First of all, happy Mothers day to everyone, or at least, all mothers,
grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and above, and most of all to the ArcterMom,
who has put up with me for the last 25 years or so. Love you mom.
Quick Sunday night TV wrapup. Simpsons was unusual as normal tonight. Malcom
in the Middle was amusing as always. On the X-Files it looks like Scully’s
baby will be Superman, and
Krychek (sp?) is back helping her, Mulder and Dogget. This episode wasn’t all
that terrible…. it’s a 1/2 so we’ll see how the finale next week is. Wonder
if it’s a series finale or a season finale. Last weeks was far cooler I
think, the one about the lizard man… they kinda got back to their roots.
The Practice was decent too, a season finale, with all the various people now
doubting that they are doing good getting murders off and so on. It was nice
to see the character who shot the short funny looking guy getting 2 10 years
sentaces…. and then getting an extra 75 years tacked on to both of
those sentances.
While watching TV I saw a commercial… well, an advertisement… hmmm… what
do you call something that’s not an ad and not a TV show that’s on TV?
Anyway, it was just a little thing for Mothers Day, spelling out the letters
in M O T H E R and printing out a little rhyme for each letter. Anyway, as
the ad approached it’s end I found myself thinking, “who is this brought to us
by?” It was curtesy of Global TV of course, but that’s not the point.
Have we as a society gotten so entraced in the idea that everything has to be
brought to us by someone, or something, needing to get their name in front of
our faces to show us what nice people we are so that we’ll buy more of their
crap? What happened to the idea that one person can do something nice for
another, without wanting anything back or asking anything from them? At my
University College we got a nice new library and computer lab. First Heritage
donated the cash mooooney for it. Know how I know this? Because their name
was plastered on both sides of the lab and if I recall correctly, in other
places throughout the building. Did they donate the money to us out of the
kindness of their hearts? I don’t think so…. they donated the money to us
because the RTI (Return On Investment) was probably thought to be high enough
that it was worth it to them as a company.
I’ve got a lot of spare hardware sitting around my apartment, computer bits,
parts, motherboards, chips, cases, powersupplys, whatever. It comes from
being a computer geek, that’s what happens. I don’t have as much as I did a
while back though. Know why? Because people say they are looking for
something and I say “I’ve got one, do you want it?” I (generally) try to give
stuff away with no request for any payback, exchange, whatever. If
they offer, hey, I won’t say no (some of ufies.org is running on hardware that I got from
my buddy raskal because of this.
But I try, without saying anything and by trying to promote giving, to show
that you can get something for nothing, and when you do that it is
not attached to a “brought to you by” or a “from your friends
at” message. I don’t claim to be good at this, nor any sort of an example to
try to follow (I’ve made more than one mistake in my past). I’d just like to
see more Mothers Day commercials that simply say “Happy Mothers Day” period.
full stop. end of sentance. fade away...