Everyday my bus drives by a giant anti-smoking billboard with a picture of a clogged artery. It looks like a cannoli made of swollen, infected flesh instead of dough. It’s disgusting. It’s not the only one I’ve seen in the city either. Honestly, I would rather live with a little more secondhand smoke in the air than start my day by looking at giant images of a plaque-clogged arteries. By the way, isn’t the message “smoking is bad”, already out enough? I think we get it. We seem to do this thing a lot in the States (and perhaps Down Under too) where we identify that something is becoming a problem, which is good, but then we way overstate it and overreact, so that the solution is almost as bad as the problem.*
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Our stove/oven is perhaps the most annoying appliance I’ve ever had to use. On the oven dial, all the settings are in icons not words, so if I want to cook something on broil, I have to reference the manual to find out which icon represents broil. It’s not like the pictures are intuitive, either (oh, two wavy lines represent bake, of course). If one needs a manual to figure out the basic functions of your oven, you’ve failed as a manufacturer.
The stove is one of those completely flat electric stoves (no coils). First off, I prefer gas many times over, because it’s much easier to set the temperature correctly when you can see the flame, but that’s not my biggest gripe with our stove. My biggest gripe is that the on/off “button” (which is just a circle) is slightly temperamental so sometimes you have to press a few times to get it to go. I find myself sliding my thumb all around it, applying different amounts of pressure on different points, before it goes. Why design it this way? Why can’t you have a prominent on/off button or switch?
I feel the same way about my iPod, by the way. Why on earth is the on/off button the same as the play/pause button? I have to press down on it with just the right amount of pressure to get it to turn off. It’s an amazing piece of technology, and yet for some reason the simplest function is extremely annoying to utilize. It makes no sense.
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The other day at H’s, I was looking through his musical selection for something to play, and I put on The Backstreet Boys as a joke. Everybody booed and demanded I change it and started busting my chops, including H. I thought that was funny since I pulled it from his collection. How can you make fun of somebody for playing your music?
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I gave up on Catch-22 after about 100 pages. I just didn’t like it. Now, I’m bookless, but S put John Krakauker’s Pat Tillman book on order at the library at for me, so I’m waiting for that.
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A first-person account by a former NFL agent (weird, the first hit on Google was a link to my old home town paper, the Bellingham Herald) admitting he paid college players has piqued an ongoing sports-fan debate about whether or not college athletic stars are adequately compensated. I’m strongly of the opinion that they are not. On the contrary, I think they are often unjustly exploited to a very large degree. It’s a bit absurd to me that as a graduate student who did a relatively small amount of teaching, I was paid a stipend of about $20,000 a year, but the members of the basketball team who filled a 20,000 seat arena 15 times a year were not allowed a cent.
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*I tried to find this clip from The Simpsons on youtube, but couldn’t. It’s quite funny though. The scene is that Homer just took a driving test at the DMV, but his sisters in-law, who work at the DMV (and who are constantly feuding with Homer) failed him.
Marge: [walking up] So, Homer, how'd you do?
Homer: [glum] Well, I...
Super: Ladies, please don't tell me you're smoking in a government building. Because that is precisely the kind of infraction that can cost a couple of sisters their promotion.
[they gasp, and stammer]
Homer: [chuckles to himself] [sees Marge looking unhappy]
[sighs] I'll never forgive myself for this.
[grabs both cigarettes, drags]
Super: Wait a minute! Those are yours, sir?
Homer: [monotone] Yes. [coughs] I am in flavor country.
Super: [skeptical] Both of them?
Homer: [hacks] It's a big country.
Super: Ladies, I apologize. And you, sir, are worse than Hitler. [she slaps him]
I couldn't get into Catch 22 either. I've been secretly feeling guilty about it for years since it's supposedly wonderful and funny. I thought maybe I was either too dumb to get it or just don't have a good sense of humor, but I know YOU are smart (Ph.D in mathematics, anyone?) and have an excellent sense of humor (see Simpsons quote referenced in latest post) so now I feel much better about not liking it.
ReplyDeleteIt seemed like a lot of nonsense to me. Maybe it's a great satire that we just don't get it, maybe it's the emperor's new clothes.
ReplyDeleteHi DJG,
ReplyDeleteI agree about not wanting to look at the billboard, although I find 2nd hand smoke these days extremely offensive. Not sure why since I grew up in a house where my grandparents smoked liked chimneys. It didn't seem to bother me then.
And you are quite right about the overreaction ... that phenomena has been identified by others who analyze America's media culture. It has been referred to by some as the "panic cycle". First, an "issue" arises. It can be a real one such as bullying gay youth by their peers or the sudden resurgence of bedbugs.
More often, though, it's a completely Fox News contrived one such as with a political axe to grind such as "America outraged over the placement of a mosque AT Ground Zero".
In the post 9/11 U.S., ANYTHING having to do with a perceived terrorist angle instantly explodes as The Next Dire Threat. Here a Federal response is "demanded."
Typically, the "trend" is grossly and exaggerated overblown one such as "Tea Party Revolt Sweeps America, Dems will be obliterated for a generation."
The issue then builds through the 24/7 media news cycle to a crescendo.
Then, just as suddenly, boredom sets in, and the media machine, crack addict style, is out looking for its next fix.
Lastly, as for your stove, could you take a picture of the icons and post them? I'm curious what they look like.
An electric stove is grossly energy inefficient compared to natural gas stoves, esp. when your electricity is coming from coal-fired generation (as it probably is for Newcastle). The carbon footprint is, relatively speaking, huge.
Did I ever tell you I met one of the Backstreet Boys once?
Now I've that weird British expression "Carry coals to Newcastle" stuck in my head. It means to do something superfluous and pointless.
ReplyDeleteReg, are you going to go to Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity?" It's sounds right up your alley. I would consider going if still in DC.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if my electricity is coal-fired or not. The vast majority of the coal produced here is exported, as I understand it.
I'll post a pic when I get the chance, and which Backstreet Boy did you meet?
Kevin Richardson in 2001. He was at a Capitol Hill event to announce the formation of a new foundation to combat colorectal cancer in honor of his late father, who died of that. I was in journalism school at the time and in the student wire service -- and on Capitol Hill that day.
ReplyDeleteAs for Australia, it is actually pretty heavily dependent on coal-fired electricity generation. here is the EIA report from 2004 and I doubt it has changed much in the last six years except maybe to add more renewables.
Yeah, I'll probably go to that rally with the usual gang. It won't make the slightest bit of difference since there is a hurricane-force wind behind the GOP this year. There will be the usual farrago of liberal groups and causes.