Bits & Pieces
Bits and pieces from this reporter’s notebook.
Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet....Sometimes one is desperate for distraction, which is my explanation for ever turning on the television, but especially after tickling the ivories for eight or fourteen hours. And there is nothing on. I mean, we’ve see all the Poirot’s and Morse’s and Law-’n-Order’s too many times to even feign interest. So it was with a modicum of relief that I espied one of my favorite films listed on the playbill. "The Wizard of Oz" was airing on TNT. Unfortunately, the people behind that channel don’t care a whit about what they put on the air, and are content to butcher one of the most important — and entertaining — films of all times with blocks of commercials so long that one literally forgets what movie they were watching let alone what was happening in it. I’m not expecting to see everything without commercials, but the overload exceeds offensive.
Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet....Speaking of offensive and commercials, Philip Morris is running radio spots that play up their generous side. A woman somewhere in Hardscrabble USofA is heard describing how they needed money for some do-gooder type project, and couldn’t find enough and then Philip Morris came along and gave them the money to realize their dreams. Well, great, ya know, but that money comes from people smoking cigarettes. And the purpose of the commercial is to mitigate the toxic aura of responsibility so they can sell more cigarettes -- which kill a half-million people a year in this country -- to the financial benefit of Philip Morris.
Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet....The people who make things out of plastic continue their proselytizing on the radio about how indispensable plastic is and it’s used in everything and where would we be without it. As if people really needed to hear it. I mean, you don’t find a lot of people saying they won’t buy anything because it’s made of or wrapped in plastic. They wouldn’t be buying anything at all since plastic is ubiquitous. So why spend the money on the announcements? Because they have a manufacturers association with huge bucks, a membership willing to pay, and a whole bunch of folks with plastic between their ears too thick to question their own flacks.
Da-deet-da-deet-da-deet-deet....By most accounts, I’m not an idiot, but that said, I certainly do get confused some times by some of the material that is prepared under the guise of basic instruction for the general public. I am in the process of setting up a new H-P printer/scanner/fax/coffee maker. Okay, no coffee, but it does everything in color. A large two-sided chart lays out the process of getting the unit/machine/thing all settled into its new surroundings, and of actually launching this new megastar of communications wizardry. And for only $299! I would have kicked in an extra buck if they had made the instructions a little more clear. Mostly they’re icons and pictures with very little verbiage. Of course, this is to save on printing costs, and enable them to package and distribute virtually everywhere. But it leaves me thinking they could have done a far better job of explaining what goes where and how hard to push. It was something else my father never told me.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.