Tim’s Web Log 4

Why is it that, in the last couple of years, insurance companies suddenly seem to have entered into a competition to produce the funniest commercials?

For many years, insurance ads were staid, solid, and boring.  Geico seems to have started it with the Geico gecko, but the trend really got underway with their “caveman” series.  Personally, I think that series has now jumped the shark, but for a while they were really funny.

Then, we had Progressive and the Flo ads.  Some of them have been very entertaining, and I still have a crush on Flo.

Then, we had Farmers and the Farmers University ads.  “It’s an autoboathome!”  “Is that legal?”  “HA!  No.”  That series has gone into some pretty funny corners.  “You DO know this is just an exercise, right?”

Then, we had eSurance with their telephone support team.  Lower key, but still good personalities here.

My current favorite, though, is Allstate with the Mayhem guy.  Every one of those ads makes me laugh.  “I’m so busy with my LOLs and my BFFs that I didn’t see the C-A-R that I’m about to H-I-T.”  The new one, where he’s a raccoon, is another hit.

I’m not complaining, but I just think it’s fascinating that, suddenly, most of the innovation in television commercial comedy has migrated to the insurance industry.  Don’t you think?

I just heard a radio advertisement from a car dealership in which they said they had a “veritable huge inventory”.  That is a very odd usage.  “Veritable” is used to qualify a metaphor.  You could say “a veritable ocean of cars”, or a “veritable swarm of cars”, but your inventory could be literally huge.

I often wonder where people pick up these strange constructions.

I’m seeing a lot of unusual thinking in letters to the Oregonian regarding the Portland Public School bond measure.

Many writers say they are voting no because the assessment is unfair. I just don’t see that. A property tax is borne by every residence in the district, proportional to the value of the home they occupy. Landlords pass the assessment down to renters, so the burden is distributed among all people who live in the district. One writer complained that his property taxes would go up by $1,000. That would mean he is living in a home assessed at $500,000. He is doing OK — he can afford to pay a bit more.

In any case, the voters of Oregon decided this was the scheme they wanted when they passed Measure 5 and dismantled the previous system. There is nothing that any school system can do about this. There is no alternative. They can’t raise money in any other way. If you are philosophically opposed to public education, then just say that, and vote as you see fit. But punishing the school district just because you happen to dislike property taxes is not a rational response to the situation.

One writer said he was voting no until the district got their priorities straight. The reason building maintenance has been deferred is because they DO have their priorities straight — their priority is educating the children of Portland.

There’s no point in talking about cutting fat. After Measure 5, we cut the fat in 1994, and in 1997, and 2000, and 2002, and 2005, etc. We’ve been cutting muscle for some time, and we’re about to start chopping away at bone. The word “crisis” has been overused into meaninglessness, but that word is completely applicable here.

The school districts are not the enemy. They are trying to do what the people have chartered them to do. They can’t do that without funding.

I watched the season premiere of Saturday Night Live over the weekend, with Amy Poehler as host and Katy Perry as musical guest.  Overall, I have to say that I was very entertained.

For me, the best skit of the night was “Bronx Beat,” a bit I always enjoyed.  Maya Rudolph came by for a cameo to join Amy this reunion.    What made this one great was the appearance by Katy Perry as a 16-year-old girl who had “blossomed” over the summer, wearing an Elmo t-shirt that barely covered her assets.  This resulted in the best line of the night: “Looks to me like this episode was brought to you by the number 38 and the letters double D!”

The “Mosque at Ground Zero” commercial was also great.  I was watching in horror, thinking about the nasty letters they were going to get.  When they went to the “it could happen — paid for by the Republican National Committee”, I just about busted a gut.  Great stuff.

The closer for Weekend Update had Fred Armisen doing his great imitation of New York Governor David Paterson, only to be interrupted by the REAL David Paterson.  Watching the two of them side by side was great entertainment.  Paterson made a good case, with just enough of the craziness that makes him such a good target.

One of the new “featuring” cast members, Jay Pharoah, did a spot-on imitation of Will Smith during Weekend Update.  If he has the same kind of imitative talent as Fred Armisen, we should have some really entertaining episodes in the future.

I like Katy Perry, so I was looking forward to her performances, but I thought California Gurls didn’t work nearly as well as it does in the video.  Her voice didn’t have that same lush, rich quality that I like in her recordings.

I don’t understand what it takes to graduate from the “featuring” section to the “regular” section.  Abby Elliott graduated this season, but Nasim Pedrad did not.

Rush Limbaugh said that if the health care reform bill passed, he was going to move to Costa Rica.  I, for one, stand ready to contribute to the fund for his one-way airline ticket.

I wonder if he realizes that Costa Rica has nationalized health care?

There have been a number of recent letters in the Oregonian discussing the naming of the decade that just finished.  Several have argued that “the aughties” will not actually end until the end of this year.  This is just silly.  I’ve already had one letter published on this topic, but they edited out one of my better arguments.

The key mistake is in thinking that the meaning of a term like “the aughties” is affected in any way by the numbering of years past.  That constraint cannot be justified.  Another mistake is insisting that “the aughties” must always refer to a decade.  “The aughties” refers to any consecutive set of years where the tens digit is zero.  The most recent “aughties” ran from 2000 through 2009.  There was another “aughties” about 2000 years ago, but that one only covered nine years — the years 1 through 9.  Similar, “the zero hundreds” only contained 99 years (from 1 through 99), and “the nineteen hundreds” contained 100 years, from 1900 through 1999.

I think we can all finally agree that the 20th Century started in 1901 and ended in 2000, and that’s true because the 1st Century started in 1 and ran through 100.  The very term “20th Century” has a dependency upon  the centuries that preceded it.  Indeed, if you want to refer to “the 201st decade A.D.”, then I would agree that it does not end until the end of 2010.

The Third Millennium AD began in 2001, but “the two thousands” began in 2000.  There is no reason why the meaning of “the two thousands” has to involve arguments about the absence of a “year 0″.  It’s a word problem, not a number problem.

With all of the critically important problems facing the world today, I suppose it’s nice to be able to argue about something as trivial as semantics for a change.

It is my hope that the recent attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to attack an airliner on Christmas Day results in absolutely no changes in procedure at American airports. Amidst all of the posturing and apologies and useless attempts to place blame, we all seem to have lost the notion of “common sense” in our approach to airline security.

Security experts have stated that three changes since 2001 have demonstrably improved air travel security: (1) reinforced cockpit doors, (2) armed air marshalls, and (3) the passenger attitude that “we aren’t going to take it any more.” Everything else is pointless flailing. Indeed, it was exactly this third change that brought down both the “shoe bomber” and Abdulmutallab.

As unpleasant as it is, we must use a kind of morbid calculus to determine the cost/benefit ratio when assessing security procedures. If an aircraft carrying 100 passengers crashes, assuming an average age of about 35, a collective total of about 30 million hours of productive life will have been lost. In comparison, there are (within an order of magnitude) roughly a billion airlines trips every year. Assuming a conservative one hour of inconvenience per passenger, that means the largely symbolic enhancements to passenger screening instituted by the Transportation Safety Administration have cost this country ten billion hours of lost American productivity since 2001.

Let me put that another way. Every two days, airport delays cost this country the equivalent of one human life in lost productivity. Does anyone really believe that additional security is saving one life every two days?   If not, then the TSA is not a “net win” for this country.

At some point, enough is enough. What happens if the terrorists figure out how to weave explosives into their clothing? Will the TSA respond by requiring that all passengers fly naked? I wish I were more convinced that could not happen.

For gosh sakes, can we all please stop whining about the snow day? We had one afternoon of unexpected inconvenience, and it seems like half the city wants someone to be fired over it. Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.

Sure, the city of Portland could equip itself with a huge fleet of snowplows and sanding trucks, but that would be an egregious waste of taxpayer money. Such a fleet would sit idle, sometimes for years at a time.

We should all be clear about the government’s responsibility here.  ODOT is not required to hold you by the hand and guarantee that you get home in the usual time, regardless of weather conditions or driver stupidity. This snow was a surprise event. No one expected it. By the time it became clear that it was more than just a flurry, an ample collection of incompetent and overconfident drivers had already clogged the streets and highways, making any graceful recovery completely impossible.

Nothing should change because of this event.  It was one day.  Talk about it, laugh about it, buy some chains, and get over it.  Sheesh.

I am usually pretty good at deciphering the strange English translations one finds in the instructions supplied with electronics from Asia, but one of the “warnings” included with an alarm clock I just got is still baffling me.

Warning: Where the mains plug is used as the disconnect device, the disconnect device shall remain readily operable.

I’ve read that through 6 or 7 times, and I still have absolutely no clue what they’re trying to warn me about.  The clock does have a battery, so the clock will keep running after you unplug it, but is that really something they would warn me about?  We even looked at the Spanish version, and it seems to say exactly the same thing:

Advertencia: Cuando se utilice el tomacorríente principal como dispositivo de desconexión, dicho dispositivo debe permanecer completamente disponible.

Congratulations to these folks for stumping me.

One of my partners has a great idea to save this country a lot of money.

The government could set up kiosks in the major metropolitan areas and give away cocaine, heroine, and methamphetamine, for free.  In one fell swoop, you would eliminate 95% or more of the property crime in the country, since addicts would no longer have to steal in order to support their habits.  You could redirect the resources of the DEA to more useful tasks.  The addiction problem would solve itself pretty quickly by attrition, since those who could not stop themselves would leave the gene pool.

In the long run, and probably in the short run as well, this would be one heck of a lot cheaper than the “war on drugs” we’ve been fighting for decades.  It’s almost too bad the idea doesn’t stand a chance.