Where Did I Go Wrong?

Here is another potpourri selection of what I call periodically offer as Random Observations.

Why do commercials for virtually every company, every product, with the exception perhaps of banks and medical trials, have to have a zippy musical jingle?  And to my aging ears, listening as I do on a small clock radio with small speakers, they’re increasingly hard to understand. My current “best one yet” is a radio commercial for Ace Casualty Insurance.  It talks about leaky roofs, overflowing toilets, storm damage and the like and then comes a very upbeat, rock-and-roll jingle exhorting listeners to call Ace Casualty. Stop it, just stop it!

I do not use the self-checkout lane at the supermarket.  First off the machines have put cashiers out of work.  Secondly, it’s very embarrassing.  I just don’t like machines that reprimand me in front of other shoppers. I once scanned an item and bagged it only to have the checkout machine intone, LOUDLY, “Put the Item in the Bag.”  It prompted other shoppers to turn and look at the idiot who could not figure out that a grocery item had to be placed in a bag on the carousel. I like personal interaction which is why I prefer going through a check-out manned (or womaned) by a live cashier. It gives me such opportunities as standing behind a woman on line in the 15 items or less lane who is carrying a case of 24 bottles of waster.  “Excuse me Miss, this is the 15 items or less line and you have 24 items…” There’s nothing like a small diversion as you wait to pay for groceries.

If I hadn’t seen the TV commercial with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears I’d have thought it was a Saturday Night Live gag.  Sadly it was for real.  The commercial showed a distinguished looking man dressed in a suit seated in an easy chair. “Hello, I’m Lee Majors.  Many of you remember me as The Six Million Dollar Man powered by bionic technology.  I’m here to introduce the Lee Majors Bionic Hearing Aid…”  Six Million Bucks just don’t get you what it used to.

Geography pop quiz, left-to-right, right-to-left.  Imagine a world map.  Where is Iran? Where is Afghanistan? Where is Iraq? Where is Yemen? How about the other ‘Stans? Where is Turkmenistan? Tajikistan? Kazakhstan? And where the heck is Kyrgyzstan? Where have all of our billions of dollars in American foreign aid gone?   Where did I go wrong?