Bound for Larrytown

Feels like Christmas morning. Or it would if I got this excited for Christmas anymore.

40 minutes till departure for the first ulti tourney of the season, Fools Fest in Lawrence, Kansas.

Full trip report when I get back.

Television Commercials and the Decline of Western Civilisation, Part 2

A couple weeks ago (has it been that long?) I went on a bit of a rant basically explaining how TV commercials are harbingers of doom for our society… the reasoning being not only are a lot of them incredibly dumb, but what they are selling is often even dumber. The combination of these leads me to the conclusion that there are an uncomfortably large amount of idiots walking among us – more than I’d normally care to imagine – and that can’t bode well for us on the whole.

Now, dumb commercials are pretty self-explanatory. You know one when you see one. The second part of the equation, what they are selling, is oftentimes just as obvious, but perhaps bears some explanation. What follows is a list, by no means exhaustive, of dumb things I have seen advertised.

1. “High tech” razors. I can remember back in the day – and I’m not that old – when the 2-blade razor was pretty much your only choice. Well, that or one of a few brands of electric razors, though I have no idea who actually uses those. Anyway, at some point the three blade razor came out, and I’ll admit it was a noticeable improvement. Heck, I still use one. Then, more recently, all hell broke loose. As if the razor gene pool was suddenly struck with a strange mutation-causing radiation, bizarre new configurations began to emerge. Four blades! Three made a difference so logically another must be in order, diminishing returns be damned! How about tiny bars over the blades? That’ll increase the safety factor, dramatically reducing shaving-related fatalities. OK, now put a vibrator in the thing, say that it’ll bring the hairs out or something… hell my facial hair is standing erect just thinking about it. And while we’re getting a little too suggestive, how about those razors that secrete a milky white fluid over your face while you shave? That’s an image I don’t need to see during an evening of television viewing. Finally (or most recently, I should say), we get the most shocking, groundbreaking innovation ever… there must’ve been a full month of teaser ads for this one, along with the requisite computer graphics and imagery of faux scientists working in their top secret location, lest the commies discover the latest shaving technology first, thereby winning the face race… and finally we get the big news, during the Superbowl of course, because the world must know… five blades! Actually that was rather anticlimactic. Predictable really. Wasn’t there an Onion story on that? Like, a year ago? Well, anyway, I suppose I should be glad the technology is finally here, seeing as no one had ever found it possible to shave their face before this.

2. “High tech” toothbrushes. Same deal. Often these ads come paired with a razor ad in the same break. Same ridiculously flashy kind of ad, lotsa CGI, probably some scientist-looking people in lab coats with clipboards or looking at some computer with a really cool 3-D representation of the new toothbrush, or if we’re really lucky a holographic projection. Yes folks, this is how science develops the amazing technologies we now take for granted! Just think, before computer graphics, we were limited to primitive toothbrushing methods like using our own wrist power to draw the brushes over the surface of our teeth. I’ve heard they still do that in some third world countries…

3. Anything advertised in an infomercial or “As seen on TV!”. It slices! It dices! It cleans dirt, red wine, rust, and blood stains, works your abs, never goes dull, folds and fits under your bed, and comes with a foolproof 30-day money back guarantee! Maybe it replaces literally every other household appliance/cleanser/exercise device/food preparation tool you have, or maybe it just has some obscure use like making folding clothes slightly easier or allowing you to cut your hair with a vacuum! How much would you pay for this item? First of all I gotta wonder about anything that they won’t sell you in stores… secondly I wonder how many people are as excited about these things as the people that are paid to be excited about them on TV, and how many get used as often as suggested in the ad or infomercial. But what I really want to know is how many people actually take all the products that are now supposedly ‘obsolete’, stack them together on a table, and then sweep them with both arms into a garbage can, just like they do in the infomercial. I am guessing it is a small but non-zero number. I hope I do not know any of these people.

4. Automated text-message services. These started popping up in the last year or two. I guess the technology is ubiquitous enough now, though I’m still managing to get by without a cell phone, let alone one with texting. Now, I can see that there is a purpose to texting and there might be some things that it’d be useful to get on an automatic basis. But the ones advertised… yikes. Texting to get a joke sent to you? I can’t see how this would be good… most likely they are the same lame jokes that you are sent regularly by that one friend of yours who has evidently just discovered email and thinks it has no greater purpose than for forwarding every single thing that comes into their inbox. Come to think of it, these are probably the same people who use these texting services. Only now they are paying $1.25 per use. Yeesh.

5. Singing plastic fish, and all variants. The original singing plastic fish was bad enough. You get some motion-activated piece of plastic crap that sings at you when you walk by, always the same song (maybe it knows two if you’re lucky), playing with absolutely terrible sound quality that is not supposed to matter because the thing moves its mouth and even turns to look right at you once in a while. Oh, wow. For the discerning customer this will of course get old in well under a minute, so you can only imagine who would actually buy one so that they may make it a fixture in their living room. Now, if you’re buying it for its kitsch value… you’re still an idiot. C’mon, is it really worth it to get a couple cheap laughs from your hipster friends? Answer: NO. Try harder. Now, the singing fish thing is mostly played out, thank god, but the concept itself is far from dead. This past holiday season my television was inundated with commercials for new products from a well-known card manufacturer, offering pretty much the same deal except that instead of the fish, they would perhaps have a snowman at a piano or something, and instead of “Take Me to the River”, it played Christmas carols. The commercials did their best to rub in the inanity by showing potential customers having bizarre fantasies about how all their guests at the Christmas party would be completely captivated by the device, and when you waited for the payoff when they realised “no, this is just a cheap gizmo that will get old so fast it will never need a second set of batteries”… it never came. These things are evidently designed for those with either an overblown sense of irony, or none at all.

Well, look at that. I’m already well over 1,000 words and I’m not sure I’ve made a dent in all the products I want to berate. There is no shortage of material… perhaps I should just get rid of my TV (Yeah, I know. Wasn’t that in the Onion? Like two years ago? Well, good luck finding it, smartass.). I guess I’ll just have to keep a quick thumb on the remote once the commercial break starts. Or suffer through it.

Television Commercials and the Decline of Western Civilisation, Part 1

Here’s a question I’ve been pondering for a while: How much do TV commercials say about the society that produces them? If the answer is “a lot” or in fact anything other than “none” or “very little”, I think we are doomed.

This was spurred a few months ago when a friend brought up in a conversation just how incredibly stupid some commercials are. Or rather, how stupid most of them are, but some almost go out of their way to flagrantly insult the viewer’s intelligence. Now, most of the time we consumers, or at least those of us who like to consider ourselves the more enlightened of the bunch, can simply tune out the inanity, or simply think “my, that’s an annoying ad” to the more egregious examples, and let it go at that. But sometimes these mental filters can simply not stand up to the full power of stupidity and one must confront what is behind these ads, and what are the implications for society. The fact is, as ridiculous as some of these ads are, as pointless as some of the products they advertise are, their existence must somehow be justified by the fact that they work. People out there, somewhere, are actually stimulated to go out and consume goods and service based on what they are seeing. And they are doing so in significant numbers.

If I may illustrate using a counterexample: Consider spam. Spam is of course, pure evil. It is more insidious than TV ads, and for the most part even more poorly thought out and advertising worse products. For the most part, the products or services promoted using spam are things that 99% of the population is not interested in, and the vast majority of the remainder probably realises that even if they were to purchase said good or service there is probably a better way to go about it than to respond to some unsolicited, anonymous, poorly spelled email. BUT... it works. If it didn't, it would not exist. The tiny fraction of people who respond to spam are enough to perpetuate it, because spam is cheap and easy to send out. Or conversely, because spam is cheap and easy to send out, only a very small fraction of people are required to perpetuate it. While I’m not happy those people exist, I’m at least reassured the number need not be very large.

Now, back to TV commercials. TV commercials are not spam. They are, to varying degrees, better produced, and may be selling more desireable products. But they are vastly more expensive, and more involved. Whereas one spammer can send out millions of emails at a cost of tiny fractions of a cent each, ads cost money to write, produce, and broadcast. Many many people must be involved. When I see a really bad ad, I think: Someone wrote this? And then someone approved it? And they found actors to perform it, and a director, and production crew and editors and distributors, all willingly going along with it, even presumably knowing how it would turn out, and then they paid hundreds, thousands, sometimes millions of dollars to broadcast it so that viewers everywhere could be subjected to it, just so hopefully some of them would be convinced to go out and purchase the project advertised? The horror.

But as I said it must be justified. Enough people do go out and purchase the product. Only it is not a tiny fraction of society, as for spam. It must be many people. Enough to justify this massive undertaking. For whatever the amount spent on advertising, that can only come out of the revenues generated from sales, minus the actual costs of production, plus all other expenses and some allowance for profits. So whatever level of effort and expense is represented by an ad, no matter how incredibly stupid the advertisement and/or the product may be, this only represents a small fraction of revenues from said product. So whenever I see a particularly terrible ad for a terrible product, I think about what went into the ad, multiply it by a large amount, think about what that says about society, and start worrying a little bit more for our future.

Anyway I’m pretty sure I’ll have more thoughts on this, perhaps some specifics, hence the “Part 1” in the title. Don’t touch that dial.

Ultimate Outlook, Spring 2006

Well, you might not know it if you’ve been outside recently, but winter is almost over. One week until the official start of spring... effectively meaningless in itself of course, but at least the days are getting longer and the sun brighter, and that can only help.

With respect to ultimate (since that is apparently pretty much all I write about), winter league hit its three-quarter mark this past week, and for Trogdor that manifested itself in a rather disappointing crossover loss to Johnny Chimpo that’ll send us to the B division for the remainder of league play. Hopefully we can use it to work on our fundamentals, win some games, and build some confidence heading into summer league play. I have come to the conclusion that we are just not cut out for the indoor game. While we do well in summer, for some reason our game just doesn’t translate into the indoor environment. I checked our cumulative historical record over the last two seasons of winter... 4-28-1. Not impressive, to say the least. But in spite of, or perhaps because of our winter league frustrations, we’ve always come out strong in summer and this year we’ll look to continue where we left off... on a 12-game winning streak and division champions, albeit in the Wednesday B division, below the Wednesday A division reserved for the league’s elite teams. This year we are likely moving to a different night where we can play in the A division and still find teams that are a better match for us, but ideally continue our winning ways.

Before then however my focus is on the upcoming Fool’s Fest tournament in less than three weeks. I’m excited but getting a little apprehensive for a few reasons. First off, I’m picking up with a team where I only know a few players and the overall skill level is pretty good. They’re a fun team but getting more serious about their competitive play, and I want to do well and show that I can hang with them. Secondly, no matter how fit I think I am at the end of the indoor season, outdoor is a whole different game in terms of the type of fitness required, so I have no idea how I’m going to feel after a few points. Lastly, while indoor games last an hour, outdoor games last significantly longer and at tournaments there are generally about four games on Saturday, usually with one bye thrown in somewhere, and two to four games on Sunday with no byes. I’m not sure how many other sports require the same level of effort over that many games in as short a period of time. Anyway, I’m trying to train myself for that kind of exertion but I don’t know if I’ll be completely up for it by then. This weekend was another test of sorts, a 4-hour hat tourney on Saturday and an intramurals game plus a 5-km run on Sunday. I made it through both days OK but had no energy afterwards... not good if I have to ready to party it up Saturday night or drive home Sunday. One possible saving grace is that we’ll have a big roster, so hopefully that’ll make things easier on me. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’ll continue training and playing winter league, plus getting out and doing stuff that doesn’t involve ultimate. Next few posts will be about something else, I promise.

Battle of the Bloggers

THURSDAY! THURSDAY! THURSDAY!
At the Golf Dome on Wilkes

Huma leads Johnny Chimpo into action against Druski and his team Trogdor and the Burninators!

The Afganistanimation monkey takes on the peasant-squishing dragon!

Watch as they slug it out for semi-obscure pop culture reference supremacy!

The battle commences at 10:30 pm...

BE THERE!

Hope on the horizon

At the beginning of last week I was starting to feel pretty optimistic about winter finally coming to a close... the sun was out, it was a balmy -5, the snow was melting... only a matter of time. Then a big snowfall last Wednesday followed by severeal gloomy overcast days and I realised there was still a ways to go. I had been thinking about how soon it'd be until outdoor ulty finally started up again, but with the return of winter weather cam the crushing relisation that summer league is still over two months away. Another month of snow followed by a month of waiting for the fields to dry out and spring back to life. How dreary.

Anyway I was about to post some long whiny rant about how much I miss outdoor and how indoor, while an adequate replacement in the interim, was starting to wear thin. It was going to be quite long-winded, I'm sure my fan(s) would appreciate it... but I'm not going to. Two reasons:

1. Scanning some of the other ulty blogs in the meantime I cam across this gem that pretty much sums up my mindset better than I could myself... the specifics are quite different naturally, but that's pretty much where I'm at.

2. Looks like after some uncertainty, everything's finally fallen into place for a trip down to Kansas for Fools Fest... I can get my outdoor fix in less than a month. Picking up with a fun team outta Duluth, and the tourney's on its 25th anniversary so they've got some big plans... should be a good time all 'round.