I’m restless. It could be because it’s Sunday evening and the weekend seems to have evaporated (nothing unusual there). What I really want to do is go for a walk on the beach, but there’s no beach anywhere remotely close suitable for walking on. I’m homesick for Worthing. I’ll get over it.
Ads on tv – I sometimes wonder whether the whole world’s gone mad. Recent examples: I refuse to watch MTV’s “Up North”, partly because the presenter is annoying but mainly because the “presented by JC” ads at the start and end figure penguins. Has Nobody told them that there are no penguins “up north” or did they just not believe it when he did? Fanta: Three young Australians are doing a radio show. They do the “weather”, they say it’s live from teh beach and that it is raining, whereas they are all in the studio and just holding the mike close to a glass they’ve just poured Fanta into. It does sound a lot like rain. Then we see them arrive at the beach. Due to their ingeniousness they have the whole beach to themselves. Fanta’s current slogan is: “Share the fun”. Anyone else see the incongruity here? “Share the fun with a selected few” would perhaps have been more apt. Then, of course, there is the ad for Shakira’s album on Norwegian televison, with a Norwegian talking about how fantastic it is. Well and good, except he can’t pronounce “clothes”. How hard can it be? And if you’re thinking “Well, a lot of people have problems with the “th” sound” you would be right, but that’s not the part he stumbles over. It comes out something like “cylyothes”. What? They were on so tight a budget they couldn’t do a retake? I will admit that there is a vague possibility that both the penguins and the Fanta ads are meant to be ironic (they might have read in a magazine that the current generation are supposed to love irony), but somehow I doubt it. And in the case of the penguins it wouldn’t help, as there are enough people out there that actually believe there are penguins on the North Pole (what else would the polar bears eat?), and we really don’t need MTV to confirm their miscomprehensions.
Apparently, a “scientific study” in Australia has found that the television channels turn the volume up for the ads and down again for the actual shows. As a result, an enquiry is being made to see if it would be possible to enforce a law that allows a blockage of the technology responsible for doing this automatically. I’d welcome such a law here, but I’m rather surprised that a study was necessary to prove the fact that this happened. All you need to do is try to watch one of the ad-based channels for a few hours. Yesterday, much to the point, I watched Little Women (not a bad movie, by the way), and to hear what the characters were saying (it IS rather low key) I had to turn the volume WAY up. Consequently, every time there was a break, I had to dive for the remote and press mute, or my eardrums would have shattered.
Music in my head: If You’re Feeling Sinister (Belle & Sebastian)