Some Blog Site

I’m not posting anything today – I’m too busy doing Thanksgivingy stuff.

Since it’s football season, that means I’m watching TV.

And since I’m watching TV, that means I’m seeing commercials.

One commercial that I’ve noticed is for a Volkswagen SUV. It shows a family on a road trip and they’re driving through a sparse area – looks like a desert. The daughter is holding a map and a marker and she asks the dad something like “How about now?”

The dad looks down at the nav system in the vehicle and waits for a couple seconds before saying “Ok, now.” At which point the daughter scribbles on the map. I assume she’s crossing of a state, keeping track of which states they have gone through on their long road trip.

The commercial then finishes by showing the view from a slight distance, and we see the car driving off down the road. And we see a road sign that tells us it’s the New Mexico state line.

That’s my problem with the commercial. Dad should be looking at the road, not the nav system. And he should tell the daughter to watch for the road sign.

The fact that the dad doesn’t know or realize or care there’s a physical marker that they can see at the state line tells me that he trusts too much whatever’s on a glowing screen in front of him. Volkswagen must be marketing this vehicle to the types of people who drive into lakes or off bridges because the nav system told them to.

And the commercial is not consistent, because if the dad is so into glowing screens, I would expect the rest of the family would be too. But the daughter has a paper map. If the dad were the type of parent to give his daughter a paper map instead of phone or tablet with a map app, then why is he not doing the same for himself?

As a dad, one of your responsibilities is to teach your kids how to handle the world around them. He should have instructed his daughter on what to look for outside the SUV. He is not teaching her to fish – he just handed her the answer.

“Untouched by human hands”

That makes me wonder if it was touched by animals hands and they’ve found a loophole.

Alternatively, I suppose it could be touched by alien hands.

Gamma made me a craft thing out of adhesive-backed foam that he cut into shapes and stuck together.

It is, of course, the leaning tower of pizza.

I think if you want to mess with someone, a fun thing to do would be to have your email signature say “Sent from your iPhone X” or “Send from your Galaxy S8” or whatever phone you know they have.

Even better would be if they read it while at their computer, not on their phone.

Since it’s football season, that means I’m watching TV.

And since I’m watching TV, that means I’m seeing commercials.

One things I’ve noticed about the various car commercials is that various car manufacturers are promoting their version of collision avoidance or pedestrian detection or the like.

The most common theme seems to be showing distracted people darting into traffic. The next common theme seems to be showing distracted drivers not noticing normal traffic patterns.

Either way, the message is that one (whether driver or pedestrian) doesn’t need to pay attention closely to traffic or road conditions or potential hazards because the car will handle it.

I realize there are emergency situations where the car can detect and avoid a collision better than a person can. The commercials are trying to sell “safe car” but they are not accounting for human psychology. The commercials are training the millions of viewers to trust that cars will fix their mistakes and they can relax behind the wheel, which I think will make the roads less safe.

Remember people, the way the law is written, if you are driving a vehicle then you are responsible for what it does.

I don’t remember what responses I had back when I was younger and people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

But now that I’m older and know better, let me tell you the answer I’d like to give:

Retired.

Aim high, kids.