Author: substitute

nope

This has NOT been a recording.

When you fill up your car, there’s often a tv monitor at the pump with ads on it now. Elevators have monitors in them with ads. Any of the interstices of life where you’re stuck somewhere for a minute, someone is trying to get an ad in there. Ted Turner likes the gas pump ads and he likes the idea of supermarket line ads too; can’t get away there.

Blame Chris Whittle. In the 80s, he saw the power of imprisonment. He invented a whole set of publications that were available for free to doctors’ offices, hair salons, car repair joints, anywhere people were stuck. The only condition of receiving these magazines was that you had no others available; his was a jealous God. Later, he invented Channel One, the free news television provided to schools only if they forced all the students to watch it, including all the ads.

Channel One still exists, although Whittle Publication is gone. But everywhere there’s an ad. TiVo recently began putting ads on when you hit fast forward or reverse. A couple of years ago someone patented the idea of putting ads in the tone you hear when calling someone and their phone is ringing. The next natural step there, of course, would be making the ad happen if they were ready to answer the phone, or charging you for ad-free phones.

What’s next? Seriously, where do you think the ads will go next? Someplace you can’t avoid it…

Lyrics du jour: It Says Here

It says here that the unions will never learn
It says here that the economy is on the upturn
And it says here we should be proud
That we are free
And our free press reflects our democracy

Those braying voices on the right of the house
Are echoed down the street of shame
Where politics mix with bingo and tits
In a strictly money and numbers game

Where they offer you a feature
On stockings and suspenders
Next to a call for stiffer penalties for sex offenders

It says here that this year’s prince is born
It says here do you ever wish
That you were better informed
And it says here that we can only stop the rot
With a large dose of law and order
And a touch of the short sharp shock

If this does not reflect you view you should understand
That those who own the papers also own this land
And they’d rather you believe
In coronation street capers
In the war of circulation, it sells newspapers
Could it be an infringement
Of the freedom of the press
To print pictures of women in states of undress

When you wake up to the fact
That you paper is tory
Just remember, there are two sides to every story

—Billy Bragg