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I’ve Boycotted Most Canadian TV Channels for Replacing Good American Ads

Digital Citizen 1 Comment

Here in Canada, for a lot of American sport events, the American commercials are replaced with terrible Canadian ones. This is true even on cable on the American channel itself, not just the simultaneous broadcast on the local network. In Nova Scotia, where I am located, the commercials are even sub Canadian standards. They’re so awful I will often skip watching a show or an event, or go out to a place where I can watch it without those commercials. Or I’ll get what I’m looking for from another source, like news from CBC NewsWorld or MSNBC instead of CNN that’s now proliferated with ghetto budget local business ads when I’m there to be thinking globally.

Do these Canadian ad buyers think they’re getting their money’s worth for those prime spots?

I know there are some rules about rights across the borders, and Canadian content rules and such, but that’s for the channels to worry about. The ad buyers don’t have to buy in to this, and without them, the channels don’t have commercials to run. The channels probably offer ad time with events like the Super Bowl as a bonus to a package rather than selling ad time during the event like it’s done in the US. Still, I would decline it if I were a Canadian ad buyer cause I don’t think people think of those spots fondly.

This comes to a point with the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is as well known for its ads as the game itself. Just observe the chatter the day after the Super Bowl. To watch the Super Bowl with local commercials is like to watch the Super Bowl with one real team and one team of local substitute players. I resent having to watch the Super Bowl with crappy Canadian commercials so much I watch the event on broadcasts with American commercials now, I have blocked the Canadian channels overriding American signals. That means CTV for this Super Bowl, and Global and ASN from previous other offences.

Now, those channels don’t even have a chance that I might surf by and catch something I like when channel surfing. I get local news from the CBC solely now, and you know what? I’m doing just fine without those other channels. I’m not even losing Canadian content, cause it’s not like they show much Canadian content anyway. Why bother with Canadian commercials on prime events, or even just for the Super Bowl, if resentment like this, with some people turning it into action, is what you get?

For events less prime than the Super Bowl, where I might put up with Canadian ads on overridden American shows, I take note of some of the advertising companies and occasionally put them on my “no buy” list. It’s not that I end up watching the commercials to do this. Usually, they annoy me enough from what I’m doing to distract me, and then it’s an easy choice. Eastlink was the first on my list.

I wonder if some of these companies ever imagined their advertising strategies to lead to this?

Oh, and here’s a great example why I go the extra distance for the Super Bowl with the real ads. 🙂

New Horoscope Dates Explained (but will people use them?)

Digital Citizen 8 Comments

The 12 used zodiac constellations seen in the night sky

It’s old news, but it probably went viral this time because of social media. The dates of the zodiac used for telling horoscopes that so many people in the Western world follow are completely off! Astrology has been using a system that has been constantly changing for 3,000 years so that it’s about a month off now. But now that the world knows about it, what are people going to do about it? An explanation and some things to consider follows.

The Babylonians invented the zodiac system about 3,000 years ago. They noticed the sun passed through 13 constellations of the many they had mapped in the night sky. Passing through is a visual perspective as the Sun does not literally pass through any of the constellations. That needs another whole article if you don’t get that so I’ll pass given it doesn’t have relevance here. Yet, despite the 13 constellations the Sun looks to pass through, the Babylonians opted for 12 in creating the zodiac system we know today. Guess trisdekaphobia, the fear of the number 13, has been around for a while. The Babylonians left out Ophiuchus, with the Greek name given later to be the “serpent-bearer”, that is placed between Scorpio and Sagittarius.

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This Blog’s 2010 Performance in Review, Courtesy of WordPress.com

Digital Citizen 5 Comments

The performance summary below was a nice little features the people at WordPress.com did for their blogs. Now if only I could find a way to turn it into some monetary income.

WordPress.com should set some traffic rewards where you can get credits to use to purchase their services, like storage space, or domain mapping. I pay for these things just to make this blog function the way I want it to. To think, I donate all this time to work on this personal interest, and people came here as much as they did (2.3+ million page views and about 700,000 downloads), and I still had to pay money to maintain it.

That small possible improvement aside, in my opinion, I would like to genuinely thank WordPress.com for all the hard work they do to provide such a wonderful blogging platform! I did do a review of most of the other well-known platforms before deciding on using WordPress.com and I am glad I did!

The stats helpers at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meterâ„¢ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

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Best Songs I Heard for the First Time in 2010

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Most people do not hear most of the songs they know for the first time in the year the song was released. If anyone did, I would feel very sorry for them for missing out on all the great songs of the past from before they were born, or even great songs each year they lived they would have missed.

What most people don’t do is reflect each year on the best songs they heard for the first time that year. I’ve blogged some of mine, but not all so this is my entire collection for 2010 which could fit on a CD if I made one.

After several years of discovering a ton of jazz and older music, then tunes from musicals, so that they made up most of the songs in my list for recent years , I am back with an eclectic set that reflects my true musical tastes and philanderings across genres. I even have not only one song from the current year, but two! A song from the year of the list was something I didn’t have for several years. I did find newly released songs I liked a lot in those years, but they didn’t compare to a variety of jazz and musicals standards I discovered in those years.

But before I share my list, let me ask you the same question as I answered to write this post. What were the best songs you heard for the first time in 2010?

I’d love to know so please do leave a comment. I can add the links to videos so people can hear what you’re talking about, if you would like. But if you don’t want to do it here, maybe write a blog post like this if you have a blog, or a Facebook note or something like that on a social media platform account you have. It might just be one of the more thoughtful notes to your friends all year.

Here is my list, in no particular order of preference, with videos streaming the songs. You will need to click on the YouTube link for some videos with some weird copyright condition that only allow them to be viewed on YouTube. I hate that’s become a wussie and lost all its edge.

Happy New Year!
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A Dirty Song Called All That Meat and No Potatoes? (and Lyrics)

Digital Citizen 9 Comments

There once was a time when you could take a dirty phrase to make a classy hit song out of it. I don’t know when it ended, but it was certainly alive in the 1940s when this song came about! This is the Louis Armstrong version, with Velma Middleton and the Louis Armstrong Orchestra, not the original Fats Waller version (at the end) that wasn’t nearly as good.

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Hey Pops! What’s wrong Daddy?
You look like somethin’ botherin’ you
Ain’t nothin’ botherin’ me honey
That a piece of roast beef can’t fix up

A man works hard then comes on home
Expects to find stew with that fine ham bone
He opens the door, then start to lookin’
Say, Woman, what’s this stuff you cookin’?

Now all that meat and no potatoes
I just ain’t right, dey like da green tomatoes
Here I’m waitin’
Palpitatin’
With all that meat and no potatoes

All that meat and no potatoes
All that food to the alligators
Now hold me steady
I’m really ready
Now all that meat and no potatoes

I don’t think that peas are bad
With meat most anything goes
Yes, I look into the pot
I’m fit to fight
‘Cause, woman, you know that mess just ain’t right

Oh, Pops!

All that meat and no potatoes
Just ain’t right, like green tomatoes
Woman, I’m steamin’, yeah!
I’m really screamin’
All that meat and no potatoes

Say, I don’t think that beans are bad
With meat most anything goes
I look into the pot
And what a sight!
Oh, woman, you know that without rice
Beans just ain’t right

Oh, Pops!

All that meat and no potatoes
Just ain’t right, like green tomatoes
Now woman, I’m steamin’
And I’m really screamin’
All that meat and no potatoes

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Louis Armstrong & Velma Middleton

 

When I first heard this song, I found it really groovy, and I still do, but I thought to myself, why would someone write such a great song about meat and potatoes?

Well, after some researching, I found out.

The title of this song, All That Meat and No Potatoes, was a slur from the early 1940s that was used to described a big figured attractive woman with small breasts. Gee, don’t you wish English was still that classy these days?

Hey, some people will never be classy, but you could help them by giving them language like this rather than, well, you use your own choice words.

Anyhoo, the story regarding how this song came about was that Fats Waller liked some female vocalist he was working with, except that she was all that meat and no potatoes. So he wrote a song about it.

Awww. Wasn’t that romantic? 🙂

But you’ve got to give credits to Fats, and his manager Ed Kirkeby. They wrote a good song on the literal end of things, expressing discontent with cooking that had a lot of meat and no potatoes, as a metaphor for Fats’ feelings towards this woman.

Then Louis came along and just took it to another level. Compare the version above to the version below.

It might be jazz, but I’ll tell ya, can Louis rock it or what???

The Louis Armstrong version of this song goes on my list for Best Songs I Heard for the First Time in 2010. I make a list every year. Please click here for links to other songs I have put on this list so far.

https://youtu.be/66mawPFdFm8