A Slight Delay

One thing life should teach everyone, sooner rather than later, is never to say, “Now I’ve seen everything.” I was reminded of this when I made the mistake of answering a question posed to me during an everyday conversation. I was asked if I’d ever read Rhonda Byrne’s insipid and insidious The Secret (the insipid and insidious part wasn’t part of my interrogator’s question, merely my own editorializing).

I answered that I hadn’t, but that I’d once been subjected to the movie, because someone at my last place of employment apparently thought it was so deep and insightful, we should all be subjected to it. Normally, I would never take the movie over the book; this is one time I gladly made an exception. Hell, it’s bad enough I’ll never get those 90 minutes of my life back.

You would think that I’d just told Billy Graham that I thought the Bible was crap. (more…)

A recent article on MSN.com tells of the rise of self-service checkouts and kiosks. If you listen to the marketing people–and somebody’s got to be listening to them, given that everything from gas stations to doctors’ offices now offers self-service–this improves service, speeds transactions, builds brand loyalty, and saves money.

Oh, really? In no particular order, let’s take this point-by-point. (more…)

The promotions make it sound so enticing: motion pictures and events on demand, high picture quality, a variety of channels, and service that rivals cable. Then there’s the tagline: “Friends don’t let friends subscribe to cable.” Let’s just say that after having their service for nearly a year now, I know why so few of my friends and family have DirecTV. The channel selection’s not what it’s cracked up to be, picture quality is merely passable, and the service… well, I’ll let one story stand in for the several I could tell about the nail-biting experience that is DirecTV.
(more…)

Science has made great strides in prenatal and neonatal research, and things have the potential to get interesting. For instance, it’s only a matter of time before we see a modification of the common “Parental Advisory–Explicit Content” stickers found on so many CDs. Building on pseudoscientific quack Don Campbell’s research on the effects of music on unborn and newborn babies, a bill to relabel CDs will be introduced. The current sticker will be replaced by, “Prenatal Advisory–Explicit Content.” It will be argued from both sides that hearing obscenity will have a deleterious effect on the unborn. Using the same labirynthine logic with which they’ve defined the abortion debate, the GOP will argue that the unborn, though they lack the facilities to comprehend what they’re hearing, could be corrupted by the content of the music; the Democrats, of course, will fall in line behind the GOP for fear of losing support on a populist issue in an election year. (more…)

And you thought the commercialization of the holidays was bad. Now we have more commercials for Mucinex… you know, the company with the Archie Bunker-esque glob of talking phlegm. We’ve also had talking stains (courtesy of Tide) and anthropomorphic toe cheese (thanks to the folks at Lamisil). What’s next? Overall-clad hernias? Hemorrhoids that sound like Dick Cheney? Enough already.