The Pondering Absurdist

Over the past couple of years I have worked 40-hour work weeks for my company, and not really taken any vacation. Consequently, I’ve racked up a lot of vacation hours on the books. Technically, our company policy says that we’re not supposed to be able to keep more than 2 weeks of vacation (welcome to America, if any Europeans with your 5 or 6 weeks of mandatory vacation stumble across this blog), or we will somehow “lose” them (get paid for them, or something, I imagine, since it would be illegal for them to just not give them to us… they are one of our benefits). Well, my pay stubs tell me that I have around 4 weeks “on the books,” so I decided that I should probably take some to lower the number a bit. Since I have a lot of work around the house I’ve been wanting to do anyway, I decided to take a little “staycation” during Christmas week and through New Year’s Day.

This past week I’ve been working in my garage, trying to finish a small room I started a year or two ago. The room will house my new 60 gallon Quincy Air Compressor, with a small amount of space left over for a couple of storage shelves. I could have just put the compressor in the corner and run it from there, but I wanted to do it “right,” with some sound insulation so I don’t always hear a loud compressor running if I’m in the garage. I built some walls, I’ve added fiberglass insulation in the walls for sound, and I’ll install the solid-core door that I bought to access the room. I even installed a ventilation fan, with a fiberglass-wrapped duct that will vent any excess heat generated by the compressor out of the room through an existing vent opening in my roof. I’ve been working on the room most of the days this past week, and it’s nearing completion.

A couple of years ago I decided to put a small TV out in the garage to add entertainment while I’m working in the garage. I don’t have cable TV, even in the house, as I stream most of the things I want from the Internet in the house. However, there is no connection to that source out in the garage, so I put an antenna in the rafters of the garage that will pull in the available digital TV channels that are being broadcast into the air. For background noise and mild entertainment, it has worked fine thus far. The unfortunate downside to TV broadcasts is that they come along with the requisite advertisements (TV commercials) needed to pay for the broadcast. Let me tell you, the commercials you see on “free” TV are definitely different than what they used to be when I was a child. Now it seems that most of the commercials are targeting the elderly, with the “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up” devices, stand-up bath tubs, the face creams for under-eye bags, special supplements to help you “feel better,” and life-insurance commercials.

This past week, though, the commercials have taken on a special kind of sickness. If one keeps in mind that most of the other commercials are targeting the elderly, that is probably who the TV channel operators assume is the target audience, as well as those who might be stuck at home due to an injury, or just those who don’t have the money to pay for cable TV. In all, a target audience who probably don’t have a lot of money. This (Christmas) week’s commercials all seemed to consist of solicitations for money… for “wounded veterans,” for “children with cancer” or the hospital where they are being treated, and most despicable to me, the commercials asking for money to help feed the starving animals, who “don’t know where their next meal might come from.”

I understand that money for some of these programs probably needs to come from somewhere, but trying to bilk low-income people out of money for things that they really have no business spending their money on when they’re just trying to survive… is simply disgusting. To make matters worse (at least in my mind), the commercials not only had the sappy, sad music and photos of skinny animals in cages, but instead of just using a voice-over, there were RECOGNIZABLE FACES reciting the dialog asking the people for their money! Two actors, in two different commercials for the same “needy animals” organization were involved in this pandering. I looked both of them up on celebritynetworth before writing, just out of curiosity. One of the actors asking people to send in their money is Edie Falco (Sopranos, Nurse Jackie, etc.), worth approximately $25 million if you believe the website. The estimate is probably at least close, if not accurate. The other actor in the commercials I saw is Eric McCormack (Will & Grace, Travelers, etc.), worth approximately $20 million. These two were really pouring on the guilt, with that sad music in the background, begging people for their money, acting as if they were part of the staff of the animal rescue, and as if they were really desperate for my $19 per month (or whatever the amount was). Instead of thinking they were “noble,” or anything of the sort for trying to help animals, it really lowered my opinion of those two human beings, seeing and hearing what they were doing.

I have a real problem with social injustice, so when I see a couple of multi-millionaires on TV trying to guilt money out of low-income people who don’t really have it to spare, it really irks the shit out of me. Edie and Eric, you should both be ashamed of yourselves as human beings. But hey, if it helps contribute to your fancy lifestyle while others struggle to pay the bills, maybe you don’t even have a conscience.

PA