Archive for category Angry Rants
Reality, Imagination and Stephen Hawking
Posted by Tony Hatter in Angry Rants, Uncategorized on April 22nd, 2008
Well, I’m disappointed at the lack of anything about Theoretical Physics or wheelchairs, but this did prove to be a mildly amusing, very angry rant about people misusing words. I think I must have been in a bad mood…
During the current remodel of a school building, there is a temporary wall which seperates the area in which non-construction workers should be from the area which is being remodeled. The number of linguistically impaired people calling it a “fake” wall finally got to me today. The next person who I hear saying “fake wall” will be the recipient of a very sincere invitation to try walking through it. The same goes for the people who circulate the “fake” photos of sharks swimming just beneath the surface of the water next to an unsuspecting surfer or a low-flying helicopter. The photos aren’t at all what bother me; each of those photos almost made me laugh the first ten thousand times I saw them. What bothers me is that each of these photos comes attached to an email with a string of about thirty previous recipients and senders each of which has found it necessary to not only send the picture on another lap around cyberspace, but to also add their own rendition of the sentence “This is probably fake, but funny nonetheless.” The pictures are not fake!!! They are all very much real, it is just the situation they are depicting that is fake. When you watch a movie, the characters are being played by real people, which are recorded on real film and are real interpretations of fake people.
I know someone who very frequently reminds me that there is such a thing as male PMS. Usually I laugh and let it go without asking him how many times a day he pulls that line out. Maybe he has a point.
Genuinely worthwhile.
Posted by Tony Hatter in Angry Rants, Religion, The Dog, Uncategorized on October 18th, 2006
The US Mint is running television ads promoting thier commemorative coin collections. The ads depict various ordinary people in ordinary situations acting strangely because they are numismatists (coin collectors). There is a woman who is fishing through the penny tray next to her convenience store cash register, there is a man with a metal detector in his bedroom and a long-distance runner who stops and sits down on the race path mid-marathon all because they are inspecting coins they have run across.
First of all, these are not the type of people who want to “collect” coins they ordered from a catalogue. That’s not collecting, that’s shopping. The mint should be honest with themselves and admit that their target for these ads is the well-intentioned aunt/uncle/grandparent/neighbor/family-friend who is looking for a graduation/birthday/congratulations gift for little Timmy or Sarah.
More importantly, though, is the slogan emblazoned on the screen and read aloud for the blind at the end of the commercials. “Genuinely Worthwhile” Does this refer to coin collecting, or the US Mint as a whole? Is this a desperate attempt on the part of our government to make a push at catching back up with the Euro? Would stimulating the coin collecting industry really bolster the value of the dollar all that much? Am I reading too much into this? Probably. The mint just wants to sell pre-collected coin collections to unsuspecting doofuses who are either dumb enough not to realize that the fun of collecting things is the colleting and not the actual possesion, or are lazy enough to want to have a collection without having to go to the trouble of collecting anything.
Thank You for your time. This has been Genuinely Worthwhile.
P.S. The Dog has a halloween costume. He will be a lobster. Both he and I are thoroughly pissed.