Feeling a bit off kilter today. Not sure why. Changing weather or something. Anyway, time for some random rants and explanations of things that piss me off.
Ads with little kids in them
- What is it these days with people using little kids in their advertisement. Sure it’s cute to see a bunch of 4 year olds screaming “Blah motors has the best deal!” or some kid telling me how her dad has the best carpet deals in the lower mainland, but man, it’s just as lame as anyone else trying to sell me their line of BS. You might say that this method is employed to make you remember because it’s so annoying… well, I don’t, I change the channel, and make a concious effort to put it out of my mind.
Advertising methods in general
- On that note, what is it with advertising these days! You can say pretty much anything as true these days! Just stick one of the following phrases after anything you say as true, and it seems you’ll be covered.
- Based on labratory results
- Actual results may vary
- Compared to other vehicles in it’s class
- Not available in all areas
- Clients may incur some charges
- Results not typical
- … plus cost of food
- Results may vary
Sensationalism in the news
- Wow, seems like everything is turned into a drama on channels like CNN, or MSNBC to boost ratings. I must have seen hours* of footage on how the US is on “yellow” alert, the reasoning behind the alert level, how the july 4th blah blah blah…. gads, give us some good news straight one of these days! Course, “news programs”, advertising, and tabloid programs are pretty close to each other these days anyway. And as I’ve said before, all programs gravitate towards being jerry springer.
* based on clinical studies
Computer games blamed for women’s low self image
- This one really pissed me off. I was surfing and hit SexTV (yes, I did surf to it, as it’s not worth the hype). They had a story on how computer games featuring disproportionate, scantily clad females is affecting girls and women’s self images. Excuse me????? Have these geniuses passed by a magazine rack lately and seen the shit known as Cosmo, Redbook, and the other magazines featuring women who resemeble anorexic 12 year olds? Good God, at least a computer game you know is fake, and the characters don’t pretend to be real, or doing real things, but these magazines display their airbrushed and bulimic models as people who exist out in the real world. A lady being interviewed (a game programmer in Vancouver) was saying how of course computer game characters are generally exaggerated, as when you jump into the fantasy world of the computer game, it’s far more fun to play as a muscle bound super hero, a brave and resilliant soldier, or a sexy, long legged oriental teenager in a skirt with a slit up to your ass than an out of work and overweight computer programmer, or a bored middleage housewife.
Christian TV Shows on when I can’t change the channel
- Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any problem with pretty much anything on TV. If you want a show talking about how gophers are the best pets, or that intel is in fact, the devil here on earth, and that all good worshippers of amd should rise up and kill any intel user out there, or whatever crap they put on, as long as I don’t have to watch it! Well, one of the advantages of this new gym I joined is that they have a “cardio loft” with all their bikes and treadmills, and they have TVs mounted on the ceiling to watch. Twice when I’ve been in there doing a run I’ve been stuck watching 100 huntely street (a christian tabloid show, pretty much like other tabloid shows, but with less flashing of breasts and swearing at the studio audience) and some world vision thing. The TV was right in front of me, and without excersing hotties down below doing weights (there were none at this time), there was really nowhere else to look. My one tiny shining ray of amusement was the bad, bad, bad job that the text-on-screen (what the heck is that called) was doing, giving all sorts of interesting modifications of words spoken that it didn’t understand.
- Speaking of World Vision…
- Not sure if you’re familiar with them, they are like CARE or the peace corps, and put out pleas for a dollar a day to feed a kid in a third world country, and they let you write them, etc. The show basically consists of two parts. Rich actors going to the most downtrodden parts of the world and showing us the most horrible conditions that people are living in, and a couple of rich white hosts with good teeth holding up pictures of kids and asking people to call in and sponsor them. Don’t get me wrong, I sympathize, and wish I could help (see unemployed programmer comment above). My parents worked for CARE [archive.org link] long ago, and if I’m lucky someday I will be able to contribute to lives in need like they did, and get the exposure to the world they did. However, why the hell do they have to talk about how every kid they try to get sponsors for is “cute”, “adorable”, or “precious”? I see there being only a couple of answers. All little kids are cute in some way, so don’t bother mentioning it, and let people see for themselves that the kids are cute. Or all the kids they try to get sponsors for are the cute ones, and they are a secret organization trying to weed out the gene pool of the ugly gene. The latter is less plausible, so to the world vision network, please stop saying how each and every kid is cute.
Enough ranting for now. I’m starting to feel better. Had a few people look over my resume, and am in the process of modifying it to be more friendly, less geeky, and more hirable. Course, this has been an ongoing process for the last few months. Wish I could work [archive.org link] at something 🙂