Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Television has been dumbing down its content for years to keep up with a dumbing population.  The makers of an ad for Plavix(R), a clot prevention prescription product of Bristol-Myers Squibb, recently changed their commercial  to point out more clearly what the drug does.

In an animation of blood platelets traveling through your bloodstream, the white platelets of an unhealthy person at risk for heart attack start to stick together and form a clot.  New signage in the animation actually draw lines to point out that the funny-looking white stuff blocking the blood flow is a “CLOT.”  Duh.

Did anybody actually write in to the manufacturer to complain that they didn’t know what they were seeing?  Has anybody out there actually not been able to figure out that they were looking at a sample of what happens when a clot forms?

Commercials can often talk down to viewers, and that immediately loses my attention.  If you want to sell me on a product, just keep it to-the-point.  I see how I can get a clot, I see that if the platelets don’t get sticky I won’t get a clot.  Simple.

The object of enlightening an audience is to peak the curiosity of some while holding the attention of the rest.  Making an ad that panders to those with a 5th grade education won’t get anybody anywhere.  We need to bring back the 1960s, when Hitchcock wasn’t afraid to put a collegiate vocabulary into his movies and television treated viewers as if they actually had a brain.

Yeah, gotta take some time off.  Back in October.

On my usual Thursday shopping excursion I came across a talking Christmas ornament in the Carlton Cards store.  I haven’t gotten into collecting ornaments, mostly because i don’t get into trees anymore.  Still my shopping buddy enjoys the anticipation of seeing the new collectibles when they start showing up around June each year, so I was looking at them while she decided which ones she wanted to add to her warehouse sized collection.

As a Twilight fan I would have considered buying any such themed ornaments had they been available:  they weren’t.  What did attract my eye was a talking ornament featuring Bela Lugosi as Dracula, with several classic (dare I say immortal) lines from the appropriately accented voice of the greatest king vampire portrayer ever.  After listening to the first phrase to respond to my press of the hidden button (“I am. . . .Dracula, I bid you velcome!”) I moved on to check out the other ornaments and catch up with my friend.

While I was in the middle of noticing that the employees had mixed up the names of the South Park Cartman and Kyle in the display, a woman came into the store and gravitated immediately to the same Dracula ornament.  What struck me about the visitor was her pale mien, lack of hair and sheer scarf wrapped stylishly around her head.  My guess, like anybody else’s, was that she was likely undergoing chemo, and I tried not to seem as if I was staring.

Suddenly my mind began to whirl.  Being a Dracula fan for years, I am very familiar with the most popular lines Lugosi spoke in the role, and as I saw her press the button on the ornament I anticipated–and got–an unexpected scene played out in front of me.  The next line to come up on the ornament was, “There are worse things awaiting men than death.”  She released the ornament and walked quietly away, but the implications of that moment were simply mind-numbing.

I have been able to come up for air just long enough to observe how the timing of the Labor Day weekend and the sudden change from summer heat to September chill was amazingly out of whack this year.

Labor Day was a week late this year as it was, but the cold weather arrived early as if to stomp out any “last hurrah” folks would want to indulge in before school and regular autumnal life started.  School started early for many people as well:  they even had kids in school for two or three days before letting them out for three days again.  What was that all about?

The lower temperatures came at an appropriate time for me because I didn’t have air conditioning for a few days.  Had the heat stayed around I would never have been able to function in those last days of vacation.  Now that the artificial cool has come back, we’ve spent two days relying on the artificial heat because somebody just yanked the plug on indian summer.

Last week was a madhouse, with nothing but meetings, appointments and adjustments to new schedules.  Next week won’t be any better.  This is how it will be until the holidays, when we add more insanity to the mix.  Why do we do this to ourselves?  Can’t we stand on even ground all year and not have to worry about adjusting all the time?

My prescription medication was a bit expensive, so when I went to see my doctor I asked, as my prescription provider recommended, that I be given a generic version of the drug I was taking.  Unfortunately there is none, partly because it’s a combo and not past its patent expiration date, I guess.  So he dutifully put me on the half of the drug that mattered, and in a slightly higher dose to make up for the missing half.

In a month, I’ve gained four pounds.

So what do I do, go back on the original drug and be four pounds lighter and broke, or try another change by adding a second drug to my medicine cabinet?

Awhile ago I wrote an open letter to McDonald’s asking them why they had not introduced their 1/3 pound Angus burgers to the general public instead of confining it to the New York test marketing area.  It’s finally here, and I’m glad that some requests do get answered.

On the other hand, I had to contact an internet provider because, according to my server, their security certificate had expired.  I tried calling, but was transferred three times and wound up back where I started.  I e-mailed them instead, but got a generic response and no promise that the problem would be handled.

If you were a secure website, wouldn’t you want somebody to let you know that you could be vulnerable–and your customers by proxy–to invasion?  Wouldn’t you at least want to extend a note of thanks to somebody who had taken the time to let you know about it?

Being a person who still (perhaps stupidly) believes in fighting for the right, I won’t stop trying.  That doesn’t mean I don’t get ticked off when others stop caring.

The news of a man opening fire inside an aerobics class at an L.A. Fitness club in the small Pennsylvania town of Bridgeville touched a nerve for me as it did for the general public.  Reports say the shooter, George Sodini, had been trying for years to find companionship with women and was continually rejected.  After years of frustration, he succeeded, in his second known attempt, to take his pain out on those he felt had hurt him.

It’s hard to be one of those human beings who just can’t find a mate of any kind, even just a friendly social type of relationship with a person of the preferred gender.  Of course, we never question our own fickle nature, we make it impossible for lonely people to find safe companionship, we have diseases like AIDS and an aversion to playing it safe for fear of looking like wimps.  We are also so aesthetically picky about people, we often cheat ourselves out of getting to know some wonderful folks just because they may not be perfectly turned out.

What the rampaging shooters in our society learn too late is that dead people can’t help you.  They can’t say they’re sorry that they don’t find you an acceptable prospect, or tell you the reasons why or give advice that would be beneficial.

Apparently Sodini was taking classes on how to “pick up” women, and he was hitting the gym to try to be shapely enough to attract women.  So what went wrong?  We may never find out from those victims who are still recovering from the shootings (three women died, and nine were injured before Sodini took his own life).  We are left with another legacy of revenge and terrorism that we will ultimately forget until the next time it happens.