I’m sure everyone knows the kind of commercials I’m talking about. Some of them are really obvious. Some of them less so. Here are a few that I love.

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

Let’s get the obvious choice out of the way. It is hard to argue the awesomeness of the commercial. It is a perfect melange of a random, yet entertaining series of events and a man who is not equal to anyone on this earth. Sure, this debuted at the Super Bowl, at which every single commercial is insane, yet unlike all those commercials, this one makes perfect sense. So much so that I have memorized this commercial. I think it’s made me a better man. Pretty much all the Old Spice commercials after this one apply as well, but this one is the most awesome.

Yellow Pages Mobile App Ads

I have no clue if these are running anywhere else but Canada, so I’m unsure if this is obvious to the rest of the world. Anyways, there are three of these advertisements, and each one is as funny as the last (this one being my favourite). They’re each random, one implies lesbianism and one edges on disturbing. Yet they grab your attention, make you laugh, and make sure you know that you can get shit quick with the app.

BMW M Commercial

How do you say “down boy” in German? Stomp on the goddamn pedal, that’s how! It is a beautiful, simple commercial. Dobermans are intimidating. I’m sure if you had one barking at you, you’d probably want to run away and not take your chances. The BMW M engine’s exhaust note is even more intimidating, and the thunderous noise coming from that straight-6 would make you piss your pants, or come in them.

Ally Bank

Kids are amusing. Messing with kids is even more amusing. So when a man in a suit comes into a series of commercials treating kids unfairly, we take notice and laugh. Then we understand that banks are sadistic bastards who pull your strings every goddamn day. Makes perfect sense.

Terry Tate: Office Linebacker

I have no clue what Reebok is selling in this commercial, but I’m buying it anyhow. The thought of Terry Tate tackling me for not doing so has me shitting my pants.

Super Smash Bros.

There’s nothing better than beating other things up, other than random beatings in comical situations. This even takes it to another level. Donkey Kong tossing that motherfucker Pikachu around? Sign me up!

Yes, THIS.

That’s easy, actually. It will lead to further ease of access in home and business computing. Imagine walking into your office, speaking out “Open folder: Case 308″, having all the contents of the file on your screen, and being able to easily organize multiple documents to display on screen for comparisons, study, or even presentations and meetings. At home? Similar functions with music and video could come to fruition (which is already on display with Kinect).

Notice what I didn’t mention in that last paragraph? Yep, gaming. I’m in no way excited for the gaming aspect of Kinect. I think it’ll be too awkward, and although it’ll have function (such as RTSes being controlled à la Minority Report, which would be awesome), for the large percentage of games, I don’t think it’ll work.

Then again, there’s a reason Kinect isn’t a stand-alone platform (at least, as of my guess); it’s a tech demo. With Kinect, Microsoft can properly test the capabilities of their motion sensor system, and easily calibrate it to perfection (or as close as possible). What better way to do this than with gaming? It requires the camera to capture sensitive movements quickly. If it performs well in a gaming environment, it’s surely ready for the home computer world. And soon enough, Tom Cruise will be in a police station bringing up pictures of every suspect on a 70″ widescreen HDTV and organizing them by hand, as a probability program calculates who most probably committed the crime.

Yes, I want this in my home.

I wasn’t so lucky.

If you’re wondering where I was while I wasn’t updating, I had the chicken pox for the last week. For those who don’t remember it, let me clearly give my description. I begin by summing it up; it was the worst thing ever.

It started off by pulling me out of work with a large headache and stomach ache. Those symptoms continued, but then pox started appearing everywhere and the disease was confirmed. My head couldn’t rest in certain positions because the pox in my hair were painful to sleep on. Imagine getting punched in the head; that’s what sleeping on a pox felt like. As well, because of this, I developed a horrible muscle pain in my trapezius muscles. This, along with the itchiness, made it impossible to sleep. Not to forget that the rest of my muscles made me feel as tense as someone who just swam the English Channel. Last, but not least, were the pox on the bottom of my foot, making it a pain to walk flat footed and forcing me to walk on my toes or the sides of my foot.

The bright side? The pox had a horrible sense of direction, and thankfully, left my face unscathed for the most part. A mark on my cheek, a couple on my nose, but otherwise, my face is still sexy. My forearms are relatively clean as well. Yep, the pox, for the most part, stayed to the back and the chest, places where I can easily hide them (or, if it gets to the point where I am naked, won’t care to have them). As well, they really only lasted a week, and the harshest symptoms only stayed less than that. I only had two nights of sleep where I really had trouble.

So, how bad was it really? People say it’s worse when it’s older, but I actually can compare it to both my brothers, who had it within the same time frame. One caught it at 19, and had barely any effects, and the one who is 14 had it the worse. So for us, nope, it’s not worse for the older… until you consider we both lost about $800 combined in wages.

So I agree; it’s worse to have the pox when you’re older.

First of all was GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. Similar to the first game only in name, it met lackluster reviews, and probably caused the angry cries of thousands of gamers saying, “What the hell is this? This isn’t GoldenEye!” On the other hand, at least it wasn’t trying to be, and gamers everywhere would only accept basically an update of the same game. And that was about to happen some time in 2008, but no deal could be done to get the game on both the Wii’s Virtual Console and the 360′s Xbox Live Arcade.

Fast forward to today, and Activision officially reveals their “remake” of GoldenEye on the Wii. Most people cheered; instead, I held my breath. With good reason apparently. According to Kotaku, there are many changes, even so much so as to axe the Brosnan Bond and put in the Craig Bond, as well as making it play similar to Call of Duty (see regenerative health and perks for splitscreen multiplayer). The video that was leaked yesterday (and probably replayed today officially) also helped to get to that conclusion, as it showed close-quarters insta-kills not related to slappers.

Alright, for legal reasons, we can’t expect the same game to come out. At this point, it seems like Microsoft and Nintendo won’t make friends. Rather than a cool refresh, this game will be a butcher knife to the original cartridge. A great thing about GoldenEye was how simple it was. It didn’t take much for someone to get into the game and have fun, the multiplayer didn’t give experienced players too large of an experience gap (and even added handicaps, both in options and characters [Oddjob, Jaws]), and if you were bored, you could turn on cheats and make scientists dance. This will probably be none of that. It’s not that the Call of Duty system is bad, but it’s bloated, and made for straight-line combat. Online will always play a certain way, and give advantages to certain combinations. In all, this isn’t the GoldenEye that we all knew, and this isn’t the GoldenEye that I want either.