Blazy America

I heard it again on the radio this morning on the way to work:

"With your busy schedule you need...blah-blah-blah-blah, to make your life easier and save you time."

"Save you time" That's advertising code for "Spend money on some overpriced useless gadget you don't need because you are too lazy to do it yourself".

Yes - lazy. We're not too busy, we're too lazy. I've started to call it 'blazy'. That is say you are too busy, when you are really too lazy - blazy.

The TV and radio blare on and on and on trying to convince us we are soooooo busy and don't have time. Time is precious, we have to spend money to save time. Time - we're busy. We're over scheduled. It' s become so common it's not even challenged. 'Our busy schedules' is just blurted out and we all shake our heads like sheep. "Yes we are busy, what should we buy now to save us time".

You know what though? We're not busy at all. Proof you say? I feel busy? Everyone tells me I'm busy? The man on the TV says so every 13 minutes in fact.

There's your proof. The average American spends 35 hours a week watching tv (1812 annually) and 34 hours a week working (1777 annually)! We spend more time on our ever enlarging asses watching TV than we do working. How in the world can we be busy when we spend 75 1/2 days a year watching television? Well we must be, the guy on the television says so.

The trend is getting worse. We're watching even more tv, getting even blazy'er.

Feel too busy? My simple advice - turn off the tv.



Sources:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/med_tel_vie-media-television-viewing

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/02/24/us.video.nielsen/

http://www.tvb.org/rcentral/MediaTrendsTrack/tvbasics/09_TimeViewingPersons.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time

'Stand Behind Our Troops'

A posting was making its way around Facebook yesterday. It went:

"Post this as your status for one hour: ' stand behind our troops, if you don't stand behind them, feel free to stand in front of them!, make this your status for one hour and feel free to pass along to your friends."

There is so much just plain stupid and wrong with this I don't know where to start. First of all I have Swedish, Finnish, Brazilian, Canadian, English, Scots, Irish, Russian and German friends on my Facebook. Whose troops do they stand behind? Or in front of? And if it's not 'ours' does that then mean they should be 'in front' of ours? I like my English friends, they send me Mafia Wars gifts, why should I threaten their country with invasion?

Of course that wasn't the point. But then the point is hard to see isn't it? Maybe a better posting would have been : If you are an uneducated blow hard who wants to take the easy way out and still act like a bully post: "stand behind our troops" here.

I'll tell you what to do blow hard. Just what I did when I saw these obnoxious posts. First I went to a page that rated military focused charities. Then I selected one The National Military Family Organization that pledges to help the families of 'our troops'. Not some blow hard posting, but actually helping military families with kids do things like; go to school and summer camp and get flue shots, the real help they need. I pledged a small amount of $25.

Why don't you pledge $10-$25 dollars today and make your Facebook status "I gave $20 to support our troops and their families today did you?"

Tommy Moron was at it again this week:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/opinion/13friedman.html

Friedman never seems to tire of being the mouthpiece for the Communist government in China. I absolutely hate two 'tricks' he turns at every corner. Trick number one, "As I was in (insert distant city here) talking with (insert CEO he's pumping here), they agreed with everything I'm going to tell you now." There's some in depth analysis. I'd ask if that works on anyone with an IQ over 95, but there are CEO's out there who are impressed. Draw your own conclusions about that.

Trick number two: "I was talking with (insert famous US CEO here) about (insert India or China here) and they said (insert India or China here) is the future of America." Never mind that said CEO is a CEO and his credentials on international relations are likely zero. Tommy Moron uses these tricks to sell people that what he says is worth a Domino's Pizza. (old style)

Tommy Moron's column today reminded me a lot of good old Henry Blodget investing $700,000 of his own cash in a pitiful attempt (he'd made 10's of millions) to continue the fraud he'd barfed all over the American investor community. Blodget took a lot of blame for the hype that created the Dot Com bubble, will Thomas Friedman take the blame for helping to create the 'idiot bubble'?

Of course Tommy Moron's column was timed to distract from the real news of the day about China. Google looks to be on the way out. And that's some bad, bad press to investors here. A much better recap of the days events can be found here:

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_14183107

I didn't think much of Chris O'Brien when he showed up in town. One of his first columns was to be the mouthpiece / apologist for the local Mafia Family when their first son went down on an embezzlement wrap. I'll cut him some slack though, he was new and maybe the editor suggested the angle that made Mr Boots Del Biaggio as some type of high tech hot shot gone bad rather than the arsonist, union corrupter and money launderer that he was.

Compare O'Brien to Friedman and you'll see he's worth reading.

Pizza, really?

Quality doesn't matter. Services doesn't matter. That's the true mantra of Thomas Friedman's revolution. Price and easy access, that's what America wants. So what if you have to go buy a new one every 6 months because it breaks, it's cheap, after all it's made in China, and Walmart is close. Need service? That's expensive. Let's have you try to untangle the English of a call center in India as the owe so happy Customer Unservice Rep tells you your problem is "thankfully solved so much". Three hours on the phone, no problem, that's what America wants.

It is hard to take Domino's seriously:

Colbert Report

After all it's not like it's been a big secret that Dominos sucks. I have not had one since 1986, and even then it took a drunken night of poker and a post midnight need for calories to choke one down. I'm going to be hopeful though. Maybe it's not just another marketing campaign. Maybe Dominos is going to care about quality. I'm not going to spend my pizza calories finding out though. I'll stick with my locally owned pizza joint for now. If you try one though and it doesn't suck let me know.

Martha Stewart and the Death of the Party

When was the last time you had friends over for a party? I'll give you some slack here, maybe not a big blow out, just 3-4 friends, for dinner and drinks or maybe a movie. And Christmas with your family doesn't count. That's obligation, not a party. I bet it was a long, long time ago.

People only really have three parties now in their adult lives. Their first marriage. The second marriage (usually smaller), and their funeral. That's like 1/2 a party. You're there, but not really in on the events.

I blame Martha Stewart.

Actually Martha is just the mouth piece for an over budgeted knick knack / catering / specialty item industry. The wedding industry is the pinnacle of this nightmare. A quick cruise through the web and I found these scary stats: In the last reporting year, which was a recession year mind you, we spent an estimated $59,599,378,360 on weddings in this country. That's billion, with a B.

That ranks U.S. wedding spending right between the Gross National products of the Czech Republic and Pakistan. No wonder the Pakistanis hate us. We spend more on weddings than they earn on everything. Maybe a good way to fight terrorism would be to move all our weddings to Pakistan, thus doubling the GNP of the country. The resulting wealth and good will would do more damage to the radical terrorists than all the droid planes we could ever make.

Just on invitations alone, a category which includes things like shower invites, place cards, and those awful 7 pound 43 part actual invites we spend an average of $1117 per wedding. For $1117 I could throw a hell of a party for 30 of my best friends this Saturday and invite them all back again on Sunday to do it again.

So why blame Martha? She's the enabler of inaction. Martha and her day time hostess with the mostest TV offspring, have convinced us that we can't have a party unless everything is 'perfect'. Perfect food, perfect pairings, perfect doilies, perfect ribbons on every perfect fucking chair, even perfect barf buckets, for the perfect puke, from the perfect cosmos you MUST have in order to have a party.

Bullshit. You need to invite people over to have a party. That's it. I did it last week on $40 in food and a couple bottles of wine I had around. We watched a good movie, had dinner, and a great time. Fuck perfect. Have fun.

This idea that you need all this crap to spend time with people you like, has meant we never spend time with people we like. Instead we spend more time with people we don't know, who try and act like our friends while they sell us crap we don't need on TV. I prefer real people. Martha Stewart is not my friend.

Sources: http://www.theweddingreport.com (yeah freaking scary)
http://www.nationmaster.com.

Chicken Soup Bowl

Watching the BCS Championship game reminded me of one of the great games of all time. A full recap is here:

Notre Dame Link

And a shorter one here:

Wiki

I missed the actual injury to Colt McCoy, I was fetching Chinese take out, but when the reply was shown, it just didn't look that serious. He never looked in pain and was able to get his shoulder pads back on. Usually a shoulder injury will make getting the pads on and off very painful. The only speculation was that he and his family didn't want to risk his NFL career. And of course it wasn't his throwing arm.

Now a searched around for an injury update, and could not find one. We may never really now how serious he was hurt, because now the spin will be that he's 'ok' for tryout camp, but I got to think Joe Montana would have gone back in.

If it was not serious then Colt McCoy will go down as one of the great pussies of all time, and he sured looked the part in post game interview. If it was serious, then well, never mind. I know there are millions of dollars on the line, but honestly if you look at Colt McCoy, his size, his arm strength, his ability to play against real tough defenses (I'm not talking body bag games here), then he needs to be a competitor like Joe Montana, because he's lacking in a lot of the things it takes to be an NFL QB. If he's prone to quit like say Jamarcus Russell, well then I suspect a pro career on par with Russell.

Kill the Happy Pony

I hate this commercial:

I do yell at the TV every time:

"Get a fucking life you losers"

Record four things at once? I haven't recorded anything in 10 plus years. Go outside and play you little brat and take your dumb ass father with you and see if he can find his balls out there.

Who does this advertising work on? Probably the people on my "blogs to make you barf" list.

We Do in Fact Need Health Care Reform

For all of my adult life I've had a pretty good job, and thus pretty good health care coverage. I'm also not the type to use my health coverage unless something is broken or cut past the point of band aid repair. I hate waiting rooms, all those sick people.

So I've been mostly neutral on the idea of health care reform. Personally, as in the effect it has on my life, it was pretty low on things I felt I needed to do enough research on to have an opinion. I know that makes me pretty unusual. Most people have an opinion without really knowing anything about what they are having an opinion on. I'm sure you've seen the videos of people in town hall meetings screaming they are against the Federal Government having anything to do with health care, then raising their hands when asked if they are on Medicare.

I had an epiphany moment though watch TV a couple months ago. I don't watch a lot of TV but I caught this:



Only one conclusion I could come to. Our current system is totally and completely fucked up. We spend millions on research and testing, and millions more on TV advertising, then more cash still on Brooke Shields.... To grow eyelashes?

I've listened to the young mothers in my office spend all winter sharing tips on were they might be able to go to actually find somewhere that has flu shots for their kids. Flu shots for infants is hard, but need longer eyelashes? Now that's serious, get right on down to your doctor and he can fix you right up.

If you're opposed to Obama's Health Care Reform, and your fall back plan is the one we have now, you are an idiot. I can see being opposed if you have a better idea, but what we have now, will keep your dick hard, your eyelashes long, and your kids sick. That's fucked up.

The Good and The Bad

Over the years I've read some very good blogs, and some very bad ones. In the search for a url for this blog I weeded through a detailed history of one girls trip through baton camp. Who knew such a thing existed. So, twir.blogspot.com was out. There was also a very depressing recount of one woman's menstrual cycle. She either killed herself or discovered Motrin around 2004 because that was the last post.

Those are the bad, and I will try hard not to be bad. To me bad is the mundane or worse inane. One of the best things I've read lately was a commentary about Facebook. It was simple: "If you think Facebook is inane, you need better friends." I'll try not to be inane also.

The blogs I've enjoyed have been well written, and taken a pretty direct approach on what ever subject they take on. That's what I'll do.

It won't be a blog about Thomas Friedman, although the title I choose was a direct rip off of his book. I consider Friedman the pied piper of the last decade, and I consider the last decade the Decade of the Dumb. The Bush - Hilton years, when our President was a graduate of the slow reading class in the fourth grade, and the most famous celebrity laughed at us laughing at her being so dumb. The joke was in fact on us.

Friedman deserves ridicule, and I'm sure I'll give it to him, but I don't want this to be just about politics, or just about Paris Hilton. Football coaches are dumb, I'll take them on too, and the Federal Reserve Board, or the people who propose that trains should have air bags on the front to prevent suicides.

I guess basically I'm taking a firm stand against stupid. I'm going to challenge it when I see it, and call it out when it speaks up. We've been to quiet about stupid, to afraid to challenge it, to passive in thinking 'everyone is entitled to an opinion'. Everyone is, but that doesn't been it's not dumb.

So of I go, follow along I hope. I'll write as often as I can. Daily I hope, maybe more, probably less.