Monday, October 27, 2003
Three cheers for media manipulation! Seriously, I consider myself fairly media savvy, because I have a degree in journalism that required me to take such classes as "Introduction to Mass Media," "International Mass Communications," and "Communication Law."
Not to mention countless broadcasting classes that taught me how to mold and manipulate my audiences into brain-dead zombies that will not change the channel during a commercial break.
So, when I am molded and manipulated by a media message, I can't help but want to applaud the entity that so cleverly infiltrated my defenses.
Of course there are many entities that try desperately to accomplish this feat, some of them quite pathetically, like Michael Moore in his latest documentary, Bowling for Columbine, which practically screamed, please ignore all the manipulative editing and false assumptions, and just let my faulty message sneak in and convert you to an anti-american commie left-wing zombie! If I weren't so sad for all the people who fell for it, it would be laughable!
Anyway, back to the entity who for a few split seconds deceived me. You see, last night as my husband I were watching television (a ritual bonding experience for us,) there was a commercial that showed this really cool, hip, alternative-dressing girl, who had been given a gift card to a really uncool, not so hip, old-lady store. She tried on lots of old-lady clothes which looked really awful and she was very sad, and the audience felt very bad for her because there was clearly nothing she could purchase with her gift card at this store.
So, then the audience is told that from now on they should give "American Express Gift Cards" so that the recipient can use them anywhere credit cards are accepted, then they show the girl, much happier walking into a store that looks just perfect for her, because she has a "American Express gift card."
For a few split seconds I actually thought to myself,
"Oh, that's brilliant, of course I would want the person I was giving a gift certificate to, to be able to spend it anywhere!" It was when I looked over and saw the look of sheer glee on my husband's face that I knew something must be wrong, because he was clearly being duped.
That's when I realized, "Oh wait, that's right, we already have a gift certificate that can be spent anywhere the recipient pleases, it's called cash."
And frankly, it's typically considered kind of tacky and thoughtless to give someone cash as a gift, (unless it's for a wedding gift in which case it's considered amazing!)
I will enjoy watching as American Express dupes everyone into believing that the most sensitive and practical gift, and truly the most thoughtful gift that can be given is basically cash, but in the form of a nifty card American Express provides.
And when I receive them for gifts, or help my friend and relations purchase them for other friends and relations, I will smile to myself applauding on the inside, and reflect to myself on my own plans for thought-domination through the perfect media message, don't get paranoid, I'm sure I will curb my worst nature and make it a message that encourages you to love Jesus and vote Republican, instead of the really clever message that I have almost perfected which would force you to give me all your money and compliment me endlessly.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
I would like to thank everyone who participated in the name my business contest. Unfortunately none of you won because Ryan and I came up with a different name on our own. However, your input did help us to start thinking of names, so again, thank you. The new name is "Media Green House" We're thinking of slogans now, like "Where productions are grown," or "Where ideas bloom" etc.
Anyway, I've recently come to the realization that I may be suffering form Adult Onset ADD. I mean honestly, do you know anyone with a shorter attention span than me? Point in case....the anti-feminist thread....where did it go? I mean really, that was supposed to be a long term thing, but it died because I became disinterested. It's not even that I exhausted the subject, I had lots more to say, for instance, I recently played horseshoes, a classic example, like golf, of an anti-feminist sport, that certainly could have been a blog entry. Oh, and recently I was perusing Barnes and Nobles free online university, this may be due to the fact that I am suffering from school withdrawal, which I may or may not have discussed in a previous blog, anyway, B&N University was offering a free course entitled "Money Management for Women," I am sad to admit that this really disturbed me, so I could have written an entire blog entry throwing a bone to legitimate feminists out there, because really, are women just naturally worse than men with money? I don't think so. Has B&N ever offered a free course called "Money Management for Men," I honestly doubt it. I mean really this is practically as bad as having a course called "Money Management for Black People," seriously I was very annoyed. However, my annoyance was quickly abated by the fact that I just quit caring, due to adult onset ADD.
Real life examples of how ADD is effecting my potential in life are, three months ago I was going to apply to be a substitute teacher, you know, when I wasn't busy with video productions, of course I never followed up on that. Just last month I decided I would start taking senior photos and other stock photography to supplement my income, that thought still surfaces occasionally, but I can tell it is already dying. I'm sure you all remember when I was going to be a humor columnist, I don't really care at all about that anymore. And just a few weeks ago I signed up for free online courses from Barnes and Noble one on programming, so I could help my husband with side projects, and one on writing for children. I went to both course web pages once and then promptly decided that I didn't really care enough about either of those things to spend an hour a week on them.
Even last week's crazy used book scheme is dwindling away. I have a new scheme, it's much better, but I'm willing to bet that by next week I will be disinterested in it as well. Over the years I have thought about being a pediatrician, a pediatric occupational therapist, a lawyer, a teacher, a newscaster, a writer, a professional actress, U.S. ambassador to Israel, and the ruler of the free world. I'm not sure my interest in these fields was ever based on a genuine desire to make a career out of these things, but more just out of a cocky self-assurance that I would be much better at them than anyone else currently in these fields.
Is everyone in their twenties so flaky, or do I really have Adult onset ADD? I will probably never know, but I'm pretty sure that if I respond to even one of the 10 emails I get everyday about getting prescription drugs online I could be on ritalin within two days.
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
I have a new scheme. And if you're a feminist or a male you may be happy to know that my new scheme in no way deceives poor defenseless males into giving me things.
My new con is brilliant. I buy books at garage sales for 25 cents or less, and then I take them to a local used book store who gives me store credit for them, typically between a dollar or two per book. I spent an entire weekend buying books at garage sales. At first I just bought all the books that the mindless masses read, you know Tom Clancy and various female mystery / romance writers.
I don't know any of their names because I tend to not read pop-culture books. I'm stuck in a little closet with C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L'engle and Herman Wouk. We live happily in our little closet, luckily they were all fairly prolific, because I dread the idea of leaving the closet and finding other reading materials.
Anyway, so anytime I recognized the author of the book I bought it. On a whim I also bought some really old and corny Christian books, and a few self-help books, they were all copyright 1980-something, so, I really didn't expect them to sell. As it turned out these were the books that really sold, while only about half of the pop-culture books sold.
So, I assumed that non-fiction books were the way to go, so I bought all kinds of non-fiction books in my next garage sale outing, and then they only took like two of them. I was bitter. Still the few they took paid for the others I had bought. But seriously, what am I going to do with copies of "The Silent Passage: Menopause," and "What to Expect When You're Expecting?" I hate when my brilliant schemes to take over the world backfire. Oh well. Maybe I'll start listing the used bookstore rejects here on my blog, and if you're interested in them I'll sell them to you for fifty cents a piece.
(The scheming never dies folks...)
Ok, and one last thing. My new idea for a name for my video business is too generic I guess because everyone else in the world is already using it. Doug warned me about this but I failed to see the light. So, now we're having a contest on the old blog, it's called "Name Amy's Business," a good name will end with the word productions or media, and really say something about what it is I do. Right, so I would characterize our business as a communication and promotion tool for other businesses, which is why I liked my old name "Big Picture Media" because I felt that we helped businesses show their clients "the big picture." So, now that two of my favorite names have been killed, the other was "Big Day Productions, " I am bitter and unwilling to be creative. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to name my business....names with the word "Big" in the title will get special consideration... if you win, i.e. we actually use the name you came up with you're in for a glorious prize. You will get to choose five, that's right, five reject books from my collection. That's right any five reject books you want, we have such favorites as "Controlling Cholesterol," and "Opposites Attack" and several other undreamed of glories. So, get busy. Be creative, and win some crappy books I'm trying to get rid of. You can post all your suggestions in the comments section of my blog.
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
No one likes my phone. Actually, I should be specific here, so as to not incriminate the innocent. The phone no one likes is my home telephone, not my cellular phone. In fact my cellular phone is a very good phone, I've had it for at least eight months now and it is only slightly broken, and I also have yet to lose it, so that's amazing considering my record.
Now my home phone has always had problems; in fact, it has been having problems for well over a year. Pretty much ever since we have had our home phone line it chooses to buzz intermittently. It's fairly annoying, as anyone who has ever talked to us on the phone can testify to. One minute everything is clear as a bell, the next minute there is a loud buzzing, basically just a lot of static on the line, as if you're making a long distance call from Antarctica, although with satellite technology even that phone call might sound better.
To give you an idea of what kind of people my husband and I are, we have never done anything to look into what is causing the buzzing or whether or not it is fixable. This may be due to the fact that the buzzing is intermittent, or to the fact that you can still talk over the buzzing, or that we simply don't use our home phone that often, or that if you call out the phone company to repair it and it happens to be a problem with an internal line instead of an external line they will charge you $80 and not fix the problem. However, since it has been over a year I think the answer is just that we are very, very lazy.
A more recent problem with our phone line, (and by recent I mean that it began about eight months ago instead of a year ago,) is that the downstairs phone jack has stopped working entirely. That's right, you plug in any phone whatsoever and you get no dial tone. So, did we have that looked into? No, we just stopped using the downstairs phone jack. Which means that whenever the phone rings I have to run upstairs to answer it.
The running up the stairs was pretty annoying, but not quite annoying enough for me to pursue having the phone line fixed. Plus I figured all the running up the stairs had to be good for me. Well thanks to a new problem with the phone line, I no longer have to run up the stairs to answer the phone, ever!
See, now our phone has stopped ringing. That's right, you call my house, it rings on your end, but on my end it is completely silent. (The crickets are chirping over here folks.) So see, I no longer run up the stairs because the phone no longer rings. In some ways this is kind of convenient and really lends itself to my life-long goal of becoming a hermit. The problem is that most people have caught on, so they just call my cell phone instead, which racks up a heck of a lot of extra minutes. The other problem is that if I am expecting someone to call my home phone, I have to make a million calls to time and temp... at least this is free.
"What?" you're thinking, "What does time and temp have to do with anything?" Well you see, while my phone no longer rings, call waiting still works swimmingly, so as long as I'm on a call, I can hear when someone else calls me. So today I called the furniture store to see when they were going to bring my repaired sofa back to my home. They asked if they could call me back in about ten minutes. I said sure, and promptly dialed time and temp so that I would be able to hear their call come through. There is no redeeming factor to this problem, it is just flat out annoying.
Now I know what you're thinking, surely this new complication with my phone line will cause me to have it fixed. In all honestly, probably not, as the new complication has been around for several weeks already. However, as I am writing this super complaintive blog, I am starting to wonder why it is that I pay fifty dollars a month for a phone line that I can only make outgoing calls on, keeping my mind that three quarters of those outgoing calls will just buzz anyway.
Hmm, maybe I should just have my home line turned off and only use my cell phone. Of course that would involve calling the phone company, and then alerting everyone who has my home number that they can now only call my cell number. That would be a lot of trouble. It's probably simpler to just keep paying the fifty dollars a month.
