Given that my sorties into the written news have led to an explosion of forensic linguistics whenever I read, I thought I would try the more passive approach of letting the television wash over me, as I practice bad sleep-hygiene [yes, such a thing exists and is very important to your [not yours, ed.?] mental health … um, shut up?] and turned on the television too early this morning.
There was indeed a news round up of stories either national, or just Ontarian, I cannot now remember which, and an infomercial [which a neighbour’s child used to pronounce as informical, and so it has become] about a curling iron that was also a blow-dryer. Already my attention was divided – that’s cool I thought [or hot, the ad said], even though I never use a curling iron, having hair that defies the simplest and most complex styling attempts. I got married wearing a drugstore hairband.
But wait … Cindy Crawford and a melon farmer? Does it get any better? Apparently not, as Cindy’s Promise [or is it Cindi with one eye, as the birthday card with a cyclops on it proclaimed to me on my 40th, given as a joke because no one gets my simple name right, including an uncle to whom I am an only niece, she raved bitterly?] was on every channel. Well, no not really. We only get 17,343, but she was on a lot of them, probably in 12 languages on Omni.
And the preachers were getting started, one with a lovely graphic of a golden cross, and suddenly a shield and huge sword descend and cover the cross, with a sort of violent swooshing sound. Yes well, don’t get me started on that pleasant religious imagery. Religions of peace everywhere you look.
But one interesting thing did strike me as I paged through the cable line-up, more like one of those criminal line-ups where you are looking for the perpetrator, and that was the number of spots labeled either informical or paid-programming. What I thought to myself is unpaid-programming? The news channel I could have in un-ostrich like fashion turned to was paid for by someone, possibly the government, possibly a network owned by someone I would loathe. What a strange distinction, and so misleading.
I had an eye-opening, or rather mind-opening, experience in 3rd year university when a professor [thank you, Professor Beatie, but you shouldn’t have given me only an 83 on my essay that won that prize, but I don’t dwell on it much, or mention it more often than semi-annually, usually when in my cups] made me understand how important it was to read the introduction to a book, something I had always avoided, to figure out the perspective of the author. He drove home that all books were organized collections of selected “facts”, chosen to tell a particular version of history. I thought introductions were just places where authors babbled on about why they wrote the book. It turned out I was right, except for the just part. Everyone has an axe to grind. Even when they don’t recognize it themselves.
So I think I will take my chances with the paid-programming and informicals. At least you will know who is selling you the snake oil, I mean melon cream, and it is easier on the eyes.
Why melon farmers is funnier than it should be to my juvenile mind:
Yes to gypsum – that would be a good word of the day. It is difficult to export water directly to the U.S., but it is not difficult to export slurry. So they mix it with water from the lovely Tay River at some alarming rate every day and off it goes so we can brush our teeth and redo the basement.
It would also be a good scrabble word.
this is a crystalline form of gypsum called selenite.
i haven’t had cable television in over two years now. i refuse to pay to be marketed to. i pay $7.99/month for Netflix, and try not to be influenced by product placement and other even more subtle forms of marketing and persuasion embedded in all programming now. sometimes when i catch something that i find particularly revolting i turn off the TV right then and there. i have found that the longer i have gone without watching commercials, the more obvious all the other tricks they use are. but some of the stuff is quicker than your eyes can catch. i think such methods should be illegal. yeah right, like that’s going to happen. morality and business in the USA don’t jibe at all anymore.
that’s all the rant i have in me today. i’m feeling beaten down. it is super damn cold here again. i should have just stayed in bed all day! 😡
thanks Xty for providing me a place to grumble! 😛
Staying in bed all day would be very bad sleep hygiene. Better to lie on a couch all day, by far.
i chose option three. after completing my mental to do list i sat at my computer all day.
one thing leads to another. i am now reading about education during the medieval period. i wish i could get my money back spent on college and go back 500 years and get a real education. here’s a good summary…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivium
There were fewer books by far and it was possible to almost master most knowledge. Now we drown in information and it is hard to know what to focus on.
I took a fair amount of mediaeval history and was always fascinated by the written documents and how they survived and why they were held or not held to be important. A burning library features in that Umberto Eco novel everyone read, the something of the Rose and also in Gormenghast, a most unusual trilogy I remember reading as an impressionable teen. But a huge disaster in those days. Literally irreplaceable. It is no wonder scribes held a pretty high station. And they could interpret what others couldn’t read.
i do not think the basics are taught anymore. at least not past superficial treatment. if one would thoroughly learn the basic curriculum of the trivium through high school, then the quadrivium if one went to college, what else could you not quickly learn to get caught up to 2014?
i did go to college as i have stated before mainly because i was told to do that to get a better job. well, since that has proved tenable at best, i would have preferred to at least receive a thorough education – one that teaches a person how to think for themselves especially.
the truth is that i have learned far more on my own than i have ever learned in school. and since i killed the television a few years ago, my continuing education has really taken off.
speaking of burned libraries, i would give up the internet for the rest of my life or until i could read all the books and learn what was lost 2000 years ago here. i think that in the USA today, the average man on the street understands less about the entire universe than a resident of Alexandria did then. and the more i read, the more i believe that we are being dumbed down purposefully. well at the very least by benign neglect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
I remember it like it was yesterday… i was 7 years old and in the second grade. The letter ‘ i ‘ was on the chalk board and the very old and nice Mrs. Henley was my teacher.
I verified in a step-by-step interrogation that we had indeed finished all our numbers and all our letters, we could add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and read any book on any subject regarding anything we might need to know in the future. “Yes”, she confessed that this was true. “And this is the second grade?” “Yes”, she said. “And school goes all the way up to the 12th grade?” “Yes”, she said.
“Well, since I already know everything… do I still have to go to all those other grades?”
“Yes”, she said. And then she told me there were all kinds of other things I would be learning. But looking back… I should have followed my instincts.
just to better explain what i meant above…
our schools are not teaching the basics very well, and because of that people are unable to learn things on their own. everyday i see the stupidest things. people do not understand how things work in the natural world. part of this is because we have become too dependent on technology also.
and because of this people are too easily herded as their ignorance makes them susceptible to fear mongering. the unknown is feared.
DN – people do learn differently. i do not need a teacher for most things either – i am naturally curious, maybe to a fault! i do make sure to donate every year to wikipedia.
i have a lot on my mind lately. thanks for being patient all. 🙂
I found school very difficult once I hit grade 7 – I really disliked it. Skipped as much as possible, which was a surprising amount. And I must have told you that I dropped out when we got back from England when I was 16 and legally able to do so. Ran back when I realised it was way easier than working … and when it was my choice it was suddenly much more fun.
soliloquy – noun 1. an act of speaking one’s thoughts aloud when by oneself or regardless of any hearers, especially by a character in a play.
to peck, or not to peck………….
Soliloquy is a lovely word, and I am well aware that I am mostly talking to myself. But it is good fun and I am enjoying the whole html thing and widgets, etc., and it has been spilling over a little bit into other areas, like helping Mikey with his clothing company web stuff as they try to get it going. But I am mostly just wanting to mention that we are having elderly parent concerns, not my mum this time, hubby’s dad, and it will interfere with my writing for sure, although it looks like I might be blogging from the cottage all next week so a silver lining in every fucking cloud.
It is, you will also be interested to know, 10 degrees C below average. That is a lot.
i intended the term “soliloquy” to describe my posting lately. i do try to keep the place going because i appreciate your efforts Xty. and until the weather improves, i am going to have a lot of time to kill. but i feel self conscious when it seems i am killing the thread!
the weather here of course is to the same magnitude just as terrible. there is no way we are going too have a normal growing season this year. the ground is still frozen. some years i am already putting some early stuff in April 1.
it’s probably nothing, but just in case…
i did not mean anything more than what i said as far as the soliloquy post. in fact i was looking for words using the root “sol”, meaning “sun” in Latin i believe, because of yesterdays word of the day, when i thought of it. (as it turns out the Latin root is solo) oops. 🙂
we are all going through varying degrees of hell – everyone of us, and it ain’t just the weather. so let’s not all withdraw, OK?
peace. if there was no misunderstanding, then disregard all of it, including this.
and like i have said before, i really could use an editor.
I did not take the soliloquy quote wrong at all – it is just something I happened to have thought about – to keep writing regardless. There are only 5 of us, so the thread is pretty dead by definition!
all is well then. sorry for being confused and contributing to said confusion.
DN – i’ll take Death Valley. 70’s and 80’s all week. we are 20 degrees below normal today in F, about the same as Xty is below normal in C. bad news, no change in the weather is forecast. the next three months are supposed to remain well below normal for the Midwestern USA. i am not doing a garden this year now at all. i am moving in August so it’s not going to be worth it.
nice to see ya 44.
and i’m pretty sure someone mentioned melon.
Gone, but hopefully not forgotten. I’m around, just busy. Gold, Silver, and miners all stink. That much I know. I don’t get official SELL signals until Friday, but it looks baked in the cake at this point. Pfft.
And yes, the weather sucks donkey balls. And I disagree about shaking your fist at the sky. If it makes one feel better, as it does me, then not true about it doing no good.
Good luck with father-in-law. We currently have two nephews with their dads in intensive care death watch as we speak. I know one pretty well. The other, not at all. Heart attacks, revived, now assessing the damage, as in “how long without oxygen” type damage, and no, neither one looks good. At least one is going to get the plug pulled soon. Sorry to sound callous, but it is what it is. Not really old, old guys either. Another one of those things that…um…makes one think…
I’d post a tune, but nothing apropo comes to mind. Hey! That sounds like a candidate for Word of the Day!
Quick check of the charts. Only silver and miners officially suck. Gold is still hanging on like grim death. Literally. Grim…grim…death. 😥
OK, this one is always good. It could be about the weather, or about life…
i concur.
and because my wife is now pissed… i will play something mellow because YES i do know what mellow is. 😀
Good stuff from Ritholtz today. Here’s one nugget “If you follow advice from anonymous bloggers, you pretty much get what you pay for”.
And if you follow that link, you’ll see another link in the first sentence to “yesterday’s screed”. For my money, it’s even better. With stuff like “If you say a crash is coming every day for five years, when it finally comes, you get precisely zero credit for it.”
It’s a double header that I agree with 100% and wish I had written myself. Though, in many ways, I already HAVE written it myself. More than once. Maybe that’s why I like it so much.
Please god, if you exist, just give me one more bounce in silver so I can unload the rest of mine.
OK, so I’ll keep the box full of sterling spoons, just cuz they are so damn cool, but the rest of it has to go. Now. Price is really no object. But, ahem…higher is better. 😉
Here’s a good question: So, Eric, why are you unloading your silver now, at such a low price?
And here’s a good answer: Because my silver was all bought in 2010 (give or take) at an average cost of $20/oz (give or take). I got rid of some at higher prices (some MUCH higher prices) and for the rest I’m being offered a rare chance to reverse a mistake in my life at breakeven, or even a little better. It’s a “do-over”, at no cost.
Suppose someone offered you all your money back that you’d lost on miners. You jump at the chance, right? I’m never going to get that chance, but the market is offering me that chance in silver. Stuff I never should have bought in the first place is going bye-bye, and at a slight gain to boot. No harm, no foul, and moving on. Like it never happened.