, it is clever on how they are playing off society as a whole.

-- Pat (BAMECW@aol.com), May 08, 1999.

Heard it too. Think it's disgusting to exploit and make light of a situation that could become life-threatening. Hope that every light in every Motel 6 is not on for you come January, so that we can see that Tom Bodette jerk-off eat his words. I hope the sleazy bastard goes bankrupt.

-- @ (@@@.@), May 08, 1999.

Pat,

Absolut Vodka did that ad. It's on the back of the April issue of Wired. The "Lights Out" black cover issue with the 4 y2k slanted articles. The bottle has only zeros & ones.

mb in NC

-- mb (mdbutler@coastalnet.com), May 08, 1999.

I like the new Kia commercials, it is clever on how they are playing off society as a whole. -- Pat

You've got to be joking. You are joking, aren't you? karen

-- karen (karen@karen.karen), May 09, 1999.

If it's the same Pat that was jerking my chain on another recent thread he/she is NOT joking...

Yep - it's really not funny, like an ad campaign on the holocaust...

just... not funny (sorry), all these ads will do is desensitise the population,

by the end of the year y2k may well become a laff-riot if the spin- meisters get their way...

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 09, 1999.

quite a while back I was reading an article about hunger in africa.one of the locals was too starved to make the trip down to the relief truck,he knew that he was going to die of hunger.luckily he happened upon bone a with rotting antelope meat on it.About to eat the rancid flesh he was clubbed down from behind by one of his neighbors,and then a general melee ensued as every one fought for the scrap of rotted meat.the dyeing man broke away,laughing at the irony that reduced his fellow man to the status of scavenging animals.It had a strong impact on me to never become so puffed up with my own importantance that I overlook the humor that my own ludicrosity affords to others. My fellow "get-ITs",it does not matter if hindsite shows us that we're right for buying all these beans,the fact that y2kers are prepairing for the end of the world AS WE KNOW IT makes us, in the eyes of the status quo,NUTBAGS!go with it baby,but don't lose your sence of humor,it makes the worst that life can give you bearable. Are we not funny?I'll happily be the clown if someone looks at me and says"well,he's WAY off the deep end,but a moderate level of prep is ok" Remenber "doom does not have to be gloom"

go kia!

-- zoobie (zoobiezoob@yahoo.com), May 09, 1999.

This is why our move out of the city to a farm last year was done for "lifestyle" reasons, as far as my family knows. (My wife has confided in her Dad, though. He's not as cynical as mine.)

I imagined it would go this way. We would be portrayed by society in the worst ways -- either evil or comical. All just for trying to protect your family. All just because you neglect to go along with the crowd for a short while.

Come to think of it, isn't that what the kids at Columbine and a thousand other schools are talking about these days -- the incredible cruelty of immature bullies picking on anyone they can identify as a safe target?

Once you've told them, you can't un-tell. 1000 reasons for silence.

-- jor-el (jor-el@krypton.com), May 09, 1999.

Their airing the Motel 6 ad in Alaska. FYI, Tom Bodette is from Homer Alaska (the end of the road) Toms home there is set up to cut of the grid and none of the Bodette"s would loose any sleep over it.

-- Trapper Man (northmail@arctic.com), May 09, 1999.

Andy,

Bravo! You said a mouthful with that one word - DESENSITIZE.

When you get right down to it that really covers just about everything that is wrong with our world today - society is becoming more and more densensitized. Reminds me of a song by Jane's Addiction; "Nothing's Shocking".

I think the accelerating pace of our lives (Art Bell would say "the Quickening"), caused mostly by technology, is creating such a high level of stress and mental illness that the behaviors we witness become more and more bizzare, but we eventually grow accustomed to this. Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, each successive incident seems to become less and less suprising to us. I bet within a few months most people will have totally forgotten about Columbine high.

I think it will probably be a good thing if all of our technology crashes. Our society needs to slow down and finish growing up before we jump blindly into the future. Or maybe I'm just getting slow with age! Yes, I think an awful lot of people are going to be "densensitized" about Y2K by the time we get there. Especially after that movie comes out and convinces people that it is all just some kind of imaginative fantasy that Hollywood whipped up for entertainment.

-- @ (@@@.@), May 09, 1999.

Andy,

I usually let your comments roll foolishly along... but to compare Y2K to the Holocaust is grossly offensive.

"What Makes the Holocaust Unique?

The eminent Jewish philosopher, Emil Fackenheim, offers a concise outline of the distinguishing characteristics of the Holocaust in his book, To Mend the World (IN: Indiana University Press, 1994).

'The "Final Solution" was designed to exterminate every single Jewish man, woman and child. The only Jews who would have conceivably survived had Hitler been victorious were those who somehow escaped discovery by the Nazis. Jewish birth (actually mere evidence of "Jewish blood") was sufficient to warrant the punishment of death. Fackenheim notes that this feature distinguished Jews from Poles and Russians who were killed because there were too many of them, and from "Aryans" who were not singled out unless they chose to single themselves out. With the possible exception of Gypsies, he adds, Jews were the only people killed for the "crime" of existing.

The extermination of the Jews had no political or economic justification. It was not a means to any end; it was an end in itself. The killing of Jews was not considered just a part of the war effort, but equal to it; thus, resources that could have been used in the war were diverted instead to the program of extermination. The people who carried out the "Final Solution" were primarily average citizens. Fackenheim calls them "ordinary job holders with an extraordinary job." They were not perverts or sadists. "The tone- setters," he says, "were ordinary idealists, except that their ideals were torture and murder." Someone else once wrote that Germany was the model of civilized society. What was perverse, then, was that the Germans could work all day in the concentration camps and then go home and read Schiller and Goethe while listening to Beethoven.'

Other examples of mass murder exist in human history, such as the atrocities committed by Pol Pot in Cambodia and the Turkish annihilation of the Armenians. But none of those other catastrophes, Fackenheim argues, contain more than one of the characteristics described above.

Jews do not need to compete in a morbid contest as to who has suffered the most in history. It is important, however, to explain why the Holocaust is a unique part of human history."

In case you don't know what the Holocaust was:

"The Holocaust refers to a specific event in 20th century history: The systematic, bureaucratic annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and their collaborators as a central act of state during World War II. In 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed. Although Jews were the primary victims, up to one half million Gypsies and at least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled persons were also victims of genocide. As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe from 1933 to 1945, millions of other innocent people were persecuted and murdered. More than three million Soviet prisoners of war were killed because of their nationality. Poles, as well as other Slavs, were targeted for slave labor, and as a result of the Nazi terror, almost two million perished. Homosexuals and others deemed "anti- social" were also persecuted and often murdered. In addition, thousands of political and religious dissidents such as communists, socialists, trade unionists, and Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted for their beliefs and behavior and many of these individuals died as a result of maltreatment."

**************

It is an affront to compare a POTENTIAL technological problem with a planned, systematic elimination of millions of lives. There are many historical events you might want to discuss when considering the economic or social impacts of Y2K. Your selection of the Holocaust reveals not only an ignorance of history, but utter insensitivity.

-- Mr. Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), May 10, 1999.

Nice try double-decker. My you are a waesel aren't you - using all the tricks in the book.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 10, 1999.

And as I've been to Dachau and seen first hand what happened, and worked in Germany and Israel I am personally offended that you would try and give us all a history lesson.

Double-decker - you're not fooling ANYONE on this forum, you are as shallow as they come.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 10, 1999.

Not another whining jew - get over it.

-- @ (@@@.@), May 10, 1999.

No I'm a Brit you racist bastard.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 10, 1999.

looks like trouble in doomer paradise...

-- no (one@home.,), May 10, 1999.

Andy,

I was talking about Decker, dumbass.

-- @ (@@@.@), May 11, 1999.

Am I fucking psychic?

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 11, 1999.