Making It Up As I Go Along #227

An upcoming change in things. Due to my vacation coming up (July 21 to August 1) there will be an update on July 20… none on July 23… none on July 30… And a quick one on August 2 before returning to the regular schedule on August 6. I thought of keeping the updates going while in Newfoundland, but it will likely be too busy with little nieces running around and such… so the break will be done instead.

MONDAY…
--- Up kind of early (before 7:00) but able to get back to sleep for a few more hours.
--- Around the house on e-mail for much of the morning. Pretty quiet times.
--- They talk about economic sanctions against North Korea as punishment for their weapons testing. But how does that help the people of one of the already most poor countries on Earth? I hate to say it but straight to military action may be the way to go here if the North Koreans can’t be reasoned with.
--- Happy birthday to my mother. Soon to be seen… the celebration can happen a bit more face to face.
--- Work is fine. It’s weird seeing Laura and Karen back on evening shift (after months in the training unit). It will make for some laughs again I’m sure… even if they aren’t my team mates anymore.

TUESDAY…
--- Rare Birds on DVD in the morning. Getting my Newfoundland mind back in gear… I love the Newfoundland dialect when it isn’t some forced thing for an audience. Speaking like a Newfoundlander in Ottawa is about the same as juggling at a party. It’s there for kicks… and I don’t want to juggle.
--- Busy at work dealing with stats.
--- There are about sixty mosquitoes on my door when I get home. Thanks to it being a hot and humid night. Probably a dozen of them come in with me… it’s a pain.

WEDNESDAY…
--- Long day. In early to prepare for a meeting… and have the meeting… and I still stayed until the regular time (more or less). So a little banked time will come in handy soon enough.
--- Chinese food for supper is good.
--- A long walk tonight is pretty peaceful. I think I passed one person and two cars in the hour.

THURSDAY…
--- Hot day. 39 or 99 F with the humidity. Work is less busy than lately so I can go at a pretty calm pace.

FRIDAY…
--- Hot day… about the same temperature as yesterday. The car is like a sauna. It still doesn’t stop Mike, Laura and me from going to the Chip Wagon for supper. Good times… Mike and Laura are easy to relax around.

SATURDAY…
--- Quiet day around the house. I’m really tired all day so I’m sleeping much of it.


This Wilderness Trail Brought to You by…
Is there no better way to be driven out from the city and into the country than advertising? Cities are great… I love cities and can hardly wait for that right time to move from my suburb no-man’s zone further into this city. But urban life in North America is brutally commercial. The more urban your lifestyle, the more you get bombarded with sales pitches. Newspapers, billboards, sports arenas and stadiums, the internet, TV, radio… all dominated by product sales pitches. Our economy is largely based on how to pry the disposable income out of the public’s pockets. Even the postal carrier is little more than a flyer deliverer now. It’s bad enough that they won’t bring your mail right to your door anymore (they need these large postal boxes where they can deposit all the mail at once without need of walking the neighbourhood). But now most of the mail I pull out of my post box is advertising flyers. I’m battling this though… I take the junk out of my mail box and deposit it straight into the outgoing mail slot. It’s the modern day circle of life (advertising style).

TV commercials used to try to either inform or entertain. There was some thought put into them and you at least felt like there was an effort on the part of the seller to better the life of the buyer (either through education or giving a smile).

More and more, these commercials are only about two things… pound the name of the product into a person’s subconscious or guilt you into buying their product. Making you think you’re a lesser person if you don’t buy what it is they’re selling.

One of the best examples of the drill-it-into-your-head approach I’ve seen is out right now. Some product named Head On consists of a commercial of a smiling woman rubbing what looks like a deodorant stick on her forehead. She’s smiling blissfully and the voice over simply repeats the same statement three times… “Head On, apply directly to the forehead.” We are then told that we can get Head On without a prescription. And that’s it.

I have no idea why the smiley woman is rolling this gunk onto her head. Did she have a headache and does this stuff magically make the pain go away? Was she depressed and in need of a high? Was she hyper and needing to be settled down? Maybe she’s just stupid and does what she’s told.

Many products fall into the ‘you’re a lesser person if you don’t buy this’ approach. I recently saw a spaghetti miracle product. No more waiting for a pot of water to boil! No more having to break the pasta in order for it to fit into the slow boiling pot! Now get this plastic canister (looking much like the canister you pull the pasta out of) and pour boiling water in there to watch the pasta cook… in minutes!

It leaves me wanting to run to the phone. I’ve always had so much trouble making spaghetti! Come on… I make about three dishes ever. I’m about as far from a cook or chef as you can find… and one of the meals I can very easily prepare is spaghetti. I really don’t need to buy some plastic tub to magically do the work for me.

Then there is the ultimate guilt job… Viagra. What once was a product for the poor ol’ soul who could no longer be a man in the bedroom is now a product each man should be taking. You have no erectile difficulties? Foolishness… who do you think you are to say that you’re better than these millions of men who can’t get it up? Now take this stuff! The woman you love will thank you for it. Not doing it is letting her down!

If a man had no trouble being a man before the Viagra onslaught, he sure learned to have trouble soon afterwards. We’re so much a society of sheep and we’re so swayed by images of happy men holding hands with smiling women as they walk into the bedroom preparing to go where no network television channel can take us that I’d think there are single, sexually inactive men buying this stuff. Considering that we’re now being told we aren’t really a man unless we can sustain six hour erections, I bet there are many a lonely fellow just laying alone in bed, making sure the drug builds him up… just like it would his sexually active friends.

Hummer is now guilting the meek. Ads of men and women being pushed around by their fellow man… or woman. Ads where the kind hearted man is pushed aside in the checkout line at the grocery store. And Ads where the gentle mother is at the playground with her daughter… waiting patiently in line for the slide… only to have another mother pushing her daughter in front and preparing to pick a fight when the meek woman protests.

In these ads, the meek and mild look up to see a Hummer rumble by. And like Clark Kent disappearing into a phone booth in order to unveil Superman, the mild mannered victims disappear into the Hummer dealership, trade in their minivans, and come out boldly… with rock music blasting… and, in the case of the woman who was bullied at the playground, with the daughter probably rolling around somewhere in the back of the behemoth. Or maybe the daughter was traded with the minivan in order to make up the difference for the suburban tank… we the viewers never know the poor daughters outcome.

Of course, Hummer has a social conscience. Global warming is a problem… they know that. So they give us the H3… the midsized Hummer. I think that, in reality, midsized means they rounded off the corners. And I’m sure even the midsized has the fuel efficiency of a transport truck. But using the term midsized makes some of the sheep feel the Hummer is now okay. It’s definitely good for that suburb mom now… she won’t be pushed around at the playground anymore.

Yes, with all of this kind of advertising, I want to go into the country. Let me wander wilderness trails where pine trees are the billboards and hills are named after original settlers or explorers rather than products. Where men are men even without pharmaceutical aids. Where you’re inspired to do more in life than buy the latest gadget or knickknack.