Sex Sells

Did you see the Old Milwaukee commercial where Will Farrell tongue kissed an older Asian lady?  Chances are you missed it unless you happened to live in one of the three small towns it aired in.  This isn’t the first time Will Farrell has made a low budget commercial for Old Milwaukee, only to release it in a small market.  Last year’s commercial showed him walking through a field towards the camera while triumphant music played.  He comes to a stop and raises a hand to catch a can of beer thrown to him from off camera.  Suds spill out as he cracks open the can and the commercial ends halfway through him saying “Old Milwaukee”.

This unconventional advertising scheme costs very little compared to the massive costs of Super Bowl commercials.  It isn’t even clear if Old Milwaukee pays for these commercials or it is just Will Farrell being Will Farrell.  Regardless of which it is, the results speak for themselves.  The commercials become a hot topic on social media and rise to the top of Reddit.  The most recent commercial has over three and a half million views.  Not bad for a low budget commercial that only aired in Sherman, Texas, Ardmore, Oklahoma, and Glendive, Montana.

Calvin Klein followed up last year’s David Beckham commercial with an equally hunky guy posing in equally awkward positions while staring down the camera.  Unlike Beckham, this year’s model, Mathew Terry, was relatively unknown prior to strutting around in his banana hammock for millions of television watchers.  Rather than bending it like Beckham in Major League Soccer, Terry abandoned his career of stocking groceries to become the face of Calvin Klein.

So who were they trying to target with this commercial?  Matthew Terry sport the physique of the average football fan.  And the underwear he wears aren’t exactly fat guy approved.  The best answer I can come up with is that the commercial was designed to attract the interest of women, who would then by said underwear in the hopes that their husbands would suddenly transform into a sexier version of themselves.  I fear that the actual result might more closely resemble Chris Farley as a Chippendale’s dancer.

 

Operation Sarcasm

To:

Editor

The Washington Post

1150 15^th Street NW

Washington, DC 20071

Dear Editor,

            Writing a sarcastic phrase can be dangerous.  Too often, the writer’s intent is lost to the readers preconceived notions.  Because of this, I am asking that the Washington Post join in making Comic Sans the official font of sarcasm. 

            The need for such a device is evident.  A routine sarcastic response like “Oh yeah, I’d love to” is easy to confuse with a genuine answer.  Comic Sans fixes that confusion.  Now when a friend asks if you would like to help him move out of his third story apartment, he won’t be misled by your response of “Oh yeah, I’d love to”.

            I’m not the first to suggest this solution.  It pops up every now and then on Facebook or Tumblr, then bounces around for a bit before disappearing into obscurity.  The problem is that no voice of authority steps in to give the idea credibility.  The Washington Post can be just such a voice.  With the Post's rich history of being a leader and pioneer in the written word it is uniquely qualified to propel this idea into mainstream usage.

            It will take some time for texting technologies to adapt to the use of Comic Sans.  But as usage increases, users will that demand this feature be included into their texting applications.  Let’s not forget that once upon a time emoticons were not a standard feature.

            If this plan works, we could share a world where sarcastic words are used without fear of misunderstanding.  A world where writers can finally harness the full power of sarcasm.   With your help, we can make this dream a reality.

Thank you,

James Billingslea

Meet Sadie

            There is an injustice that our earliest and most influential memories are also the ones we struggle the hardest to remember as adults.  The people and events that mold us as children into the adults we become are the first memories we lose.  That is what led me to sit down and interview my daughter Sadie.  She is in the middle of what may very well be the most instrumental year of her life and I want to capture what I can.  I know I can’t bottle all of her memories up into a fifteen minute interview.  But maybe, years down the road, she can look back and see her five year old self and remember where it all started.

            Sadie is like most five year olds, in that what her attention span lacks she more than makes up for in energy.  Her last year has been pretty eventful.  She started kindergarten this year and even occasionally rides the bus to and from school.  This December, just before Christmas, Sadie lost her grandmother.  They were very close and Sadie mentions her several times throughout the interview.

            She begins by talking about a school project where they make number bracelets.  They are currently on the number five bracelet, an amazing coincidence considering she is five years old and rides bus number five.  Her favorite food is oatmeal, but that is subject to change at a moment’s notice.  When asked where in the world she would like to travel to, she answers without hesitation “Florida”.  Her recent infatuation with Florida is directly tied to her love of everything Disney.

            The interview takes an interesting turn when she is asked what she wants to be when she grows up.  She concludes that she wants to be a nurse just like her mother.  When asked why she wouldn’t want to be a doctor instead she says “Doctors are really for boys and nurses are for girls”.  Even after being told that isn’t the case, Sadie concludes that she still wants to be a nurse just like her mommy.  It is worth noting that Sadie is also very stubborn like her mother.

            When asked about the best part of her year she responds “Easter, the last Easter that grandma gotted to have”.  This is the first reference to her deceased grandmother.  The Easter she fondly recalls was a family get-together in Kansas, and one of the last days Sadie spent with her Nana.  When asked to name some of the bad parts to her year Sadie paused to consider, then replied “sometimes people be mean to me at school”.  She goes on to talk about a boy that used to be at her recess table named Colton that says mean stuff to her.  Sadie stresses the importance of people being nice to each other.

            After discussing the importance of being nice Sadie explains how her school rewards random acts of kindness.  If a student performs a random act of kindness they get to wear a “kindness medalie”, I have to assume she meant kindness medallion.  She has received that honor three times this school year.  Once for helping a student up that fell to the ground and another time when a student accidentally smashed their finger.  The third time she couldn’t remember.

            The conversation was then steered (rather forcefully) into the subject of her doing anything bad this last year.  After some coaxing she admitted that she stole a tube of ChapStick from Wal-Mart.  The memory is a difficult one for her.  Once it was discovered she stole from the store, it was decided that the next day we would return and she would confess to her crime.  After a restless night she did just that, and even paid for the stolen merchandise with her own money.  It was a difficult lesson to learn, but hopefully one she will remember for a long time to come.

            The subject of holidays came up and Sadie listed her favorites as Christmas, Easter, and Valentine’s Day.  Her favorite part of Christmas was the cupcake maker Santa got her.  When the day comes that she stops believing in Santa, we will have to tell her that the gift was actually from her Nana.  She says that the worst part of Christmas was that her grandma couldn’t come.  This was significant because, as Sadie puts it, “It was the first day without her being with us on a holiday”.  From here Sadie talks about her favorite memories with her grandma.  She states her Nana was great because “She did everything for me”.  Her face lights up as she talks about playing on Nana’s laptop and she smiles as she remembers the princess play they went to.

            This is a good point to confess my ulterior motive in doing this interview.  My true goal was to capture Sadie’s love and memories of her grandmother on tape.  After the funeral everyone commented that in a few years she would forget all about her Nana.  They said it like it was a good thing, like forgetting about her would make everything better.  I don’t want that.  I don’t want her to ever forget that for the first five years of her life she had the best grandmother on the planet.  And should her memories ever fade, all she needs to do is watch her interview and see how her face shines when she talks about her Nana.

Gone Postal

         

             The United States Postal Service recently announced that they plan to end Saturday delivery this coming August.  Reactions among the general public seemed mixed.  Most people became more comfortable with the idea when they learned that parcels will still be delivered to city delivery routes.  This mixed, and somewhat indifferent, reaction could not be more different from reaction the major postal unions had.

            But first, here is a quick lesson on postal unions.  If you divide the blue-collar workers of the USPS into their individual jobs, you are left with four major job types, or crafts.  These crafts are the City Letter Carriers, Rural Letter Carriers, Mail Handlers, and the Clerks.  Each of these crafts has their own union representation, the NALC, NRLCA, NPMHU, and the APWU respectively.  Confused?  Don’t worry, I am too and I’ve been a City Letter Carrier and member of the NALC for over six years.

            Now, as you might expect, the four unions unanimously agreed that ending Saturday delivery is a terrible idea.  The NALC concluded that it is a “disastrous idea” which will have “profoundly negative effect(s) on the Postal Service and on millions of customers”.  They concluded their statement by calling for the “immediate removal of the postmaster general, who has lost the confidence of the men and women who deliver for America every day”.  And it is at that point right there, when the dialogue between unions and management become nothing more than a competition of who can yell the loudest and say the most outlandish statement, that I lose the ability to pretend to care.

            The obvious question at this point is how did it get this bad?  How is it that a federal institution, with roots dating back to the Second Continental Congress, is now forced to reduce its service?  The answer is pretty surprising.  It all started in 2006, a time when the United States Postal Service reached a peak mail volume of 213 billion pieces (by 2011 that number dropped all the way down to 168 billion pieces.).  It was at this time of record high numbers that Congress passed the Postal Accountability Act and Enhancement Act of 2006.  This Act required the USPS to prefund its retiree’s benefits for the next 75 years within a 10 year period, meaning the Post Office was suddenly given a deadline of 10 years to pay $103.7 billion to the Treasury.  It is not surprising that when you go back and look at how much the Post Office has lost each year, that number closely resembles the amount paid to the Treasury to prefund the retiree's benefits.

            The story only gets more bizarre from there.  Last June, the Post Office’s Office of the Inspector General published their findings that the Post Office has actually paid more than enough money to fund future retiree's benefits with a surplus of $13.1 billion dollars.  If this finding is true, it would mean that the Post Office's yearly net losses have been wildly exaggerated.  And that is while prefunding all future retiree's benefits for the next 75 years during a massive economic downturn.

            Ive worked at the Post Office long enough to know it has its share of problems.  It is an archaic system of outdated rules spanning back generations where decisions are constantly met with union opposition.  Add to that an inbred management system where important positions are not made available to the open market, but rather the limited pool of internal employees.  It sometimes seems like promotions within the Post Office are only a matter of the largest turd floating to the top.  But when it’s all said and done, postal management didn't ruin the Post Office.  That blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the men and women in our elected Congress.  At this point we aren't left with many choices.  Saturday delivery is gone and unlikely to return.  The United States Postal Service still faces substantial financial shortcomings.  But the dilemma now is whether it is better for Congress to pass legislation to help save the Post Office or to just stay the hell away.  I'm hoping for the second option.