Commercial for Bell’s Fibe TV Sounds a Lot Like Homeopathy

Posted on 10 November 2018 by Larry Russwurm

If you still watch some ads on network TV like I do, in Canada, then chances are you’ve come across a certain ad for Fibe TV.

In the ad a presumed gay couple are at a real estate open house and just sit watching television and go over all the advantages of the installed Fibe TV. Then the real estate agent comes over and asks them if they want to see any other rooms in the house.

“No, we’re sold,” say the gay guys. Presumably they will buy the house after seeing Fibe TV inside it.

But, for those of you who don’t know, Fibe TV doesn’t come as a package deal in the sale of a house. First you buy the house and then maybe you will install (or reinstall) Fibe TV.

So the gay couple bought the house because it once had Fibe TV inside.

That’s like buying a house because it once had a certain scent of air freshener you love.

Or buying a house because it once had a piano inside and you love music.

Think of all the marketing schemes you could come up with people being so desperate for a tenuous connection.

Real estate agents might begin to hire top chefs for a day to make gourmet meals inside houses for sale.

Or rent really expensive jewelry, you know, the kind with its own names, and telling potential buyers that it was once in the house for sale.

This comes dangerously close to homeopathy. You know, that quack medicine where you fill a bottle with a possibly lethal active ingredient. Say you use an arsenic solution. But you don’t want to actually kill your customer so you dump out the liquid and dilute the remaining arsenic solution with water. But that’s still potentially dangerous so you dump it out and dilute again. And again and again. The drink is now completely safe but you have lost all traces of your active ingredient. So now you say it will work anyway although it can be shown that the solution contains less than 5 molecules of arsenic.

So Bell’s strategy is the same as for homeopathy. There might appear to be a tenuous connection but in reality it is so slight as to be nothing.

Homeopathy is believed in by gullible people. Perhaps Bell wishes to corner this market and thus have future sales of other nefarious products. Or future upgrades that all the cable and phone companies like to up sell their customers with.

But most importantly, I hope that someone in charge of advertising for Bell’s Fibe TV gets to read this article and realize just how ridiculous their advertising is. Then they might take this commercial off their networks. Which would be a great thing because I’m so terribly sick of this ad.

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TOP isn’t Top Anymore

Posted on 3 November 2018 by Larry Russwurm

Twenty-One Pilots is of course TOP and with their new album Trench they are no longer the top rock band to watch.

Do not be fooled by Stressed Out from the last album and Heathens from the soundtrack for Suicide Squad both of which garnered over a billion views on Youtube. They don’t have a hit of this quality from the album. Jumpsuit is the first single released and so far this has gathered a mere 34 million views and I don’t expect it to surpass 100 million views before their next, hopefully better album.

Jumpsuit to me is only as good as some of the worst songs from Blurryface and Vessel, the previous two solid outings from Twenty-One Pilots. Trench doesn’t come close to its predecessors.

I had so much hope for this new album but realize I had been warned. The two concept songs from Blurryface were Stressed Out and Goner.

In Stressed Out, Blurryface is introduced as, “My name is Blurryface and I care what you think.”

In Goner it’s stated, “I’ve got two faces, Blurry’s the one I’m not. I need your help to take him out.”

I guess the help singer/songwriter/keyboardist/bassist/ukeleleer (any better ideas for that last one?) Tyler Joseph meant was the help of buying the album and the songs.

Well Twenty-One Pilots got the acclaim and sales they were after. They broke the billion viewer barrier before Coldplay and Imagine Dragons are likely to break a billion some time in the future for Thunder. Really, they were on top of the rock world.

Then they put out Trench. I am being harsh about this because Tyler, I care what I think.

It should be noted that for Vessel, Twenty-One Pilots didn’t want to jinx themselves by calling the band, TOP. After the acclaim for this solid outing, on the next album, Blurryface, they called themselves TOP. And why not? They were sill putting out great stuff.

In the credits for Trench, they call themselves TOP again. I don’t think it is deserved. I’ll just let it go because they were at the top for Vessel and didn’t use it then. But, if they continue to use the moniker for subpar albums, I’m going to stop buying those albums.

Really, I have high hopes for Twenty-One Pilots being TOP again at some point. They are still a relatively young band. Hopefully they will get it right in the future.

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Better Than “Baby on Board”

Posted on 27 October 2018 by Larry Russwurm

I still sometimes see baby on board signs in cars of their presumed parents. If this type of sign works in the first place and gets other drivers to watch their actions better, I have some even better ideas all in the interest of baby safety.

1) Two baby on board signs are better than 1. That’s right, now you can put one baby on board sign in the back so cars behind you can see it and one in the front so more cars can see its cautioning message.

2) Just in case the caring parents forgot, better than a baby on board sign, is a properly mounted baby car seat . A bit obvious perhaps but its usefulness cannot be overstated.

3) Concerned parents buy their teenagers SUVs so they are safe in more accidents. Well this should be multiplied by a factor of 10 for a baby. So, concerned parents, may I heartily recommend that you buy a forty seat capacity (or more) bus. Buses are still considered so safe they don’t use seat belts. Well, while driving your bus you can properly mount a baby car seat and put baby on board signs up.

4) How you drive can be important. So might we suggest every so often you can flash your high beams at oncoming cars. They will assume that you are warning them of an upcoming speed trap. As a result, they will slow down and drive more carefully.

5) Might we suggest a more powerful sign? You can make your very own “Explosives on board” sign. Just get out of the area quickly before the cops show up.

6) And the most impressive idea to make cars around you drive carefully because of your baby? 2 “Explosives on board” signs – one for the back and one for the front.

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L. A. Losers

Posted on 20 October 2018 by Larry Russwurm

There are three big centres for music in the English speaking world. They are London, New York and Los Angeles.

London bands sound like the clear winners of all the bands of the world. ‘Let’s see, should I stay in a city that is always rainy and foggy or should I leave to tour the world?’ The answer is always to leave and tour the world. Those Londoners sure are smart. In fact I’ve heard of rumours of some acts voluntarily touring when they don’t even have an album to push.

New York is sometimes unofficially known as the centre of the world. Perhaps it’s not such a good idea to volunteer to tour from here. But with instantaneous communications to keep in touch through most of the English speaking world, it’s kind of like you have never even left New York when you are on tour. Although some New York bands go further north into even worse northern weather, it’s not as if it doesn’t snow in New York in the winter, too. Remember that half the cities they tour are warmer than New York so this of course becomes a wash.

Los Angeles is different. When the city and area isn’t burning or in drought or having mudslides, the weather is supposed to be phenomenal most of the time. The usual dryness leads to more sunny days. The nearness to the ocean moderates the temperature so it is generally warm but usually not too hot either. So it is my theory that only the stupidest of bands wants to tour away from L.A. The losers if you will.

Look at that example of the Beach Boys. They helped make surfing culture world famous. They sang and sang and sang about how great surfing was. Did this make them surf more? No, it made them tour other parts of the United States and elsewhere where there weren’t even surfing conditions. The Beach Boys were obviously losers when they toured the English speaking world.

Decades later Guns and Roses began leading with a song that had a stupid idea as its genesis. Sweet Child O’ Mine was written from a finger exercise that one of the guitarists kept doing. With a slight change or two it became the lead line for Sweet Child O’ Mine. This was so stupid that Los Angeles decided to make them famous with it and thus kicked them out of the city for months at a time, allegedly to tour. Obviously Guns and Roses were more losers that L.A. exported to the world.

No Doubt followed. No doubt you are asking what the no doubt stands for. It seems that there was no doubt this band would tour far and wide and thus lose the niceties of L.A.’s weather. I could go on about the losers that L.A. exports to the world. But by now it should be as obvious to you as it is obvious to me.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t like L.A. bands. Just be aware that if they are on tour, chances are they are losers.

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What Do You Call Someone Who Hangs Around Musicians?

Posted on 13 October 2018 by Larry Russwurm

The real answer is Mike. The eighties answer to this – (the one that everyone knew) was a drummer.

Everybody knew that drummers were on the way out in the eighties. Drum machines were the oft pointed at pieces of technology that were the beginning of the end.

A guitarist could program a drum machine with super accurate beats. A bassist could put in a bit of randomness to sound like a real drummer by not making the beat super accurate. And keyboardists probably did the most programming because it was so similar to what they do.

Twenty years later there were the White Stripes which only was a two piece. And one of those two instruments was a drum kit.

One of the biggest acts of today is Twenty-One Pilots. A two piece where one member is again a drummer. Sure the singer, who usually plays keyboards, also sometimes plays bass and the ukelele. That helps to expand the sound. But today it seems there is always that incessant need for live drumming.

Drumming didn’t go the way of the dodo. It has become a thriving part of modern music.

Some rap artists have been saying for years that all the sounds possible for a guitar have been done. With keyboard and DJ equipment you can get ever expanding sounds for your basic instrument.

It’s not unexpected to see modern bands without guitarists. Even older veterans like Coldplay and Imagine Dragons, though they have a dedicated guitarist, are more likely to produce synthesized sounds for up front.

The guitarist seems destined to disappear entirely from the music scene.

Technically a guitar is just cords that produce sounds. Much like vocal cords. Does this mean that one day rapping will be passe? Will singing be passe? The instrument keyboards were based on also used cords. Will keyboards become passe? Basses are bass guitars.

It’s more than possible to make guitar synthesizers. The guitar six string format with frets could just be another way to control music. Guitar synthesizers can be updated just as quickly as any synthesizer and DJ equipment in existence.

I think modern music just likes to poke at guitarists who were number one for so long. But I think it is a nervous poke because they must know that music can turn again on them and put another basic instrument on life support.

The basis of a guitar is a neat format for a chord enabled instrument (the keyboard is the other great format). It will rise again. Wind instruments and bowed string instruments need a section to produce chords. With some chords having 6 or more notes, this becomes an expensive option. Even without the synthesizer a lot can happen with guitars. Guitarists have never been adverse to electronic enhancement of their sounds. Drums never went completely away either.

So now is the time to out myself. I am one of those guitarists mentioned often these days as useless. But calling me useless isn’t going to get me to stop. My adolescence was in the eighties. If you want to insult me to the max, call me a drummer.

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Eat $#!+ and Live

Posted on 6 October 2018 by Larry Russwurm

No this title is not an example of a sentence that is totally changed with the insertion of commas. It is uncomfortable because it needs to be.

For a very long time scientists have dreamt of resurrecting the woolly mammoths. Their almost perfectly preserved bodies in the arctic, with their sometimes readable DNA, has spurred this dream along. But there is more complication here than meets the eye.

At first brush it might seem that the act of finding one cell, that has a perfect copy of the DNA, that might be cloned. But the closest relative to the the woolly mammoth is the much smaller Indian elephant. To have an Indian elephant carry a woolly mammoth baby is likely to hurt or even kill the surrogate. So we have to deal with artificial wombs.

De-extinction is complicated. Splicing mammoth DNA into elephant cells is the first step. Next the hybrid cells must be turned into specialized tissues. Growing these tissues to see if they are correct is next. Then they could grow these hybrid cells in an artificial womb. Only then would we be close to getting a woolly mammoth.

We’re still not there. Woolly mammoths must make it to reproductive age and have babies of their own to reestablished. For that we might need elephants again.

Currently we are killing elephants faster than they can reproduce. All for their ivory. I don’t know how to solve this problem. Perhaps all ivory must be banned to stop this. Destroying all ivory – even the stuff that was collected centuries or millennia ago might be the way to go. There are petitions to sign here and here and here. If these don’t work, only in a handful of years the elephant might be extinct.

Well we might have gotten the splices we need and artificial wombs just might be good enough in a few years. Then perhaps we can make our woolly mammoths bring back elephants. But there are unknowns or just things that remain unthought of.

Baby elephants eat their mother’s scat. Mother elephant has gut flora that helps break down what she eats. The only way for these animals in the wild to transfer this gut flora is through the mother’s scat. It may sound horrible but this is the only way that baby elephants can live and grow to adulthood.

We may have to get the gut flora for a woolly mammoth from the Indian elephant. There might be other reasons to need elephants in order to bring back woolly mammoths, too.

So if you ever wanted to see a woolly mammoth, save the elephant and sign one of the petitions that exist to ban ivory sales. After all how else are we supposed to have Ice Age Park go amok? That is the dream.

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Lauding Economics but Dissing the Hard Sciences is a Recipe for Disaster

Posted on 29 September 2018 by Larry Russwurm

Politicians mostly hang on every word of an economist. They give that art its highest praise (as evidenced in practice) while trying to cherry pick the hard sciences of physics, chemistry and biology.

Briefly I had a computer alias as economystic to make fun of economists for being so soft (which means being incorrect more often). Let’s look at that simple relation that appears to make economics hard. That beginning law of supply and demand I actually see as being mostly correct.

But what do companies do to avoid this law? They try to become monopolies or colluding ogilopolies. Most areas of corporate ownership are run by ogilopolies which mean there are only a small handful of companies controlling the entire market. “See, we’re not monopolies,” the companies might say while making sure they don’t have deals that are much better than the competition.

And I’m not going to bother to tell you about all the times they collude. Just the recent admission from Loblaw Companies Ltd. that they and the very small number of other grocers in the Ontario, Canada market colluded for 14 years by keeping the price of bread artificially high. This was an admission. There is no doubt that these companies colluded.

So the law of supply and demand doesn’t work with monopolies or colluding ogilopolies. The rest of economics is even softer.

Look, I am aware that economists use math all the way up to partial differential equations. This just means that economics is a discipline. It is still an art. Thus it is destined to be wrong more times than the hard sciences.

Still the politicians enjoyed cherry picking in economics so they think they are entitled to do it with the hard sciences.

Global warming has been cherry picked to death by politicians. The number of scientists who say global warming isn’t happening or more recently that men aren’t the cause of global warming are very small. This while there are political groups around the world willing to enrich these scientists and flawed studies. The same thing happened with smoking where some researchers and doctors maintained for years that cigarettes didn’t harm your health. There isn’t even close to a fifty/fifty divide. So instead of giving the two sides equal time, give the 99.9% of scientists who believe global warming 99.9% of the space or speeches or however it goes. The current 50/50 divide is a lie.

And global warming is supported by all three of the hard sciences. The greenhouse effect was found by astronomers and physicists. Chemists supported carbon dioxide and methane amongst others as being greenhouse gases. Biology showed the effect of this on the Earth environment. In many ways all three sciences are in agreement. Global warming is happening, it is caused by man, and it is bad.

So when’s the last time that gravity didn’t work? (physics) Or that a chemical reaction didn’t occur that worked the last time under the same conditions? (chemistry) Or that your DNA wasn’t important? (biology) Many politicians are keeping the truth from their constituents and thus are working against the very people they pretend to be a voice for. Save the cherry picking for the arts.

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Notwithstanding the Notwithstanding Clause

Posted on 22 September 2018 by Larry Russwurm

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has an odd clause. I know, I know you guessed it because of the title of this post. The notwithstanding clause allows the provincial government to override the Charter. I think it was at least partially put in to appease Quebec. When the charter was drawn up in 1981 Quebec was worried about protecting the French language and culture in that province. I think they wished to limit the rights of other languages and cultures to keep French majority in Quebec preserved forevermore. Quebec was so serious at the time that they had a couple referendums to leave Canada.

Doug Ford, Ontario’s new premier, got the house’s backing to use the notwithstanding clause. To force the city of Toronto to cut back to 25 councilors from the current 47. Of course there is no acrimony about this just because Ford was a long time city of Toronto councilor. Of course.

Anyway the scaredy cat appeal court of Ontario just stayed the ruling that this act goes against the Charter. Still, Ford has said he will keep the notwithstanding clause vote in his back pocket in case he needs it in the future.

This is the first time ever, that an Ontario government has used the notwithstanding clause. It’s weird. It’s almost like all our other premiers didn’t want to overrule the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But I am no such sissy. When I get elected premier of Ontario, I will immediately invoke the notwithstanding clause to waterboard Doug Ford. The waterboarding will continue until he confesses to smoking crack from as far back as his now deceased brother did.

I know, he might not have actually done it but that is the beauty of torture. It can make you confess things that you never did. Once I have this confession, I will use it to put Doug Ford in jail for possession of crack and all other charges that can be brought against him.

I will say that this all is democracy because the people voted me in. So what if I only had 40% of the vote? It’s still democracy. First past the post democracy.

I’ll only have 5 years in which a judicial review will be voided. But a lot can happen in 5 years. I could die. Doug Ford could die. Or maybe, just maybe the notwithstanding clause may disappear. Or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

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The Bird is the Word

Posted on 15 September 2018 by Larry Russwurm

“Flipping the bird” means to give someone the finger. Of course the “flipping” part means to put your hand into the proper position and the “bird” means either F—, or F— Y– or F— O–. For the purpose of this crude essay, I am taking it to either mean F— or F— Y— since off isn’t something you mean when you are pointing the bird directly at somebody.

Now there’s this song called Surfin’ Bird (Bird is the Word) from 1963 by the Trashmen. It appears like a nonsense song meant to poke fun at the nonsense fad of surfing or singing about surfing. But is it nonsense?

I believe that the expression “flipping the bird” was already in use by 1963. And “bird is the word” is by far the most repititious line in Surfin’ Bird. So it is my belief that the Trashmen meant to say “f— is the word” over and over again. It is my belief that the writer of this song had found a way to say f— on the radio with no repercussions. And that is the beauty of this song.

Even if the Trashmen did not mean to stealthily swear over the radio, it is my bet that the show Family Guy did when they played this song. They played it over and over again and wrote it off as Peter getting an ear worm. But knowing the show Family Guy, I bet that they did think of this “flipping the bird” definition. Family Guy would definitely try to get swearing past the censors. I used to watch Family Guy when this ear worm was featured. I don’t watch anymore because racism.

There is one other example that started in the 1960s where I think someone tried to use the disguise “bird” to get past the censors.

Jim Henson knew that any swearing or even something slightly unseemly wouldn’t get by the censors when he put his muppets on Sesame Street. But the muppets are all puppets except Big Bird. Maybe there is a reason that Big Bird doesn’t seem to fit. Maybe Big Bird is a Big F— Y– to the censors.

And that, ladies and gents is the bird conspiracy.

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Do Hunters Belong in the Eighties?

Posted on 8 September 2018 by Larry Russwurm

If the eighties were about nothing else, they were about big money and the pursuit of such. Hunters will also pursue doe. Well that is when a nice stag isn’t available. And also this is supposed to help cull the deer population in general.

Pop music dominated the eighties airwaves. From Madonna to Michael Jackson to Cindy Lauper. Pop was big in the eighties. And who else in the family hunts seriously? Why Pop of course. This subtle sexism was more obvious in the eighties. Sometimes Pop did this while consuming pop.

Where would the eighties be without fans? And blowing back the hair of all the beautiful people? Hunters also like to have their hair blown back. That means they are heading into the wind and thus their prey cannot smell them easily.

Are hunters as out of date as the eighties? Well their plaids and buckskins might be but camouflage seems to still be in style.

The very act of hunting might very well be out of style. After all it is the teens and we are very obviously in the anthropocene or the era when men are the prime drivers for most of the earth. Really in the anthropocene men are more likely to kill animals and whole species by accident. So I guess you could say that hunting is now out of date. Go back to the eighties, all you trophy hunters, that is if you want to belong.

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