From a Canadian Press news release, October 7, about the latest political photo-op trip to Afghanistan, this time by Conservative cabinet ministers Maxime Bernier and Bev Oda:
“They hopped aboard armoured vehicles, donned
flack vests and helmets, took rides aboard an
immense twin-rotor Chinook helicopter and quizzed
soldiers about the workings of the military and its machines.”
I don’t expect the media – necessarily – to know that the word “flak” is a much-compressed rendition of the German word, Fliegerabwehrkanone, which translates literally as “air defence cannon”. But what I do expect the media to know is that the flying flurry of bits of metal from bursting anti-aircraft shells, and the word as used in that context, is “flak”.
I also expect the media to know that it is this “flak” that has since come to mean everything from those flying bits of metal that first gave it its name (hence the designation of a bulletproof vest as a “flak jacket”) to the critical tirades that appear in everything from performance appraisals to film reviews (i.e., “Ontario Conservative leader John Tory took a great deal of public and media flak over his ill-conceived advocacy of public funding for religion-based separate schools, so Ontario Conservative leader John Tory got his ass handed to him in the recent provincial election.”)
But what I would really have hoped the media to have known by now, in the near century that has passed since anti-aircraft guns first began hurling flak into the path of enemy airplanes, is that a “flack” is, most often, a sycophant, a PR person, an intermediary between celebrities and the great unwashed who seek to meet with or write about them. From time to time in fact, flacks even take flak. But a “flack vest”? If it’s a Harry Potter-like cloak of invisibility that shields you from unwanted attention from butt-kissers (or “fart-catchers”, as Frank Magazine loves to call them), sure. But if it’s the personal body armour such as is worn in Afghanistan to provide some modest protection from enemy snipers, then it is a “flak” vest.
GOT IT, MEDIA???
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Canada is a pretty generous country when it comes to welcoming foreign refugees. Really, you need look no farther than our major cities and the variety of immigrant communities manifest in their “Little Italy”s “Chinatown”s, “Little Vietnam”s, “Little Somalia”s and so on and on and on, to get the idea.
Recently, I was triggered into wondering just what such people must think, when they first arrive on our shores, as they begin to observe our so-called culture and priorities by way of our media. More specifically – and here is what I’m really getting at – as new arrivals to our shores look at the things we feature in our advertising, I can’t help but think that after even just a few minutes of watching what we are being sold, they must push themselves back from the printed page or the TV screen and ask themselves (in an endless variety of bodily-function based obscenities, such usually being the basis for any language’s more colourful cursing), “What the [bodily-function-adverb / bodily-function noun] is the matter with these people?!!”
The most recent "trigger" that led me to this musing was a 66-page (66... PAGE?) full-colour advertising supplement that arrived with this weekend’s New York Times Sunday edition entitled “Watch Your Time”. Astonishingly (Well, to me “astonishingly”. Maybe it’s perfectly normal to other people.) it is an entire special New York Times advertising supplement devoted to wristwatches. Not even wall clocks or decorative hourglasses or garden sundials... just... wristwatches.
Perhaps even the mighty Gray Lady was painfully aware that this one is a tad over the top, because the supplement opens with an editorial, no less, by its publisher, one wholly unpronounceable (or at least over-consonanted) Christian Llavall-Ubach. On his page, Mr Llavall-Ubach (I am tempted to address him as “Baron” solely on the strength of his hyphenated vaguely Teutonic-looking name) waxes rhapsodic about the fact that the US of A is so vast it requires no fewer than four separate time zones just to manage the continental part of the country. Adding Alaska and Hawaii to the total requires six separate temporal zones – for one country !!
Says the Baron, “The USA is a huge country, so big that it requires four main time zones just to manage the time across the continental USA.” Well golly gee willikers! For my part, when I read that, I was reminded immediately of Douglas Adams’ efforts to get us to understand the size of the universe in “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”:
“Space is big - really big - you just won't
believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is.
You may think it's a long way down the road to the
chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."
But the Baron’s awe doesn’t end with a country so vast it requires six time zones. No, he is, in fact, given to ponder the weighty import of the wristwatch itself in our lives:
“A fine wristwatch helps us value precious memories
(how and when we got our watches and the things we did
while wearing them), thus making us more aware of what
we have accomplished and what is yet to be done.”
Let me just say this to you, Baron... I don’t think I want to know the kind of person who could pull me aside at a dinner party, yank up his sleeve, point to his wristwatch and ask, “Know what I was doing when I got this?”
And let me just say this to you, too, Baron... Were that ever to happen, I’m really afraid my response would be a somewhat puzzled facial expression, followed by, “Ummm... wondering what time it was, and lacking a timepiece to tell you?”
Because really, why the f%#$k else does one buy a wristwatch anyway?
As I wandered through the pages of this waste of trees, I discovered in short order that John Travolta wears a Breitling; Tiger Woods sports a TagHeuer (“chronograph with perpetual retrograde calendar!!!”... Actually, on second thought, swap those “!!!” for “???”). Friedrich Nietzsche may not have worn a watch, but via this quote: “Whatever does not destroy me makes me stronger”, he has been brought into endorsing the “muscular chassis with alveolar structure, high performance engines strengthened by anti-shock bridges...” that apparently buttress the Zenith “Defy Xtreme” line of “chronographs”... Girard Perregaux includes a photo of a bottle of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 2000 in its ad – presumably to give you something to swill while you’re waiting for the stock market to open, because their watchface features red pointers on the hour ring to tell you when each of the world’s major stock markets opens. Nicolas Cage has joined with Montblanc to “make a joint commitment to social responsibility”. Each MontBlanc “TimeWalker” purchased will result in a “significant donation” to something called “Heal the Boy”.
And so it goes. Oh, apparently one of the Wright Brothers – we’re not told whether it was Wilbur or Orville – owned a Vacheron-Constatin Pilot’s watch. Which makes me wonder just how shrewd their marketing department must have been. “Hey boss... coupla bicycle repairmen out in North Carolina are trying to make the world”s first powered flight in a heavier-than-air flying machine. And guess what boss! The guy driving it? Apparently he’s going to be called the ‘pilot’” “Omigod! Quick, send him one of those two thousand gobblers we couldn’t get the Kaiser to endorse when he sacked Bismarck. We may yet sell these things!”
(Gosh don’t you just LOVE Baby Duck? Where else can you leap from Francis Ford Coppola’s son to one of the most famous cartoons in Punch Magazine’s long history... over a span of a mere 100 or so words?)
Where was I?
Oh yes... So there are 66 pages of this crap! Were it a bound guide to a museum exhibit about the history of personal timepieces, I could maybe see 66 pages. But a 66-page glossy full-colour magazine solely to sell the damned things?
To quote my anonymous and hypothetical new arrival friend (above), “What the [bodily-function-adverb / bodily-function noun] is the matter with these people?!!”
(Me? I wear a NeXXtech... $19.99 at The Source. It tells me what time it is. I am so NOT the “chronograph” demographic.)
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Meanwhile… here’s another chapter in my continuing adventures in the world o’ consumers.
We pick up our story in a large Ottawa housewares supply store – in this case, a Home Outfitters at the corner of Old Innes and Blair, right beside RONA… if you’re taking notes – where your intrepid blogger had actually gone in search of a new toaster to meet the family’s requirements of, oh you know… the ability to make toast. At a recent dinner with our in-laws, we noticed they had a really great looking model made by T-FAL, and we’d received very good reports from them about its abilities to brown everything from bread to fresh bagels. (Its appearance, admittedly, is a factor. Our toaster sits permanently on our kitchen counter beside an espresso machine and a coffee mill, both of which are clad in stainless steel. So obviously a toaster finished in, say, walnut, would clash. The T-FAL is finished in steel.)
So anyway, there I am in Home Outfitters and there is a display model of the T-FAL toaster sitting right on the shelf in front of me. Life is good. At this point, a saleslady (who in a few minutes will have told herself to never, ever again walk up to a customer and ask, “Can I help you?”) asked me, “Can I help you?”
Pointing to the display model of the toaster, I said, “Can you tell me how much that costs?” Little did I realize I had just launched a storewide search that would, in short order, make Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece seem like the annual White House children’s Easter egg hunt. The toaster, we discovered, was the only appliance on the whole shelf lacking a shelf-mounted price tag. Nor did it have a visible “SKU number” (that’s the code number usually found in little digits beside, above or below the bar code).
Eventually, after a good 15 minutes of looking, she informed me that not only could she not tell me the price, she was unable (because of the absent SKU) to tell me if any were actually in the store. Finally, she drew in two other employees who, after ten minutes’ searching of their own, both came back with the information that neither of them could tell me the price or if there were any left in the store (3 employees X their collective hourly wage X 15 minutes. Since it was Sunday, I won’t include my normal waiting fee.)
Another few minutes passed while one of the searchers actually seized the toaster and marched it over to (I assume) a manager because he came back with it, presented it like a Japanese salesman offering a business card, and solemnly announced, “He said we can let you have this one for $40.00.”
The next few phrases, I hasten to add all went no further than my own mind. What I actually said will follow.
What I thought was, “You mean to tell me you have just tied three staff people in knots looking for the answer to (what I thought was) a pretty straightforward question – How much does it cost?; you can find neither a price nor a new one in the box – (To emphasize: you have just told me you have no idea in hell what this thing costs) – and you are pitching a random number to me as a favour??? What you’re really saying is, ‘Please, will you just go away?’ Right??”
That’s what I thought. What I said: “Thanks, but I really prefer a new one in the box, with all the warranty cards and instructions included.”
He responded, “Right, I understand.” And back to the shelf went their “bargain”.
The day may come when the sad little T-FAL toaster, eventually taken home by a sympathetic Home Outfitters employee, causes an Antiques Roadshow appraiser to light up with a sparkling smile and an, “Oh my! You have an early millennial T-FAL electric toaster in beautiful condition… but of course because you have no provenance, it’s only worth $40.00. A pity, because with an owner’s manual, I would definitely have recommended to you that you insure it for, oh… say, $250,000.”
And I will laugh most merrily, watching along with the rest of my bunkmates in the Old Age barracks.
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Finally, recently I popped in to a lighting store in Ottawa in search of a bulb to replace a burned out one in a wall light we had purchased there months earlier. (Rather than even try to find a replacement bulb anywhere else, I decided to go right to the source.)
The bulb was a small one with two little wire loops protruding from the bottom – the contact points with the electrical source in the fixture.
It actually looked quite a bit like the flashbulbs I used to have to buy about a century and a half ago to use with my Kodak Brownie Starmite.
There wasn’t a mark on the burned-out bulb to tell me what brand it was, or its size, or even its brightness. So no one should be surprised to hear that, after explaining that I was looking for a replacement for the burned out bulb I had brought with me, the clerk behind the counter held it up, looked closely at it and asked,
“What watt?”
“What?”, I replied. (Of course I did.)
Then we both realized how idiotic the previous utterings had just sounded and started laughing.
To make a long story short, she was actually able to call up our purchase of the fixture on their computer – despite its having been several months ago. With a quick cross-reference to the make and model, she turned up precisely one bulb that went with it. And they had several in stock, sitting right under the cash register.
After I marvelled at the speed of her ability to discover exactly the bulb I needed, I bought two and as I paid, I said, “Thank goodness, I thought we were going to get into Abbott and Costello’s ‘Who’s On First?’ there.”
“Who?” she said.
I stifled a massive urge to respond, “Yes,” dreaming that she would then say, “What?” to which I would reply, “No, he’s on second.”
“Abbott and Costello,” I replied.
Blank.
Have you ever tried to explain “Who’s on first?” to someone who has never heard of the routine, or never even heard of Abbott and Costello?
I don’t recommend it. Because when you try to explain it, not only does it not sound even the least bit funny, it swiftly comes to sound as if you, the explainer, are just one psychiatric examination away from a Royal Ottawa Hospital room where the door locks are on the outside.
After spluttering away for a bit trying to elucidate the unexplainable, wishing desperately for another customer to come along so she could exit gracefully from having to listen to me for even one more second (“And the name of the guy on third is ‘I Don’t Know’... hahahahaha”), finally I said, “Do you have the internet at home?” “Of course,” she replied. “Well when you go home after work, just go to You Tube and search 'Who’s on first?' Trust me; you’ll laugh.”
And feeling very, very old, I took my new bulbs, bid her adieu and slunk off in search of enlightenment elsewhere. Knowing full well that seeking out Abbott and Costello had probably vaulted right up there with drawing smiley faces on her toenails as her priorities after work.
Until la prochaine.