Chronicide Online

Today is one of those days where you just want to punch things; where nothing exactly goes wrong, but where things are going just Not Right enough that you reconsider having gotten out of bed in the morning. (I mean, it took me a half-friggin’-hour to find Cool Whip at the local Jewel. It’s that kind of day.)

I think it’s just that chaos makes its presence extra known on days like this: people stop walking right in front of you at the mall, or the car in front of you is going just slow enough to make you miss each and every traffic light. So to battle the chaos, I need a little order. I could impose physical order and clean the house, but that’s just craziness talking. So let’s try a little mental order. I haven’t written a poem in probably…oh lord, since ‘94 maybe? But I’ve been reflecting on poetry a bit — how the defined structures of classical poetry styles compel you to tell a story in a specific way — and I’ve been meaning to dabble. Depending on how this goes, I might even make a habit of this.

To start, let’s hop on over to Wikipedia’s list of poetry forms and choose one that I can actually, um, do. I think I’ll try my hand at a roundel:

It’s Hard to Think

It’s hard to think about future or past
When the mind’s a mess with all kinds of fears.
You have to let go to make moments last.
It’s hard to think.

Sometimes through laughter, and sometimes through tears,
We dwell on what was, what is. But we cast
Our secrets and hopes throughout life and years.

When a mem’ry or dream feels good, hold fast,
In case it otherwise should disappear,
To counter the bad times when, by contrast,
It’s hard to think.

Okay, so maybe not the best poem ever written, but for my first try in over a dozen years, in a form I’m not familiar with, I think it’s passing fair. And more importantly, it did the trick: I no longer feel like punching anyone!

I’ve made the commitment to write something every day in this blog, so that means I’ve got to, well…write something. I think I’m going to try to come up with a topics schedule so it’s not quite so ad hoc, but right now I’ve got no formal structure. Until that structure is in place, though, I’m going to write about whatever comes to mind. Today, I’m going to look at something that being unemployed makes me particularly qualified to write about: daytime TV commercials.

I actually try to keep from watching TV during the day — it’s too easy to fall into it and lose time that I could better put to use avoiding other things I need to do — but every so often I get sucked in (I’m looking at you, Wednesday and Thursday House marathons on Sleuth and USA), and when I do I am always stunned by the sheer…I don’t want to say “stupidity”, but maybe sheer lack of critical thinking these seem to assume of their audience. Probably my favorite current example of this is a commercial for a reverse mortgage service, the name of which I haven’t bothered to run. In it, Fred Thompson (of U.S. Senate, Law & Order and failed presidential bid fame) stands on camera saying, “You’ve probably heard of reverse mortgages and wonder if they can work for you. Well, I’m Fred Thompson, and you can take my word for it.” And it just makes me wonder…does that work? I mean, it’s not like they’re even trying for the toothpaste “I’m [an actor playing] a dentist, you can trust me;” it’s literally just, “I’m a guy you’ve heard of for nothing having to do with this whatsoever; believe me.”

There’s another commercial for the same firm that uses Henry Winkler. This one at least doesn’t use an appeal to false authority. What it does, inexplicably, use is a conceit that he’s using a carousel slide projector to show you the benefits, even though it is clearly NOT being done on a slide projector. Nothing super-insulting about this commercial; it’s more just weird.

The winner for weird commercials, though, is an offering from Ancestry.com. It’s a pretty stark commercial, with a woman standing against a white background, explaining the things she’s able to do with the website. It’s got this sprightly music playing as she cheerfully explains her research path…which ends with her saying, “And that’s when I found out that my great grandmother had five children — only one of which survived past infancy!” All this, without her dropping her cheerful tone, as the sprightly music plays on.

Now, I understand that the point of the commercial is how much fascinating stuff you can learn, and how much fun it is to explore this data, but really, however you cut it, they are talking about dead babies here; perhaps a bit of somber-ness could be called for?

(I was really hoping to find a video of this commercial to paste in, but sadly, I’ve yet to turn it up.)

Okay, that wasn’t so hard. Day one: accomplished. Tomorrow’s post will be much more interesting. You can take my word on it.

Long-time visitors to this blog will notice a certain…absence of posts before today, despite it having existed for several years. They once existed — technically, they still exist, just relegated to “unpublished” status — but I wanted to start my “something every day” project with a clean slate.

I may restore some or all of the older posts at a later date (although I personally feel most of them were a bit on the lame side), but for now, you’ll have to settle for all NEW content. I know; it’s a horrible burden I put on you, my readers.  

(Gah! I’m testing out posting this with Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer, and it just changed into the above smiley which, honestly, is a little freaky-looking. I’m going to have to see if I can discourage this particular habit in the software…)