Day: June 23, 2006

Crankypantsing, Letters to Esther

New Letters to Esther

Shelly

I’ve added eight new letters to Esther.

Even though it’s been warm out today, I decided to turn on the oven and make roasted vegetables for supper. They smell really good, especially the onions. I put them on the bottom, so they should get nice and caramelized. Mmmm, Caramelite Nunions.

And now for a wee rant about Netflix. I’ve been a member for, oh, three years or so now. I’ve always been pretty happy with their service. The turn-around has been speedy and there have been relatively few bad discs or mailing mistakes. Over the past couple of months, though, the quality of service has nose-dived. About half the discs I’ve gotten have been scratched, a few were broken or scratched so badly I had to return them for replacements. The turn-around time has increased, too. The kicker, though, is that twice now, they have decided to send me random discs from way down on my queue. Today, I got two notices that they were mailing discs that had been at #26 and 27. Now, that wouldn’t have been a huge deal, except that I’m watching a series and I’d kinda like to see it in chronological order. I can’t figure out why they changed my queue order, because discs #1-25 were showing as available now. There should have been no wait, and therefore no reason to monkey with the natural order of things. It seems to me, if they are going to pick random discs, that there’s not much point in having an ordered queue.

But, the icing on the cake is that there appears to be no way to complain about this new queue reordering habit they’ve developed. I looked at the “report a problem” page, and while there is an option for “received wrong disc,” that doesn’t really apply. It’s not the wrong disc, exactly; it’s just out of order. So, I went to their “suggestions” form and sent them a piece of my mind (cuz I’ve got so much to spare, dontchaknow?). Not that that’ll do any good, because there’s a big, fat warning that complaints about account-specific problems will not be entertained via that avenue.

I think, when I move, I’m going to ditch Netflix and get basic cable. Which is sad, because for three years I’ve been a very happy Netflix customer.

Crankypantsing, Ladybusiness

Make it Sto-o-o-p

Shelly

As I’ve spent the afternoon transcribing more letters, and have had the teevee on in the background, I’d like to take a moment to share a few words about commercials.

First, KFC needs to pull the plug on their new “Music to a mother’s ears” ad. It features a family sitting around the dining room table, chowing down on crispy, chickeny goodness. The idea is that A) shutting the hell up is what a mother wants her family to do and B) the noise of people smacking, chewing, and swallowing is preferable to that of normal dinner conversation. Not only is the premise bizarre, but the smacketty-smack sounds of folks eating is sickifying. And, need I add that it’s something that even my uber-lax mother would not have tolerated at the dinner table? Not only is it all sorts of bad manners, but KFC (and Hardee’s) really ought to rethink their plan to entice diners by inducing them to vomit. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a very good business plan to me.

O ick!

Second, an old anti-smoking commercial is currently being recycled. I don’t know if these are Indiana-specific, or if they’re being run nation-wide, but there’s a whole series of similar ads. This one begins with a music box-like tune tinkling away as a mother straps her young daughter into a car seat. We see the kid sitting in her car seat. Then, the mother gets into the car and the camera pans to the rear-view mirror, where we see the child looking back at us. The expression on the child’s face throughout the commercial is unreal. The first time I saw the ad, I thought it was a PSA about mentally disabled kids. The depiction of the child is so distracting that I have a difficult time even registering that the commercial is about smoking. Now, I assume that they were going for a china doll sort of concept, in order that the viewer understand that the child is helpless; but, they’ve gone too far, making the kid look so vacant and vacuous that the point of the sermonizing is pretty well lost on me.