I feel like rambling. Things pop into my head and I just like to put them down for fun. So the usual product warning: Quit reading now if you don't want to be bored. I am doing this for my own amusement.
There is a question that PAs, nurses, and other medical professionals often ask that I never know how to answer. If you go in with a pain somewhere, they will ask, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how much would you say it hurts?" Well, now. There are some factors involved here, right? How much is 10? Is it agonizing, excruciating pain, or is it "It hurts like hell"? If 10 is excruciating pain, I would say my knee is maybe a 4 or 5, or on some days, 6. If 10 is "It hurts like hell", then it is right up there at the top. I knew a woman who moaned about how painful her mammograms were. Obviously, she had never had a baby. I knew a man who died in agony from cancer of the sinuses. When I consider this last, it puts my knee down to a 1 or 2. So it is a relative thing and what good does my answer serve?
Another silly TV ad. Cereal, this time. A young woman sits in front of a box of nutritious, heart-healthy Choc-O-Puffies. Flashing a toothy smile, she reaches toward the box and selects a Choc-O-Puffie from the very top of the box. Reality check! Have you ever bought a box of cereal where the contents reached the top of the box? No, you have not. You much reach into the box to extract a tasty Choc-O-Puffie.
While I am knocking the TV commercials for the idiotic baloney (old-fashioned term) that they are, I will give a nod to some of the dementia treatment ads, which are quite sensitive and realistic. I am not against advertising. I am against phoniness. Show us real people doing real things and maybe we (I) will be more receptive to your pitches.
A small boy and girl cousin were put into the bath together at their grandmother's summer cottage. The little girl had never seen a naked boy before and she got quite upset. "How come", she demanded, "that he's so fancy and I'm so plain?"
When I was young and for a good time after, choices at the markets and drugstores were limited to one or two of each product. For instance, I have always used Crest toothpaste. In the past, if you went into the store to buy a tube of Crest, you picked it up, paid, and took it home. There may have been some choices as to tube size, etc. but the product was the same in all. Today, Crest toothpaste occupies three shelves at my local market. Gel or paste? Toothwhitener? Plaque control? Sensitive gums? Once upon a time, Bayer aspirin was Bayer aspirin. It eased all kinds of pain. Nowadays, you can get Bayer aspirin specific for arthritis, heart problems, menstrual distress, "minor aches and pains" and lots of other special situations. I always wonder.... if I have a headache, will the arthritis pain pill work? Or if I have both arthritis pain and a headache, must I take a pill for each condition? How does the pill know which pain it is targeting? In those days, if aspirin was not your choice, you could get Anacin. That was about it. We had Minute Maid frozen orange juice. We had Kellog's Corn Flakes, and Rice Krispies. We had white rice, and apple cider vinegar. These days the cereal aisle is 50 feet long and the choices among exotic rice varieties, vinegars, grains of various sorts, and frozen products is staggering. Of course, it is nice to have all these wonderful (although often unnecessary and redundant) choices, but shopping in the old days sure was a lot simpler.
Mondegreens!!! Young scholars have expressed their rapture for the "Bronze Lullaby", Beethoven's "Erotica Symphony", Gershwin's "Rap City in Blue", and my favorite, "Taco Bell's Canon".
Rap City in Blue!
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