Notes From Neal

Seen on the rear bumper of some vehicle on the commute home this evening. Note: blogger rendition of actual image.

If you don’t know what “WTF” means, maybe you shouldn’t be playin’. I know because I have two teens-one in college, one in high school-that are skilled in “texting” (another example of a noun turned into a verb.)

Seen on the Super Bowl broadcast. Mostly ads.

• Some vacuum cleaner is blowing air into some robot. Hose gets disconnected, blowing dust all over the screen. WTF.
• Something like, “Dunkin Donuts gets things done each morning.” WTF.
• For all those wanting to watch all the Super Bowl ads, go to some web site after the game. WTF.
• We get to watch some dog lapping water out of a stainless steel bowl. In high def, the reflections off the bowl look pretty neat. But, WTF.
• Several female people with names I didn’t recognize, sitting in those suites that us normal people couldn’t get close to. Were they drunk and/or pregnant? WTF.
• Some guy takes a set of jumper cables, connected to a car battery, and attaches them to his nipples. Drinks some drink. Some other car starts. WTF.

And finally, the Giants have beaten the Patriots. 17-14. WTF.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, a now American tradition. Sit in front of the TV all day, watching interminable commercials selling stuff no one needs. A game where a major event is the Coin Toss (sponsored by XYZZY), which, in most games isn’t even televised.

Make no mistake about it, I enjoy football, and watch my share of games. But the Super Bowl gets a little tedious with all the hype and all the advertising. FOX, that obnoxious television network, has the game this year. I have High Definition on my TV and during the game their video bands take up about the top 10% of the screen. Why in the world does that band that shows the score, downs, time, etc. have to have a blank (and unusable) area above it?

Enough of this rant. Back to the Half Time Show with Tom Petty sponsored by Life Water (whatever the hell that is).

Oh. And “the National Football League thanks you for watching the Halftime Show sponsored by XYZZY.” They thank me?

I guess I should Thank Them. For allowing me the privilege of watching the Life Water Half Time Show. But, I guess they did give me enough time to post this blog entry as well as having something to blog about.

Back to the game.

Sometime soon.

After the Teams Coming Out On the Field For The Third Quarter sponsored by XYZZY.

It happens like clockwork every year about this time. About The Last Friday in April, Keeneland Race Course closes its doors on another fine spring racing meet and Churchill Downs opens for their Spring Meet. When that happens, racing fans everywhere know we’re close to The First Saturday in May. As I write this post, Derby Day is a mere eight days away.

As the week drags on, the media will descend on Churchill Downs for their annual horse racing frenzy. Many reporters will be disheartened to discover that if they’re going to get a story, they’ll have to roll out of bed in the dark to be out at the track by 5am when the horses work out.

For those writers who were out way too late the night before sipping that smooth and smoky Kentucky bourbon, one of the comments written by PapaChach over at Left at the Gate might help. He has built us a Mad-Lib type workout comment generator.

“[Insert horse's name here] came out on to the track looking [use any or all of the following: "bright", "alert", "happy", "friskier than a new-born Beagle"].

His coat was [choose one of the following: "dappled", "shining like a new penny", "exploding with equine majesty"].

He broke off around the [insert workout starting point here] and settled into a good gallop. Around the turn he [insert one of the following phrases here: "leveled off beautifully", "put that magnificient head down and gobbled up ground effortlessly"].

[Insert exercise rider name here] sat chillier than a late autumn morn’ as [insert horse name here] motored home effortlessly through the stretch. [Rider name] had to wrangle with him [use one of the following: "like an Olympian Greco-Roman going for the gold", "like Andre the Giant trying to take down Chief J Strongbow"] to get him to pull up down the backstretch.

When he came off the track he ["couldn't have blown out a candle from three inches away", "looked like he could have worked another mile in 1:33 flat"]. This is a horse who is ["really feeling his oats", "looks like he could give Secretariat a run for his money", "worked so good I wet my pants"] and he really could be sitting on a ["monster effort", "the race of his life"]. With this work he must now be considered a serious threat come Saturday.”

Be sure to stay tuned to this blog for an upcoming interview with one of the actual competitors in this year’s Kentucky Derby. I promise you, it’ll be right from the horses mouth.

The Consumerist is a blog that posts articles highlighting poor business practices of companies. Occasionally sensational, it takes the buyers’ side of things, often to extremes. It is worth skimming through if you like reading that sort of thing.

I go through the blog quickly, reading headlines as an RSS feed, using a tool such as Google Reader to find articles that catch my eye. Below is one such post. This post, Great Moments in Commercial History, features several of the tackiest television commercials you’ll find. They’re local, amateurish, and worth a laugh or two. Take a moment or two to jump over there.

Note that I’ve valiantly attempted to avoid the work “consumer”. I hate that word. What is it that buyers consume? How about “customer”, a word that in my mind engenders much more respect.

While reading another blog, I came across the web site detailing casualties from the war on Iraq. The numbers:

• US fatalities: 3150
• US wounded: 23,417

Ohio gave their “fair share” of young people losing 138, while West Virginia gave 18 of their finest sons and daughters. You can find your state here.

And the slaughter of Iraqi people also continues. Daily.

When does the killing stop? Let’s bring our troops home and now!

Meanwhile television keeps gushing forth on Anna Whatever.

My family leaves early for school, so often the television is on before and after they leave. Normally, I wouldn’t turn it on, but there it is. The Today Show, that bastion of quality interviewing and incisive news reports, opens with their usual teasers. Today, on Today, I hear another one of those phrases that just grates on me: “…and all eyes are on Hollywood, as…”

All eyes are on???

I don’t think so. Mine are certainly not going to be on Hollywood. So that statement is rather incorrect.

Besides, who cares?

If the most important thing that people have to consider or have “all their eyes on” is Hollywood, than something is very much amiss.

I was just thinking. I wonder if they said “…and today all eyes are on Brittany Spears as she gets out of a limosine without underware…”

I couldn’t resist. Enough. As a colleague of mine says, “Get back to work!”

It was in the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII played on January 22, 1984 that the video announcing the first Macintosh ran. It ran only once, but surely impressed a lot of people with its power and creativity. Some would say the video was the precursor of “event advertising” during subsequent Super Bowls.

According to Wikipedia, which seems to have an article on everything, that commerical cost $800,000 to make and another $800,000 to air during that game between the Washington Redskins and the Oakland Raiders. For the sake of accuracy, the Raiders won that game 38-9.

At the time, I was an Educational Sales rep for an Apple reseller and actually saw the commercial back in December at a Macintosh product roll-out. Those of us in the room were stunned; literally blown away by the impact of that video. The Macintosh computer itself was also quite revolutionary for its time. Unlike the Apple //e, which I owned at the time, and the IBM PC XT, all the components were inside one box. Additionally, instead of a command line interface, it used a mouse and graphics to make the computer work aka a GUI (graphical user interface).

As an employee in an Apple store, I was eligible to purchase one of these computers under what was called “Own a Mac.” For $2500, I received the original Macintosh, the first ImageWriter Printer, MacWrite word processing, MacPaint, a revolutionary graphics program, a subscription to MacWorld, and a carrying case for the computer. It showed up in several boxes on my doorstep in March of 1984.

I still have the carrying case and printer, although I’ve not used either in years. The original Macintosh is long gone, although subsequent Macs, including my current MacBook Pro, are commonplace in my office and home. Soon after the product announcement, I purchased a few hundred shares of Apple stock, based upon what I beliefed to be a great product. I was proven correct by the share price, and sold my holding a few years later for a down payment on our current Cincinnati residence.

If you have an thoughts about that video, or experience with early computing, please feel welcome to comment below.

My family is up about 6am every day, and invaribly the TV is turned on to generate noise and confusion. Tuned to WLWT Channel 5, we’re able to get brief nuggets of news about the latest auto accidents and murders, camera shots of police tape around a crime zone, live reports by talking heads in front of the county jail, traffic reports every 3 minutes or so (yes, it runs smoothly at 6am, thank you), and the occasional baseball or footbal score from our local teams.

But it’s the weather that’s most valuable. Not only can I discover that it’s raining outside my window, but I also get the opportunity to learn the latest hip jargon going on in the Weather World.

Here’s what I mean:

• In Cincinnati it doesn’t rain or snow, we have a rain event or a snow event. And if it’s really going to snow, we’ll have a major snow event. Which, given the way people drive here, will certainly create a major traffic event.
• When it’s really going to get cold here, no, it’s not an Alberta Clipper coming our way. We’ll be having a major cold intrusion. (I swear that’s what he said this morning. Not in my wildest dreams could I make that one up.)

Today, however, we can expect partly cloudy skies with highs in the 50s and no rain or snow events. Traffic is running smoothly, even through The Cut in the Hill. And I was relieved to come to find out that there will be no major cold intrusions for the next week or so.

You’re welcome to use the comments section below to add your very own jargon from the Weather World to our collection. Being the open-minded person I am, you’re not restricted to the Weather World jargon. News, Traffic, and Sports are also welcome.

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming…