Then What Do We Need You For?

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Here’s something that you won’t find American networks—or any network run by people with brains—doing.

It’s no secret that Canada is behind many countries in many shows. We get a lot of shows the same time that America gets them, but there are plenty of shows that we get much later, after even non-North American countries (no we’re not still stuck in the 80’s—unfortunately.)

A couple of years ago I was watching an early season two episode of The Shield on Global. After the first act the first commercial break began and I was shocked by the first commercial. It was an advertisement for the DVD box set of season two of The Shield. I could not wrap my mind around it. Why on Earth would they advertise DVDs of the season of the show that they just began airing? Don’t they realize that if the commercial works and their viewer go out and buy them, then they no longer need to watch the show on the network? Unless the money per capita from the ads for the DVD were at least as much as the cumulative revenue of ALL of the ads per capita from that point on to end of the season, then they would be LOSING money. Duh!

Later on Space did the same thing, except worse. In this case it was with Stargate Atlantis. We get most Sci-Fi shows between six months and two years after they air in America. With Stargate Atlantis we got it more than 1½ years later, so imagine my surprise when Space began advertising the season one DVDs (which were just released in America at the time). This was even worse than Global’s blunder. Did they really expect us to watch Atlantis on Space if we get the DVDs? Did they really expect to make any advertising money from the commercials of Atlantis when they finally aired two years later?

[Canadian] networks are quite good at screwing up, but this was a particularly amusing idiotic behavior.

Jeopardy Questions Not Hard, Obscure

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I don’t watch Jeopardy anymore; I got tired of it a year or two ago. This was partly because after Ken left, the excitement was gone, sort of like playing a game where you spend a lot of time building up, then lose and have to start all over again; it’s just not fun anymore.

The main reason however is that I noticed something about the questions. A lot of them are too easy, and the “hard” ones are actually just obscure. Most of the questions that I don’t get aren’t important questions that I should know but don’t, but rather questions that are irrelevant and only a few people in the world would know anyway. For example here’s an admittedly exaggerated, but similar example of such a question:

This woman was my sixth grade teacher.

Who the Hell would know that? I do, my teacher might remember me, and perhaps a classmate or two. Or a closer one:

This was the only animal that Elvis visited the first time he went to the zoo.

Unless that was somehow a noteworthy event like being the trigger for his musical career (I don’t believe it was) or had some other significance that would justify public knowledge, only a few people would know that—assuming they can remember it.

Why on Earth would questions like this be on Jeopardy? Sure they’re “hard” and the contestants will probably not get them, but there’s no purpose to having them. They aren’t knowledge, they are trivia. Trivia isn’t usually appropriate for a show like Jeopardy, it’s more suited to quotes-of-the-day.

Missing English Words

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The English language has it’s benefits such as being loosely ruled, which makes communication with it easy since the only important rule is that the other person understand what you say. Unfortunately, it also has it’s disadvantages as well. One such problem is that same fact that it’s rules are loosely enforced since it also makes it hard for foreigners to learn it. An even bigger shortcoming is the lack of vocabulary. Because it is a relatively young language, and despite the fact that it expands faster than any other language, there are still many words that other languages have but which English does not.

  • Many languages have different second person pronouns, including a formal (polite) and an informal, as well as a plural; English however has a single one “you”. The lack of a polite form is not too limiting, but the lack of a second person plural is extremely inconvenient. What’s interesting is that there are at least two words that have been created to fill that gap, ya’ll and you’s, but are considered to be illiterate and low-class.

  • Another word that Farsi has but English does not is mennat, that conveys the idea that one person is trying to take credit or pass off as a favor something that they did, when it is in fact something that they had to do anyway, something that is their fault in the first place, something minuscule, or other irrelevant action. It is sort of similar to the prank where you “save” someone’s life by for example pushing them off a ledge and immediately pulling them back.

  • Some languages—Farsi for one—have a word for the state of being where a person is angry with someone else and among other things, does not speak with them (ghar in Farsi). The closest analog in English is “giving the silent treatment” or “giving the cold shoulder—not quite as eloquent.

America’s Got Idiots

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I really hate that show America’s Got Talent. I don’t actually watch it, but I’ve seen/heard the commercials for it.

The most annoying complaint is that those idiots don’t seem to understand that this is a TALENT SHOW, not American Idol. The judges keep dissing people who do neat tricks but blabbing on and on about the ones who sing (“well”). If they wanted to sing, they should have go on one of the many singer-search shows that seem to run every night. The recruiters should actually be looking for talents that are non-musical; including singers is not fair to the rest who don’t have dedicated shows for their talents.

Another problem is that just like American Idol, the two judges that are sycophantic, PC, bleeding heart, liberal, hippies, keep dissing and being rude to the one who tells the truth and doesn’t love every single act. It’s disgusting. The judges who are rude are much worse than the judge who is “mean”.

Humidity Resurrection

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I hate this city. One big reason I hate this city is due to the horrible weather. During the winter it is indeed colder than Hell, but it is the summer that is the worst. This may be Canada but the summer is hotter than Hell. It’s not even just the heat that’s a killer, it’s the humidity. It is so humid that dried flowers and foods that have been rock hard and dry for decades have practically come back to life; really. My mother has plenty of dried flowers, peppers, corn, garlic, herbs, tomatoes, and so on, all of which have become soft, bendy, and re-hydrated. They were all just hanging or lying around various places in her kitchen, and that was enough to rehydrate them.

If dried things can become re-hydrated just by existing here, imagine what happens to something that is already hydrated, say for example a person made mostly of water. I get massive headaches from the sodding humidity here. Of course I hate it here.

Digital Television is Not Better Than Analog

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For the past several years we have been beaten over the head over and over again by pundits touting the advantages of digital this and digital that over their analog counterparts. While digital does have it’s advantages, specifically that it is possible to ensure a complete and accurate reproduction, it does—at least currently—have it’s disadvantages as well. As anyone who views videos on their computer knows, a small bit of corruption in a video file can not only ruin the whole video, but in fact bring the whole system to a halt, effectively crashing it. Broadcast television is no different.

In the old days of analog, if there was a problem with a video like a crumpled tape or interference, the effect would be that there would be some momentary static or lines on the video or some distortion of sound. In many cases small corruptions would produce nonoticeablele effect at all.

Today, digital television brings us high definition but it also brings us nasty corruption effects. With digital broadcasting, if there is even a small bit of corruption in the signal, on the media, or interference, then the video will break up into many little blocks, the sound will completely cut out or turn into awful horrible noises, and the whole thing will freeze. This is due to the way video files are processed by most video playback software.

Sometimes as in this case progress goes takes a backward detour.

Blockbuster No Late Fees

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Blockbuster has a series of commercials advertising their no-late-fee policy. All of them are thoroughly stupid but one in particular is mind-numbingly moronic. It features a young woman who says that she keeps having to return movies before she has a chance to watch them. She goes on to say that she has rented one movie three times and still has not seen it. She caps it by asking “that’s the point to renting isn’t it?” This is supposed to be a good reason for their policy but only highlights the advertising agency’s—and ultimately Blockbuster’s—stupidity. What kind of person rents a movie when they do not have time to watch it? Normal people rent movies on weekends, holidays, days off, and so on. They rent movies when they know they have enough time to watch the bloody thing. She would not need to keep the movies longer if she stopped renting when she’s busy.

The only ones dumber than the advertising agents who came up with the spot are the Blockbuster executives who approved it.

To Avoid Educating Children

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I just saw an article on Dateline about the things that children see on television today. They showed clips from various shows that depicted scenes inappropriate for young children. The recurring theme and solution was that the children were to be kept from seeing these shows. The parents agreed that they did not want their children—in some cases up to 12 years old—watching them.

This is ridicuolous the solution is not to prevent the children from watching the shows, the solution is to bloody educate them. Stone asked whether it is the networks or the parents who are responsible for keeping the children from watching inappropriate shows and everybody agreed it was the parents. If these parents have not yet had “the talk” with their children then the parents are certainly responsible!

This brings up another question. Isn’t it actually better to over-expose the kids to these things? If you over-expose the children to these images then they will become jaded and they will no longer respond to them. Is that not what is desired? In some cases yes it is. There are however some children who will react differently; becoming over-exposed to the stimulus, they will think that the behaviors are acceptable and when confronted with the descision, they will do it.

Again it comes back to the parents. They must take their children’s education into their own hands instead of hoping that sex-ed at school will do it for them when they are 14.

It’s What’s On The Inside That Counts

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“It’s like we got a face lift and fired our agent.”

That is the slogan that Future Shop is using in it’s new campaign. They have “changed the look” of the stores and are hoping that it will drive up sales.

First of all, the change is barely noticeable. The colors are all the same, the layout is the same, everything looks the same except maybe a little more empty space inside, and the new computer terminals where you can browse their site and make purchases using the attached card readers.

Unfortunately for them the new look does little to cover up the rot that is inside. A little paint or rearrangement does not change the fact that the staff are incompetent morons who are anything but helpful.

Yesterday I went to Future Shop to make a few purchases. I was not impressed with their “new look” and was even less impressed with their same level of—non—service. I was unable to find one of the items I was looking for that I had seen on their web site, another item had a different price saying that it’s only on sale through the web site, and the other item I had questions about.

Once again I found myself performing the Future Shop test that I have done on several occasions in the past year or so. I put on my acting face and did my best to look as confused and helpless as possible. I wandered around, I looked in all directions for sales agents, I checked my watch to indicate that I am in a hurray, I looked at expensive items to make them think I had tons of money to spend. Nothing! Fifteen minutes later and not a single agent came to assist me. Some of them were too busy helping other—somehow more important?—customers, while most of them were busy playing. There were groups of agents just standing around talking to each other, there were groups of agents helping single customers, there were agents watching the TVs, and even some playing the video games (in teams). Like I said this is not the first time I have done this test at Future Shop, however it was the first time I did it specifically in front of the surveillance cameras and in plain sight of the whole store.

I ended it—quite infuriated with the trashy “service” that Future Shop has been “providing” for the past several years—by making quite a show of being fed up and storming out. Of course I know that this will not help at all because Future Shop does not seem to give a damn about customers, they hire inept children who have no interest in their work; any changes they make will be entirely cosmetic.

The old adage is correct as far as stores go, it really is what’s on the inside that counts.