Little things are pissing me off today and I don’t know why I’m wasting cycles on them. They’re not worth getting pissed off about, and if they WERE worth it, I’d be pissed off all the time because there’s nothing unusual about any of it – it’s just normal everyday stuff.
1. The mail I got from Conservative MP John Baird, beating the drums to make Canadians get all indignant about house arrest. Far better that we overcrowd our prison system and force the construction of new prisons at huge public expense, than use alternative sentencing programs for prisoners deemed not to pose a real threat to the rest of us. (And okay, some people might disagree with me and that’s fine. But what the hell is John Baird doing using taxpayer dollars to try to create the illusion of a problem and generate public outrage where none exists? Are there no real problems for the Conservatives to solve?)
The flyer has a photo of a “criminal” in an undershirt sprawled on a couch drinking beer. It says “Why should convicted thieves, arsonists and vandals serve their sentences watching TV, playing video games and surfing “websites” on the internet?”
It pisses me off on so many levels, including why the hell is “websites” in quotation marks and isn’t ‘websites on the internet’ redundant?
There’s a little tear-off bit for me to answer a question so oversimplified as to render it meaningless: “I think thieves and vandals should serve their sentences in jail.” My choices are Agree and Disagree – there’s no space provided for comments.
I hope Mayor Larry drags John Baird down with him. Grrrr.
2. Oprah’s The Big Give. I haven’t figured out why I hate it so much, but oh my god it’s making me seethe. I didn’t watch it all but of the parts I saw, this was the worst: Why would anybody think that a mad dash through a toy store grabbing everything in sight would help small children deal with their father’s recent murder??
3. The fast food commercial with the kids and the parents reversing roles and the parents have a meltdown because the kid won’t take them to Burger King. And the parents start crying and saying “You promised, you totally lied!” and finally the kid says in a dispassionate yet contemptuous tone, “All right, get in the car.” I HATE this commercial. I think it illuminates everything that is wrong with crappy families and tries to make it seem funny when it’s just plain pathetic.
I feel much better now. Thank you.
TAGS:
You know, most days I totally admire Oprah, but your right, the BIG GIVE just some how annoyed the #%#$ out of me. I couldn’t even watch it all, it was so…. blak. I am so glad someone else agrees. thanks for getting it off your chest, so now I can get it off mine too.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way about that commercial
Oprah has finally tripped over the edge… she’s taking herself beyond Cult Leader and is now in full blown Messianic mode. What she’s doing with the show is more, or worse, than disgusting. She’s taking advantage of broken people to showcase her Generosity.
The house arrest thing… I’d be cool with it if someone could guarantee the bad guys only had access to a 14.4k modem and an old gaming system… something like a Vic20 with a tape drive.
I dislike any commercial which makes people look like an idiot… besides, the only fast food worth eating is at A&W.
I usually watch Oprah but lately I think she thinks too much of herself and her money. She has done some good things but the Big Give isn’t one of them. She’s best when Dr Oz is on the show. He calls the shots then.
I won’t watch “The Big Give”. I have seen the ad for it, and that was enough to set me off on a rant. There are few commercials that don’t annoy me in one way or another.
As for John Baird, I was spared from that mailing. Oh yeah, I live in Paul Dewar’s riding.
Ugh, the Big Give is just WRONG. A few years ago I tuned into the beginning of it and she was talking to the audience and some woman had been told if she took the time off to go to it she’d be fired – so this greedy consumerist trough feed mattered more to her than her job.
I turned if off then and I was so upset by the entire concept I felt like I was going to have an anxiety attack.
My latest thing to get totally riled up about is that disposable menstrual pad manufacterers are “donating” pads to school girls in Africa. There are orgs donating cloth, and sewn reusable pads too, but they are dwarfed by this garbage producing big bucks advertising campaign around disposable products….which once hooked – just like formula – they’ll feel they need to buy after this latest hoopla around “giving” ends. Mom worried one of her girls was going to prostitute herself for pads. I tried to get into a discussion about this with some moms at a board I visit and they couldn’t get off the track of “young girls want something discrete and its so much more convenient to use disposable pads or tampons”without even looking at what these pads will cost them after the generosity dries up, never mind the cultural differences.
I know someone who is on house arrest for the next eighteen months. Believe me, it is not a barrel of laughs for him. Friends came over and kept him company in the beginning but that soon dwindled as more exciting pursuits came up. He is allowed to go to work and back…that’s it.
With this program, he will still have a job when his term is over…not be forced to look for a new job while explaining a year and a half absence from the work force. He will learn from this experience and will think twice about re-offending…he never wants to go through this again.
Gabriel: “She’s taking advantage of broken people to showcase her Generosity.” – YES. That’s it exactly!
Leanne, I live in Dewar’s riding too…
Dirtwitch, okay, now I’m mad about the pads too!
Oh oh oh — I don’t even know where to start… the pads have been totally freaking me out for ages….I always found Oprah disgusting, so now maybe this show will help reveal that??… John Baird… AND Evangelist Charles McVety in bed with the Tories to help them deny tax credits to art/artists whose work they find “offensive” (to throw my latest personal hot button in the mix). We should all be screaming in the streets over that one.
XUP, oh yeah, you’re right, Conservative facism pisses me off too!
I don’t own a television so I haven’t seen the show or the commercials. I can’t imagine a worse example of parents than that commercial. Yesterday I watched a mother give in to her 3 year old because he bellowed at her. I wanted to tell her, “well, now you’ve done it. He knows that if he bellows at you, he’ll get what he wants. Good job”. And commercials like that just reinforce who’s in charge. What a farce.
Okay donna lee, I have to say, when I see it happen on the street my first reaction is the same as yours but I always step back then and think “Maybe today has just been over the top for that mom and she’s just trying to keep things on an even keel til they make it home”…and trust me giving in once in awhile doesn’t teach them that they can get away with it all the time…unless they are a husky (dog). I’ve NEVER given in to my daughter and she still is my biggest beg and pleader in stores…her little brother, I gave in to the other day and he’s the easiest kid to take to stores!
Oh I was hoping someone would blog about the Big Give. I did watch it and by far the most disgusting this was the trip through the toy store. That whole story, actually, kind of grossed me out, because sometimes shit happens and you may need to change your lifestyle. I mean it sucks that her husband died and all, but not everyone gets to live in their dream house and it is not a basic human right. The homeless woman, though, that was a slightly better story.
On the pads thing… I don’t think it’s right to hold third world places to different standards than first world places. I forgot to bring pads with me last time I went to South Africa, so I had to buy some there, and I really noticed the lack of my usual pad. I know I could make better choices myself, but I have the choice. Seriously, the pads over there SUCK.
I don’t watch Oprah so can’t comment. Anything with John Baird’s face on it goes into the recycling bin beside the mailbox before he has the opportunity to raise my blood pressure. That being said, I’ll be on the lookout for this particular flyer this week and see how creative I can be in ‘redesigning’the tear-off. As for the commercials . . . I may sprawl on the couch and drink beer!
cinnamon gurl how much did pads cost you in Africa? How much of the average monthly income is that?
It makes no environmental sense ANYWHERE to use disposable pads, but in places where girls are too poor to afford cloth to make reusable pads and are forced to use shredded old newspaper why would you put them in a position where they need to BUY anything month by month – this isn’t about brand loyalty – though maybe it is – just like NESTLE going in and telling mothers their milk wasn’t good enough for their babies and getting them hooked on free samples of formula in the hospital then sending them home with a NEED for a consumer product that didn’t exist before, no money to pay for it, and no clean water to mix up the product with. NESTLE killed huge numbers of children this way.
Reusuable cloth pads are fabulous by the way. Check out Party in my Pants brand – limited edition prints even!
But if you want to help in Africa they aren’t a good choice – they are too thick to wash by hand quickly. Go here – http://www.goods4girls.org/
This is the easiest to wash kind -http://www.diapersewing.com/clothpads.htm
Agreed on all three points. Misplaced quotation marks coupled with redundancies make me roar!
I gave up on Oprah after I heard her say, “America is the greatest country on the planet for women!” for the hundredth time. Blech.
I miss very little by having no tv. I still even get the commercials. 😉
If you want to talk graffiti and street art, zoom, or anyone, there’s a discussion… http://culturalshifts.com/archives/223
dirtwitch, I’ve been boycotting Nestle for two and a half decades and, given their corporate sprawl, this is not an easy thing to do. My poor daughters were raised without Quik (spelling anyone, Bueller?) and Smarties . . .
grace
Oprah…gawd, what CAN I say??? She’s lost it recently. There was another “give away” about 18 months ago and it involved children “who had nothing”. She let them go crazy at a well-known toy store. No structure, no coaching. It drove me MAD.
Junk-food adds…yep, can’t add anything more to your analysis. You hit the nail on the head.
John Baird. So….let’s try to make people “think” that we are proctecting them… DON’T GET ME GOING ON THIS ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It pisses me off too what passes for caring actions, for generosity or for social responsibility. Zoom, you’ve hit on some good examples of that kind of BS.
Here’s what pissed me off the other day. An NAC maintenance person telling people who are homeless that they couldn’t warm themselves up by a hot air vent attached to the NAC.
Here’s what was sweet. One of the homeless gentlemen looked up, saw me, threw me a big smile and said, “Hey, I love your hair, girlfriend. That was genuine!
I’m so glad others don’t like Oprah. I thought I was alone!
dirtwitch, I can’t remember how much the pads cost in South Africa, maybe R15? ($3-ish CAD then). I think the minimum wage for domestic workers is around R80 per day ($15 CAD)? But of course, South Africa has a 40% unemployment rate (give or take since nobody knows for sure how many people are living in all the informal settlements) so those jobs are gold.
All I’m saying is that I don’t think it’s wrong to donate things that are available for purchase in the developed world. It IS wrong to convince the folks you’re donating to that they’re better for your health or some other such claim. To me it is not the same as Nestle going in with formula saying this is better for your child than breastmilk and not stopping to consider the damage of not having clean water.
Donating pads is one thing, but I don’t see anything wrong with just making them available to buy. Also, with that commercial, I couldn’t help but wonder if there weren’t cultural taboos at play that would prevent a girl from going to school while she had her period.
I would wholeheartedly support donating pads (and formual for that matter) to homeless shelters in my town. How I can I not support that elsewhere?
So I’m visiting my parents this week. Today in the mail, they got their *second* stupid flyer about criminals and house-arrest. Nope, it wasn’t from their MP – they live in a liberal riding in London. It was from Rona Ambrose, Tory MP from Alberta. What the #$^% is an MP from Edmonton doing spending our tax money sending crap to London?
Norma, that’s an excellent question! Please be sure to me know what Rona Ambrose’s answer is.
As you’ve seen, it’s a “10%er” problem that Garth Turner and the Liberals are apparently trying to stop. In theory the Cons could use this spam even while in opposition!