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Oct. 30th, 2006 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hafoc
As I said in my last entry, I went so far as to give my union a non-existant address, and to disconnect my landline phone, just because I was so sick of campaign ads. I would do almost anything to avoid them, I'm so sick of them.
But this extends to other kinds of ads as well.
I don't know about you, but more and more I feel like I'm holed up in the confines of my living room like some middle-ages knight in his keep, surrounded a thousand deep by howling barbarians. Only these barbarians aren't trying to storm the keep; they're trying to sell me stuff. They wave banners. They shout slogans. Every so often they load up the catapult and lob an ad in through any available opening in my firewalls.
Geeeeee-zuss, it never ends! Banner ads, TV that's at least 50% ads, and then they have product placements, and crawling text, and little windows that pop up at the bottom of the screen so that even the parts that aren't ads are ads. Spam, of course. Junk mail-- I throw out more junk mail each week, by weight, than anything else I think. And of course it's almost Thanksgiving, so the tons of catalogs full of junk that you'd never in your right mind buy for YOURSELF are starting to arrive. Funny how nobody would buy that china windmill flower pot for themselves, yet they'd buy it for someone else, no problem.
Mom buys me the Reader's Digest. Now, I have an old copy of the Digest, from the 1950s, in which they tearfully explain their decision to accept advertising for the first time ever, and promise to be cool about it. Every so often I take one of the new Reader's Digests and rip out all the pages that are ONLY advertising, on both sides. It usually reduces the Digest to a pamphlet less than a quarter inch thick.
And they must think of new ways to get at you! When you go to the grocery store, you have to WALK on bloody ads! They've got 'em stuck to the floor.
This is starting to get to me. So much so that Saturday, when Teph and I went to the Upper Peninsula to check the heating in a cottage, I punched a gas pump.
Really. I started to fuel my truck, and next thing I knew, some speaker thing is blaring ads at me. It had a mute button on it, but that didn't work. So I punched it. Twice. Pretty hard.
It went silent.
OK, I punched a gas pump. But I was provoked.
#
We went to DeTour-- yes, there really is a town by that name. On the way we stopped at Clyde's Drive-In. "Quality since 1949," it says, and the place looks like it. "Try the Big C. It's Colossal!"
Yes, it is. Athelind would approve.
I get a burger at Clyde's about once a year. That's about right.
Winter has struck here. We got snow at the beginning of our trip, rain through most of it, snow when we got back toward home again. Yup. It's early, but it's definitely here.
#
Today I went out on the range and came back bearing my Thunderbolt rifle, showing it to Teph and explaining why it is my favorite.
Now, the Thunderbolt is a pump-action rifle, a reproduction of the Colt Lightning that Colt made in the 1880s or so. This reproduction comes from Brazil. Colt themselves gave up on the design by about 1890, because it did have more than a few problems with its design. But modern design and construction should be able to make the intricate action function properly, no?
Maybe yes in theory. But as I explained to Teph today, "This is my favorite rifle, because nothing I can do will make it work. It gives me endless opportunity to tinker."
They say that men who own big guns are compensating for something. I wonder: For what are men compensating who insist on owning big guns that DON'T BLOODY WORK?
But this extends to other kinds of ads as well.
I don't know about you, but more and more I feel like I'm holed up in the confines of my living room like some middle-ages knight in his keep, surrounded a thousand deep by howling barbarians. Only these barbarians aren't trying to storm the keep; they're trying to sell me stuff. They wave banners. They shout slogans. Every so often they load up the catapult and lob an ad in through any available opening in my firewalls.
Geeeeee-zuss, it never ends! Banner ads, TV that's at least 50% ads, and then they have product placements, and crawling text, and little windows that pop up at the bottom of the screen so that even the parts that aren't ads are ads. Spam, of course. Junk mail-- I throw out more junk mail each week, by weight, than anything else I think. And of course it's almost Thanksgiving, so the tons of catalogs full of junk that you'd never in your right mind buy for YOURSELF are starting to arrive. Funny how nobody would buy that china windmill flower pot for themselves, yet they'd buy it for someone else, no problem.
Mom buys me the Reader's Digest. Now, I have an old copy of the Digest, from the 1950s, in which they tearfully explain their decision to accept advertising for the first time ever, and promise to be cool about it. Every so often I take one of the new Reader's Digests and rip out all the pages that are ONLY advertising, on both sides. It usually reduces the Digest to a pamphlet less than a quarter inch thick.
And they must think of new ways to get at you! When you go to the grocery store, you have to WALK on bloody ads! They've got 'em stuck to the floor.
This is starting to get to me. So much so that Saturday, when Teph and I went to the Upper Peninsula to check the heating in a cottage, I punched a gas pump.
Really. I started to fuel my truck, and next thing I knew, some speaker thing is blaring ads at me. It had a mute button on it, but that didn't work. So I punched it. Twice. Pretty hard.
It went silent.
OK, I punched a gas pump. But I was provoked.
#
We went to DeTour-- yes, there really is a town by that name. On the way we stopped at Clyde's Drive-In. "Quality since 1949," it says, and the place looks like it. "Try the Big C. It's Colossal!"
Yes, it is. Athelind would approve.
I get a burger at Clyde's about once a year. That's about right.
Winter has struck here. We got snow at the beginning of our trip, rain through most of it, snow when we got back toward home again. Yup. It's early, but it's definitely here.
#
Today I went out on the range and came back bearing my Thunderbolt rifle, showing it to Teph and explaining why it is my favorite.
Now, the Thunderbolt is a pump-action rifle, a reproduction of the Colt Lightning that Colt made in the 1880s or so. This reproduction comes from Brazil. Colt themselves gave up on the design by about 1890, because it did have more than a few problems with its design. But modern design and construction should be able to make the intricate action function properly, no?
Maybe yes in theory. But as I explained to Teph today, "This is my favorite rifle, because nothing I can do will make it work. It gives me endless opportunity to tinker."
They say that men who own big guns are compensating for something. I wonder: For what are men compensating who insist on owning big guns that DON'T BLOODY WORK?
