Kiddie Credit*

While sitting in Mom’s easy chair during a recent vacation, I was enjoying my remote control cruise through the Tampa area offerings when a glitzy commercial for a new Barbie doll jumped out and slapped me rudely upside the head. For the first time in a long while I was rendered — speechless.

Although it is difficult to believe, “Credit Card Barbie“ comes complete with a bar-code-reader, check out stand and a toy credit card processing center wherein curious new Barbie doll owners are actually trained how to use a credit card. I suppose the youngsters wait in make-believe lines while play-friends electronically scan in their (optional) make-believe purchases and swiping their make-believe platinum Barbie cards. If I’m not mistaken, a receipt is printed out at the end of the shopping extravaganza, after which the children waltz off to dream about their new acquisitions, clueless  about the importance of cash flow and the accrual of debt — just like Mommy and Daddy.

“The Shopping Boutique Playset comes with three outfits, including shoes and sunglasses, and the rotating pole can hold up to 20 clothing and accessory pieces. Also included is a display stand that doubles as the cashier counter where you “buy” your clothes. Swipe the Fashion Fever credit card to “pay” and find out the remaining balance on your account. But don’t fret. Once the balance hits zero, it will reset so you can continue to shop. Barbie dolls not included.”

Training young children to equate the acquisition of material goods by using toy credit cards does not strike me as being a particularly good thing. Learning how to handle real money in real life is difficult enough for adults without the toy industry injecting their single-minded marketing ethics — like some kind of evil, brain-washing drug — directly into the minds of children. I’d like to think that the introduction of sound financial principles taught to our children should be a function of good parenting rather than corporate marketing.

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* (Credit Card Barbie, as promised from the RDJ archives, circa 2007)

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Start and End Time Apocalypse

I bet I’m not the only one noticing how television programming has recently begun messing with us big time. Probably in retaliation for our recording more and more programs and later fast-forwarding through the commercials. Yeah. I’m talking about those start and end times that mysteriously add or subtract a minute or three to a television show’s runtime for no other reason than disrupting our viewing habits by snipping off a recorded program’s last couple of scenes.

Now, THAT’S some serious messing with us.

In my mind, there is absolutely nothing worse than losing the last 45 seconds of a “Longmire” or “Elementary” or “Castle” or “Da Vinci’s Demons” or a “Vikings” episode just before the whodunnit is revealed or some inconceivable secret is about to be disclosed or unspeakable act committed or a weapon is pointed directly at a major character’s heart.

Which is why I have begun a grass roots and strategic first-level counterattack campaign using my provider’s recording/Timer options to extend an end time by tagging on an extra 2 or 3 minutes of recording time to the scheduled end of a favorite program. Unfortunately, my counter attack has been short lived and I gotta tell you that television networks have already begun counter-counterattacking my devious counterattack, and satellite providers absolutely love it: by increasing the number of late-ending programming, standard satellite receivers can’t always record more than one popular program at the same time if program start and end times overlap by those silly 2 or 3 minutes.

Most cable/satellite companies don’t give a hoot how television programming messes with us or how frustrated we get trying to record our programming choices in their entirety. That’s because most of these satellite providers have come up with an expensive solution:

“ATTENTION VIEWERS: if your older receivers allow you to only record 2 programs at the same time, simply purchase our new “super-dooper” receiver package. Sure, it costs WAY more than your current obsolete receiver box, but it allows you to arbitrarily record up to SEVEN shows simultaneously — and, with over TWO THOUSAND hours of recording time!”

There are additional tricks lurking in the television programming arsenal of weaponry which affect us viewers, too. Here are only a few of them:

• Miniaturized unreadable credits from the previous show running half-screen at a ka-zillion miles per hour and parallel to the new and current program’s miniaturized opening half-screen scene, making both the credits and the new opening scenes impossibly too small to see. What the hell is the point in having credits if we can’t read them — isn’t that the point of having credits?
• Extremely large, cutesy and obnoxious animated teases that interrupt the program we are watching and inform us what shows will be airing later on in the evening. What — we are smart enough to reprogram DishNetwork or Direct TV’s start and end times but we’re too stupid to know which programs we want to watch?
• The quickie flashback synopses at the beginning of new episodes that begin, “previously on…” yet rarely, EVER show us the closing scenes from the previous week’s show. You know the ones I mean — the same scenes that were clipped the first time because television programming was “messing with us”.
• Inane informational pop-ups, TV station logos, and screen-crawlers that completely cover up CC Closed Captioning but only during critical scenes.

GOOD NEWS:

Thankfully, I have come up with a 100% sure-fire and fail-proof solution to resolve all start and end time recording issues. All you have to do is take out a small wire snip, carefully open your receiver’s hidden contro

“ATTENTION READERS: this blog post has been clipped due to arbitrary word-count programming changes.”

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What Bears do in the Woods

Baby Bear returns from bathroom after using Charmin. Momma Bear has just finished cleaning Baby Bear’s bedroom.

I have never trusted bears who use toilet paper. Bears are no different than all wild animals: they prefer doing their business out of sight. In private. As in a “deep inside the proverbial woods” kind of way.

While Baby Bear bends over to remove lint from his bedspread, Momma Bear approvingly examines Baby Bear’s butt.

The makers of Charmin toilet paper think using bears to sell toilet paper is both clever and cute. Unfortunately, it seems TV viewing audiences agree. Success has finally relocated The Bear Family from the wilderness, where they belong, to upscale suburbia where bear cubs have their own private bathrooms.

Too much information. I happen to know all self-respecting bears would NEVER think about crapping on TV. For that matter, neither would Mr. Whipple.

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Non-Privacy Policies

How can we help (ourselves)?

 

I recently received an email from Lowe’s informing me they have changed their “Privacy Policy”. These are the same folks who — every time I purchase something and try to check out — matter-of-factually ask me for my telephone number. I always refuse. Why do they need my telephone number? I mean, chances are good (since I normally use a debit card for my purchases) they already have access to WAY more than just my telephone number.

The Lowe’s Privacy Policy Change email contained a link to their new Policy Page, no more or less frightening than other such policy pages, I’m sure. I spent some time reading through all the gobbledegook, finally taking a breather at their “Your Choices” section, wherein they pacified me a bit into believing I could remove myself from the insanity of online shopping data sharing, because everyone is in cahoots nowadays; Google, Amazon, Facebook — all of the biggies — wantonly swapping, sharing and receiving personal information and shopping habits as if it belonged to them, not you. How many times have I purchased something at Amazon and a day later the item I just bought is plastered on every browser page I visit? Depending on the item, that can be rather embarrassing if you have a visitor who asks to use your computer.

“Hey, Tim, how do you like that hemorrhoids cushion?”

I suspect the Lowe’s Privacy Policies are no different than most, but I gotta tell you, when I got to the part that said: “To be removed from all of Lowe’s official email, telephone and postal mail marketing, choose one of the following options: email customercare@lowes.com and type “REMOVE FROM ALL MARKETING” in the subject line…” I felt a shimmy of hope wiggle through me like a bolt from that first shot of tequila.

I opened my email program and began to reply. That’s when I read a couple more sentences and got down to the: “For any of these options, please include your name, address, phone number and email address in the request, and let us know how you provided us with the information.” part.

You have GOT to be kidding me. Let me get this right. They want MORE private information about me so they can remove my “old” private information  from their “Lowe’s official email, telephone and postal mail marketing”? How crazy is THAT!  Damn, they also want me to tell them HOW I provided them with “the information” they already have about me. Give me a break.

Little did we know — years back when we rushed like children toward the Google Candy Store and all the other personal information black- holes-from-Hell-blood-sucking-vampire-ish-mega-sites — the can of worms we were uncapping. Did I just say children and can of worms? Silly me. My bad. I really meant lemmings and Pandora’s Box.

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Never Again (yeah, right)

I’ve said “DON’T DO IT!” to myself a zillion times. And yet I still DO IT in moments of weakness. I’m talking about buying those cheap, store-brand Ziploc-types of zipper freezer bags with prices so low they’re hard to pass up. And, every time I falter in order to save a few bucks, I wind up cursing myself for being so stupid. Either the zippers work one time only and then derail, or the bag itself splits open upon trying to seal it up. And every time it happens I say “NEVER AGAIN!” out loud one more time.

Yeah, right.

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Plastic Wrats

I really hate the new kind of plastic packaging, the indestructible type that is heat-vacuum-shrunk around the purchased item; the type whose packaging design offers no means of opening it short of using a hacksaw. The plastic itself is so thick it is impossible to tear or pry apart. And I know that even if I am somehow able to slip a finger in-between the plastic joins, I run a very real risk of severing a digit or two on the wickedly sharp edges.  Every time I cautiously approach one of these packages, I wonder how many finger-related law suits have been filed.

Since kitchen shears are no help at all, I decided to purchase an inexpensive pair of tin snips. But when I found the pair of industrial-grade snips I wanted at my local Lowes Home Center — you guessed it — they were tightly cocooned in an impenetrable spent-plutonium plastic diaper.

“Would you please open this package for me?” I asked the checkout person after purchasing the snips. “My fingers aren’t what they used to be and I’d like to keep them that way.”

The cashier slipped her own pair of tin snips from under the counter. Snip, snip. A couple of dangerous daring finger maneuvers, and the metal snips separated from the packaging. She made it look so easy. “There you go sir. Works like a champ.”

They must. She still had all of her fingers.

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FFT: Gobbledegook the Foolish

FRIDAY FOOD THING

It began many years ago when I realized taking pictures from a TV screen was easy if you had a digital camera. Just for fun, I began taking snapshots of outrageous television advertisements. Outrageous from the viewpoint of product reality: what they advertise vs. what we get.

I want one! Burger King Whopper TV ad screenie.

My first experience was a Burger King “Whopper” sandwich ad. I mean, have you EVER bought a “PERFECT WHOPPER” that looks like this one? Sesame seeds placed just so; exquisitely deposited dollops of ketchup and mayonnaise; thick onion slices to die for; perfectly arranged serrated pickles; Ginsu-sliced tomatoes and leafy lettuce straight from Martha Stewart’s garden?

Hell, I don’t want to EAT this burger — I want to frame it and hang it on my wall!

Which got me to thinking.

I printed the picture and carried it into my local BK. When my Whopper was delivered I opened the wrapper on the counter and asked for the manager. Yeah. I was a butt-head. I placed the ad picture I had taken next to the pathetic burger-thingy. “I want one that looks like THIS one!” I said, pointing to my picture.

Needless to say, I was not very popular with that particular BK establishment for a long time to come. Like — forever. Of course, I realized the burger-thingy’s shortcoming was not the manager’s fault, false advertising or not. And even though I received an extra burger or two, I went home to the internet and did a little “false advertising” research, where I discovered it is nearly impossible to get a “false advertising” conviction because of  little known legalese gobbledegook often referred to as “reasonable expectation”.

In the above link, the following excerpt pretty much sums it up: “An advertiser cannot be charged with liability with respect to every conceivable misconception, however outlandish, to which his representations might be subject among the foolish or feeble-minded.”

At least the bureaucrats who concocted the document did not exclude themselves from the folks they are trying to confuse.

Today’s FFT is not about the Whopper, however.  It is about “Mrs. Paul’s frozen, 100% WHOLE FILLETS — Beer Batter Fillets”. Man, does that picture on the box look terrific — or does it? When I got the package home, I noticed a tiny, unobtrusive bit of text on the bottom right corner of the box: “ENLARGED TO SHOW QUALITY”.

“Enlarged to Show Quality” Perception vs. Reality: the REAL fillet is to the right.

Do those advertising folks know how to gobbledegook us foolish and feeble minded folks or what?

BTW, the 4-inch long fillets tasted “okay”.

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The Future of Television

Sadly, the following video portends the future of television. It is a video clip from a recent “Hawaii 5-0” television show in which the fast-food restaurant, Subway, pioneers a new and alarming approach to the continued degradation of our television viewing experience: full-blown advertisements, whose pitch lines are delivered by the actors themselves, carefully scripted and unscrupulously inserted into the show’s running dialog. It is an embarrassment to watch, and, I’m sure, an embarrassment and an additional degradation for the cast and crew who are forced to partake, which is evident when viewing the clip.

(submitted by Rich)

This new type of shameless encroachment into our personal viewing habits far exceeds the recent introduction of the visual “product placement” types of advertising cropping up nowadays in television shows and movie productions as well.

For example: on the “Fringe” Sci-Fi series (one of my favorites!)  last week, during a conversation inside a speeding vehicle, the camera lingers a bit too long on a tight shot of the actress’s finger pushing a phone button on the steering wheel.

The “NISSAN” leather-imprinted logo, clearly visible in the shot, is entirely irrelevant to the scene’s action. I suppose soon — during this type of product-insertion shot and the advent of more Subway-driven abominations —  the actors will be carrying on a scripted dialog about gas mileage, dealership incentives, and choices of additional items:

“Well, gee, Peter, while we are busy chasing down that shape shifting maniac who’s hell-bent on destroying our universe, I thought you might like to know Nissan has a super deal cooking for two days only at selected dealers for qualified buyers that lets you choose any seven of their 16 incredible accessories for ZERO down and 6 years to pay! Let’s forget about shape shifters for a few minutes, make a quick detour, and go check out that exciting new candy-apple-red Nissan pickup truck offer before heading over to Subway and checking out yet ANOTHER super deal I saw last night on Hawaii 5-0!”

Shame on you advertisers. Shame on you television networks. Shame, Shame, SHAME!

I think I’m going to puke.

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Flip Flop

(circa 1989)

The office computer where I work is a dog. It is about 20 times slower than my personal computer at home. And we won’t even talk about the work computer’s sub standard, syrup-slow dialup Internet speed, which is like pouring frozen molasses down a clogged drain and waiting for the last drip to drop. Or its 256 K of memory. I can brew a pot of coffee while waiting to see the Weather Channel’s National Radar picture. And heaven forbid if I accidentally click on the ANIMATED Doppler link. Incoming junk mail often takes up to 20 minutes to download.

I hate my computer at work.

When I get home I boot up MY computer first thing just to get into an UN-office state of mind. Zip. National Weather comes up in 2 seconds. Zap. MS Word loads instantly. Zing, zang, I’m happier than a mouse in a cheese factory.

On the other hand, I recall a time several years ago when my office computer was much, MUCH faster than my home computer. That was back when even mediocre computers cost thousands of dollars. I loved going to work. A twenty megabyte hard drive and a 12 megahertz processor waited for me every morning, a sweet mistress waiting for input. What’s not to like? Back then I hated going HOME. I rarely used my computer at home for anything other than writing. WordStar 2.0 and a 10 megabyte hard drive.

Funny how times change. Zip, zang. Flip, flop. I hate my computer at work.

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Music Video’s: Bah, Humbug!

I’ve never been one to appreciate music videos. The first one I happened to encounter was the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song, “SOUTHERN CROSS”. I think the video was marketed later as an afterthought, in a shameless effort to catch up with the (then) current rave of slick video productions, which indelibly pollute the listener’s mind, and the minds of our children, with prefabricated pictures nothing short of brainwashing.

To me, good music is like good poetry. Each time I enjoy a particular piece of music, or revisit a thought-provoking poem, my mind readily creates its own wonderful translation — new worlds filled with rich images and changing discoveries. To me, the quality of rediscovery is an earmark of great art, stolen from me now and forever whenever I chance upon the once great song, “SOUTHERN CROSS“, playing on some distant radio station or friend’s stereo.

Thank goodness a video camera wasn’t available when Beethoven unleashed his fearsome “FIFTH SYMPHONY”, or when Jefferson Airplane let fly with “HOUSE AT POONEIL CORNER”.

“From here to heaven is a scar,
Dead center, deep as death.
All the idiots have left.
The idiots have left.

Cows are almost cooing,
Turtle doves are mooing;
Which is why a Pooh is poohing
In the sun
Sun”

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Humanizing Email

Few things get me riled up faster than receiving a forwarded email whose subject line begins with “FW:”. It just miffs me no end, especially when FW: is followed by a string of “FW:s” back to back, and another couple of them plugged in automatically by the browser at the end of the message. What’s worse are those forwarded emails whose first 36-point, red font line begins with something like: “Gee, whiz, this is absolutely the most amazing thing I’ve ever read!!!”, punctuated with no less than three exclamation marks just in case I missed the importance of the first two.

Folks I know would never say something like that to me in person, so why do they feel the urge to send it to me in an impersonal, bulk-generated email? Is it so difficult to take a few moments to delete the FW:s in the subject line and all inane comments made by a series of total strangers and add a sentence like: “Tim — I thought you might really get a chuckle out of this one.”, instead?

Lazy and inconsiderate senders who forward something along to others using a single mouse click without thinking about what they’re doing or taking the time to add a personal touch to the message, and who lack the common courtesy of having removed the offending string of FW:FW:FW:FW:FW:s or irrelevant comments have no place in my inbox. Think about it: If senders are too busy to take the time to clean up an email before sending it to us, should we not be too busy to take the time to read it? No one (not even the bulk-mail perpetuating sender) enjoys receiving mail filled with “>>>>>”, “RE:RE:RE:RE:”, “FW:FW:FW:” or other extraneous crapola or comments. Then why pass it along to friends?

Here’s four simple email rules I try to follow that helps make a visit to the inbox more pleasurable for all of us:

1. NEVER use “Reply to All” unless you personally know everyone on the list. Ever. Even then, don’t do it.
   
2. Delete everything that’s not pertinent to the message. This includes the subject line and message body.
3. ALWAYS delete other folks’ email addresses from the body of the message. Always. In today’s spammer society, no one wants their email address Johnny Appleseeded across the Internet. No one.
   
4. NEVER use “CC:” to send bulk email messages unless you are in a business environment. (“CC” also places all recipient email addresses in the body header of the email for all to see and be ultimately forwarded along to others. See # 3.) Instead of using “CC:”, use “BCC:”. Always. (If you don’t know how to do this, check your email browser’s HELP file.)
   

If you can — unless you are sending something to a sight-impaired audience — another nice thing to do is convert HTML emails (the ones with obnoxious colored text and fonts) to left-justified, unformatted TEXT before sending. Most email browsers allow you to set “always send as text” as a default within the “sending options” in your email browser preferences.

Truth is, I won’t get a chance to read many of these types of egregious email messages anyhow, because I’ve created a message rule that scans incoming subject lines for text that contains “FW:FW:FW”, immediately whisking it off to my junk email folder where it belongs.

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Lefty Lucy

In all the world I can think of few principles as unalterable as “Lefty Loosey-Righty Tightie”. Take a screwdriver to China, Russia or Mozambique, find any screw, and Lefty Loosey will loosen it. Take a wrench to France, England or Zanzibar, find any nut and Righty Tightie will tighten it. Open or close any jar anywhere on the planet: Lefty Loosey-Righty Tightie will not let you down.

So what’s the deal with twist ties?

For me, bread wrapper twist ties are the worst. Buy ten loaves — even from the same bakery — and I guarantee at least one of their twist ties will have been affixed by the demon twist tie machine from Hell.

The other day when I tried to open a new loaf of bread, Lefty Loosey suddenly became Righty Tightie — midway through the process! And by the time I figured that out, I had twisted that silly tie into a gnarly knot that required a pair of wire cutters to unravel.

Manufactures — are you listening?

Lefty Loosey-Righty Tightie: by golly, what can be more simple than that?

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Tim says: Okay. “Loosey” it is! Now I’ve made that error wrongy–righty…

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