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ANDREW'S
RANTS ARCHIVE #4 THE ANDREW' RANTS ARCHIVE OF PAST COLUMNS ANDREW'S RANTS ARCHIVE #1 ANDREW'S RANTS ARCHIVE #2 ANDREW'S RANTS ARCHIVE #3 CURRENT ANDREW'S RANTS ANDREW'S RANTS ARCHIVE #5 ANDREW'S RANTS ARCHIVE #6 ANDREW'S RANTS ARCHIVE #7 |
JULY
18th, 2005 |
PACKAGING I want to go off for a moment on packaging. Somewhere in this world is a school that teaches Techno Nerd Engineers to design and produce the most 'human-unfriendly' packaging possible. Take for instance the PSP2 thingy I just bought for my kid. It came in a box just a tad bigger than a shoe box. When I opened it, it contained Styrofoam to protect the electronics. It had enough of this padding so that if it had been run over with a fully loaded Mack truck I doubt that it would have suffered any damage. I know what your thinking, so what, big deal, so it had a protective packaging around it. Well what bright genius decided to pack a sensitive electronic instrument inside one of the most energetic materials known to man for creating static electricity. Styrofoam. When I finally managed to separate the wielded together clamshell halves of the Styrofoam encasing I found an impenetrable shell of hard Mylar casing. You know the type; it’s most often used for things like batteries and such hanging on racks in the supermarket. It is crystal clear and rock hard while still maintaining just enough flexibility to make you think you actually have a chance to physically remove it from your purchased item without resorting to deadly force or a jackhammer. You have to use a knife to cut through this stuff and all the while try not to cut yourself from slipping because it requires Herculean strength to perform this task. You also must take great care to not damage the contents that you purchased that lie mere millimeters below the trembling knife edge. When you finally get the item out of the mass of brightly colored packaging it is barely larger than a paper back book. Now why did they need all that packaging? Was it because they thought that the perceived image of the item costing 200 dollars should come in a larger box. That some people seeing a small paper back novel size package would say I’m not chucking out 2 bills for that but I sure will for this bigger box?? Perhaps so. Individually wrapped cheese slices are another packaging nightmare. You get this crisp cool yellow cheese slice out of the package and it is wrapped in a skin tight plastic wrapper. Now this wrapper is like Scotch Tape or packing tape that has gotten stuck down onto its own self and you can not tell where it begins or ends. You can finger and fondle it for hours scraping a fingernail across every perceived and imagined starting point and still not find where the beginning of the wrapper is. How hard would it be for the manufacturer to put a little dotted line on the plastic or an offset pull tab? In the end you now have a lumpy wad of warm unappetizing cheese like substance inside a crinkly shell of cellophane that is still resisting all efforts to remove it. It has been my experience that at this point if I vigorously curse while wadding the thing into a small tight ball it will cause the free end to spring free. Sure the cheese comes out in crumbled pieces but what else are you going to do. One of my greatest pet peeves on packaging is medicine. Now follow this scenario closely we have all been there. You have a massive headache and its throbbing through both frontal lobes almost blinding you with the pain. You go to the medicine closet and pull out a new bottle of pain killer. It’s in a small plastic wrapped box that is usually quite easily opened. Inside is where the trouble begins. That bottle is small and has a child safety cap on it. First of all the cap is shrink wrapped with that same Kryptoninan clear plastic mentioned before and even though it often has tear here perforated lines on it they are a lie. It usually takes a sharp object like a Ginsu kitchen knife or Samurai Sword to finally remove it with any effectiveness. Now this cap beneath is all white and has a white arrow to line up with a white notch so that it will pop free. If you didn’t have a headache before you tried to open this thing, you are guaranteed to now as you try to focus on this white on white Rubix Cube puzzle. The simplest way to bypass this ingenious torture device is to get a child who in 2 seconds flat will have it open and ready for use. That’s why they call them child safety caps. Only a child can open them. Now you’re in the home stretch. You look inside the bottle but it’s packed with cotton to keep the pills from rattling around and chipping in transit. It’s packed in there good to, kind of like Sardines in a can. You try in vain to pick it out with your fingers but it’s no use. Fingers are just too big to fit past the constricting neck of this nickel sized opening. All you can do is repeatedly grasp and snag little tufts of the stuff and try to tease the remainder out of the bottle but it always breaks off just as you think that this time you might have it. Now not only do you have a headache and high blood pressure but you’re mad as hell and you need that painkiller. Tweezers are not to be found and nothing in the house will suffice to reach inside and snag the cotton. Finally you loose control and slam the bottle to the floor hoping to break it. With the 'force of your pain' induced throw you do the Incredible Hulk justice yet the cotton wadding still stays firmly in place and the bottle skitters under a table or couch never to be see again unless you have a small child to send into the stygian depths after it. With a screech and an ever increasing string of profanities you get a butcher knife or some other instrument of destruction and begin to wail away on the offending bottle until structural integrity is lost and pills go spraying across the room. You pick up as many as you need and choke them down with the 'anger induced' bile that is rising and stumble off to bed. Why is it necessary to package something like over the counter pain medication as if it were a weapon of mass destruction? Hell, if all the guns in the world were sold with the same precautions we would never have another war. All of these and many other packaging problems make me want to find one of those little packaging designers or engineers and just slap them silly before dipping them slowly head first in a boiling vat of plastidip. |
JULY
4th, 2005 |
PET
PEEVES Everyone has their pet peeves and hang-ups. It's just part of being human. Some people let it affect them more than others and anyone that has a mother, which I hope was most of us, knows they have a built in ability to find that button to push and send you off the deep end into screaming incoherence quicker than any other person on the planet. The only other people who have that same ability are wives but it takes them time to develop the skill whereas moms seem to be able to do it instinctively. Anyway I thought I would try a bit of a cathartic exercise and try to overcome some of my hang-ups by writing them down and sharing them with the world. Even if it doesn’t make me feel better it will let the rest of the populace know in advance what pisses me off and what they should avoid when they are around me. Babies crying in movie theaters. Now don’t get me wrong I love kids. I was one myself once and I have a wonderful son who is a delight to me. But why, oh why, do young couples take infants into the movies? I am not talking about the latest Disney movie and the audience is full of kids of all ages. That is the targeted audience and it’s normal for kids to be there. I’m talking about grown up movies. No not adult X rated movies but grown up movies where there is a lot of suspense, car chases, and gratuitous sex and violence. I’m setting there in the theater and waiting for the new Van Helsing movie to start. My 15 year old son and I have been looking forward to it for weeks. In comes a set of former DINKs. That’s Double Income No Kids (DINK). Like I said former. Evidentially they decided to spread their genetic code around and cranked out not one but two little piles of genetic refuse. One was 3 and the other was about a year and a half. They sat right in front of us and immediately the little boy the 3 year old began to shrill in an ear drum piercing squeal how he wanted candy. Then it was the restroom and a spilled drink and a change of diapers and then out for popcorn which was flourished liberally around the theater as the kid ran wild up and down the aisles yelling and all of this was before the previews started. The younger kid slept blissfully unaware in his mother's arms as the father was up and down after drinks and popcorn or chasing the brat. Behind us I caught a smell of poo and turned to see another set of ex-DINKs with a little bundle of joy in a car seat setting next to them. I wondered if they actually bought the ticket for the car seat to occupy that space or if they were just mooching it hoping the theater wouldn’t be crowded enough to raise the question. The kid had obviously shit it's diaper and the odor was rank but both of the former yuppies were oblivious to the stench. The movie started and immediately both sleeping infants burst into terrified screams as the Dolby surround sound assaulted them at a volume they were not accustomed to. To give them credit they wailed out over the blasting explosions and loud gunfire in the first preview. I was hoping that they would quiet down by the time the movie started or that the Cleavers would have enough decorum to extract the screaming infants from the theater so that the rest of the paying customers could enjoy the show. But no, they stayed, the babies erupting into stereo wails at every new monster or loud noise. I was being assaulted by wafting poo odor and two infants crying in terror while the toddler shrilled out his screams so loudly that a police siren by comparison would have sounded muted. Not once did either set of parents do anything more than attempt a pacifier in the mouth to rectify the situation. My son and I finally got up and left. It was useless trying to listen to the movie with all the noise and the smell. Why on earth would you take an infant to see that type of a show? Were the yuppies so stupid that they thought the kids would enjoy it or perhaps they couldn’t find a sitter and really felt the need to get out and do something? Something like ruin my evening. Please keep your little screaming bastards out of grown up movies and take them to see Barney. When they get older take them to see more mature movies. Like I was trying to do with my kid. This same principal can be applied equally to restaurants as well. No one wants a 5 year old you don’t know trying to snatch food from your plate while the parents look on beatifically thinking it’s cute that "little Tommy is making friends". No one wants to be setting in a fine establishment and have to listen to an infant crying non-stop while they are trying to enjoy a candle lit dinner. I’m not talking about McDonald’s or the local "All you can Eat Buffet". That’s supposed to be a family atmosphere. Like I said, I am not a person who dislikes kids. But there are some places that are grown up and the young couples who want to show off their progeny should have enough manners and social decorum to understand that the rest of us would rather not have to have our evening disturbed by their inconsideration. There are enough places for just that type of situation. Take the kid to Chuckey Cheese and let it run wild but don’t, oh please don’t, make me come over there and have to ask you to make the little shit leave me alone as he runs up and down the aisles dumping glasses of water in the floor. If I had acted like that as a child my parents would have stomped a mud hole through me. It’s not the kid’s fault they are just being kids. No it’s the parents fault for not being parents and still wanting to be kids themselves. The generation of young adults I see out there today with their rapper MTV background display an astounding lack of social skills and manners. I am frightened by what their children will turn out to act like. Hopefully I will be long gone by that point. |
JUNE
20th, 2005 |
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SCREW
THE THEATER Why is it that when I go to the movies now I have to sit and watch 20 minutes of commercials and infomercials mixed in with the previews? What the hell is going on? It used to be you watched a few previews and then got right on into the movie. But now you have to watch ads for Coke or Nike or some fool stupid car that no one wants. At home I see enough of this crap on my television but at least there I can change the channel. At the movies I have to suffer through them as a captive audience. I can’t get up or I will loose my seat and I can’t change the channel. Now I know what many of you are saying that the cost of movies is going up and they have to do this to make a profit. Well I understand profit. It is in the 8 to 10 dollars they charged me to see the dammed movie and the 25 dollars for the outrageously priced popcorn and drinks for my family. My God, $2.50 for a 12 ounce drink that’s in a disposable cup and half ice. I would love to have that kind of profit margin in my business. It reminds me of comic books when I was a kid. When I was very young I collected comics. Richie Rich and Donald duck then later on Batman and Superman, Green Lantern and Iron Man. They only cost a nickel in the beginning and I loved reading them. They were half ads for crappy products like invisible itching powder and the classic X-Ray Vision Specs. As I got older the comics changed. The artwork improved and the colors became vibrant on the slick Baxter paper. But the prices went up up up and the add space increased. Soon almost ¾ of each comic was ad space and they were costing 2 dollars apiece. As a result today’s youth does not collect comics and is missing out on a part of the culture that a previous generation loved. Only the 40 year old Vernellian Virgins still living with their parents now collect comics. Trying to relive their early youth by imagining themselves as the hero on the glossy pages and lusting after the super heroin babes with antigravity tits in the skimpy skin tight outfits. I am almost to the point where I say, "Why should I go to the theatre to see a movie?". It is just going to be overpriced and full of ads. I will have to walk on a sticky floor that is covered with "only God knows what" and sit in a too small seat trying not to crowd or touch the complete stranger crammed in next to me. The sound is going to be poor and the picture more than likely will be dim because most theaters turn down the projector intensity to prolong the life of the expensive bulbs. Then you have some knuckle head that lets the voice get out of sync on the movie or it jumps the reel or gets out of focus. Inevitably there is someone who talks on their cell phone or teenyboppers giggling or some Giant Reject from the Circus Sideshow in front of me blocking the view. Now days you get a screen hardly larger than a large screen TV in some instances. I used to go to the movies on a religious basis when in college. The Kentucky Theatre in downtown Lexington was my favorite place. They showed mainstream selections along with cutting edge art films and foreign material. It was an old Vaudeville Auditorium decorated in Baroque style with lots of gilt woodwork and stained glass accents on the ceiling. Velvet Curtains that would actually open and close between movies and a true large screen. Not one of those pint sized ones that you get in theaters nowadays. It was an acre of silver screen so you could see and live the movie in larger than life detail I loved going to the KY and missed it terribly when it burned. It has since been rebuilt but I have long since moved away. My point to this little rave is I fear movies will go the same way as comics. Soon they will have so many adds and be so expensive that the only people who will go to see them are those same Vernellians who are showing up for the 50th anniversary showing of Star Wars. Right now. I am almost to the point of waiting until I get the DVD and watch it at home on my large plasma HDTV with true surround sound. I can skip any ads or pause it to go to the restroom and I can sit on my favorite couch. In fact, screw the theater. That’s right you heard me, screw the theatre. I can buy the DVD for less than what one trip to those miserable hell holes will cost me. Right. Screw the theater. |
