The Green Door #9

May 1998

One of My Evil Semi-Superpowers, Video Lithium, and The End of Western Civilization as We Know It (But I Feel Fine)

Much like a skunk or porcupine, I have some evil semi-superpowers. One of these (I have at least two) is the ability to brand people with evil nicknames. This power seems to arise through a combination of better than average perception, mild literary ability, arcane knowledge, and repressed nastiness. The nicknames tend to be humorous, nasty, the right number of syllables, very distasteful to the person being nicknamed, and appear to have capability of long-term stickability. The stickability fear will usually cause a truce that results in the targeted person ceasing to piss me off. I use my evil semi-superpowers as little as possible because they ARE evil.

I finally caught Teletubbies, the BBC export now appearing on PBS here in the USA. Teletubbies is a rather controversial show because it is aimed at very young children who maybe shouldn't be propped up in front of the TV at that young of an age. They have the rest of their childhoods to be perverted by it. The show features energetic creatures called Teletubbies who are furry, speak in baby talk, and have TV screens on their bellies that supposedly occasionally display things. The Teletubbies frolic around a sunny green farm, rolling down hills, running around, and talking baby talk. Philadelphia's Channel 12 shows the same show every day for a week before airing a new one. Many critics consider it to be the end of Western Civilization. They might be right. To my surprise, for me, the show is rather intoxicating. I don't know much about powerful, brain-effecting prescription drugs, but I suspect it might have the same effect as Lithium. It's the end of Western Civilization as we know it, but I feel fine.

I met an acquaintance recently and it took me a little while to put my finger on it - the person is a Teletubbie. This person didn't do anything to anger me, so I never publicly noted his\her Teletubbieness. I just shared it with a few people who might appreciate it. Shawn was mad at me for privately nicknaming this person Teletubbie. She recommended some other nicknames, which I thought lacked spark. Shawn said, "but you just called this show the end of Western Civilization as we know it". Yeah, but I feel fine.

Dumb Advertising #3

In a recent issue of Business Week was full-page ad to remind people to dial 0 between the city and country code when calling Italy. The ad said that this was done "to celebrate Italy's entry into Europe". I guess that if you didn't know better you might think they recently moved the country from Asia. Instead of having to dial the extra digit for Italy to conform to European standards, customers have to dial the extra digit to help Italy's telephone company celebrate, how festive.