I was watching afternoon television again the other day. It’s thirty below zero and we’re still mired in the middle of covid, so everyone’s in their personal holding cells, and even daytime television is becoming an acceptable way to spend some time. I’m thinking about looking around for some innocuous household items to carve a shank, or maybe try my hand at a homemade tattoo. I hear that type of resourcefulness is common for the incarcerated.
Anyway, if the sports channels are showing lawn bowling or darts, and the Americans aren’t storming the capitol, then the only alternative seems to be real life crime or one of the many C.S.I. shows. After some time viewing these channels I’ve determined the networks believe that the majority of their audience are women.
At least it appears that way from the commercials. I’ve become acutely aware for example, that Candace has poise in her pants and Amy is the right person to have around when you’re calculating flow rate. Amy is apparently aware that Q (flow) = Av where A is area of the channel and v is the velocity of the liquid. I’m not sure how she arrives at A or v, but it sounds personal and maybe a little bit intrusive.
While I appreciate that bodily functions are natural, I’ve determined that I’ve pretty much reached my tolerance level when it comes to the attempts to advertise products that deal with stemming the leaks, flows and gushes that women have to deal with. I’ll further admit that some if not all of my intolerance is rooted in being male and not being able to relate in any mensurable way. I know this because the Flex seal guy is also annoying, but I bought a roll of the tape when I was in Canadian Tire because I felt that it may come in handy for leakage I might have to deal with. Like a garden hose or a pressure washer line.
So, I accept that Amy has a target audience, and I turn the channel when those ads play, with the hope that the alternate channel isn’t showing another commercial that I also find challenging. Like those five minute long caged kittens, shivering puppy, SPCA fuckers.
Maybe the commercials aren’t the problem. Maybe it’s me. I think I’m approaching the age where I can probably get away with calling thirty year old men son, as I offer sage advice on this life. It doesn’t even have to be my son, which is a bonus. Black, white, or any shade in between. It doesn’t matter, I can call all of them son as long as they’re somewhere around thirty or younger. I’m not sure what I can call thirty year old women. Sweetheart, dear and honey are kind of sexist I think, and daughter sounds stupid. Girl might work If you place the word at the beginning of your advice.
Picture a sunset in the distance. I’m wearing a cowboy hat for some reason while chewing on a piece of straw, and contemplating life with a younger apprentice type nearby. I turn to the male and say, let me tell you something son, and to the female, girl, let me tell you something, followed by sage advice.
That just might work. I’ll try it out on my daughter later and see how she responds. I don’t have a cowboy hat or any straw though. Maybe I’ll make her come into the computer room and I’ll put down a book I’m reading, clear my throat meaningfully and gaze at her over my readers instead.
I wonder sometimes if as I age I’m becoming less tolerant, and more conservative. I suppose it’s possible to be an intolerant liberal though, so maybe that’s what’s happening to me at the moment.
Anyway.
I was tired of the daytime commercials and so I decided to go and create a post pandemic playlist. A playlist to celebrate the return of friends and family. So, I went to the Google and typed in underplayed and underrated music. Instead of finding some lists of overlooked masterpieces, I was faced with the first four pages of the search results devoted entirely to how there weren’t enough women and people of color in the music business.
It was fucking annoying. I didn’t really care if one site wondered why there weren’t enough indigenous people producing music. I cared even less about the injustice of too few women D.J’s. I just wanted some goddamn suggestions for a playlist, but I had to fight through four pages of victims of music injustice before I found anything resembling a song suggestion. Also, I have plenty of female representation in my music library and absolutely no shortage of black artists, so I’m not sure what the fuck everyone’s whining about.
Just out of interest sake, I was not very successful at finding some music that I deemed to be playlist worthy. Instead I inadvertently landed on a tune by Massive Attack that I liked, and so I just re-listened to most of the album Mezzanine and played card games. Massive Attack has a shitload of female vocals by the way.
Back to intolerance.
I think that my intolerance is accelerating as I age. I think too that my intolerance is an equal opportunity employer, and there isn’t a gender or an ethnic group that I find consistently more annoying than any other. In fact, I think that my intolerance is aimed squarely at the majority. Not the majority in number necessarily, but certainly the majority in noise.
It’s a defensive reaction to the cacophony of complaint, to eventually become intolerant of the injured and the offended. I don’t believe that It’s possible or wise to determine that the entire world is intolerable though. So, I’m selectively intolerant and I’m finding that I ignore and dismiss people or groups that in my opinion, make an inordinate amount of noise for the degree of their particular injustice.
If my behavior is common, then everyone on the planet is actively tuning out disagreeable noise. I guess that’s a good short term survival plan. But I worry that if the noise isn’t attracting the necessary attention, then the noisemakers are just going to turn up the volume.
Because people just won’t listen.