- The skunks came back.
- I’ve installed outside lights in the front to dissuade nocturnal visitors. These lights are solar-charged batteries with motion sensors because skunks aren’t supposed to like lights. What else can be done to stop them? The web suggested mothballs. I deployed them. After doing that, I heard a noise and checked it out. The lights were on. A skunk walked up to the opening, lifted the board, and entered foundation. Damn it. Lights and mothballs had no effect.
- I escalated from mothballs to ammonia. “Put some ammonia in a bowl with a cloth to deter skunks,” several sites recommended. I did. The first skunk to show up seemed deterred. Not the second. Skirting the bowl, they headed on in, then left twelve minutes later. So…grrr.
- I know they’re different skunks by their tails and stripes. One skunk has white in the tail while the other’s tail is all black. White tail also seems smaller. White tail is the one who ignored the ammonia.
- I doused the board with ammonia and set it up again. No visits last night were recorded. I’ll refresh the ammonia tonight. I want to ensure there are no skunks (or other animals) under the house before I permanently fix the space.
- Watching television, a Ford commercial often plays. It extols Americans’ belief in speed. Yes, we believe in speed (snark). I’m not certain what they even mean. Are they defining speed as a value for our society? Sure, if you’re into fast food. Highways are limited by speed limits. Ford isn’t encouraging us to haul ass down highways over the speed limit, are they?
- That same Ford commercial tells how Americans love the great outdoors. They show a car — well, an SUV, to be technical — rumbling across the land. That’s not being outside, Ford. That’s being in a car. It’s called driving.
- Yeah, I know, splitting hairs in modern America and overthinking these things, aren’t I? I’m still simmering about how ‘literally’ is now used, along with ‘decimated’ and ‘obliterated’. They’ve all become weapons of hyperbole.
- We didn’t receive a Visa bill this month. Freak-out city. What happened? Why not? Going online to our account, I navigated to statements. No September statement. WTF? Why not? Occam’s razor: we didn’t charge anything on it. Really? But wouldn’t they/shouldn’t they send a statement to tell us they received the last payment and that we don’t owe them anything?
- When we told friends about not receiving a Visa bill, their response was astonishment. Like, “Wow, I don’t think that’s ever happened to us.” Yeah, we’re all standard American consumers. Charge it. We always pay it off, though. Every month.
- Tucker, our black and white moo-floof, has established a new routine. After using the litter box in the morning, he then steps out. Releasing a little cry, he tears through the house like the devil is after him. After going from his litter box (yeah, weirdly, in the office), to the farthest spot in the house (the master bedroom), he’ll pause for a few seconds. Then the second leg is initiated in reverse direction. Don’t know what’s behind this. I’ve talked to him about it. He says there’s nothing wrong. His urine and feces seem okay, fur and eyes look great, excellent appetite. Seems happy and healthy, and the litter box is clean. Well, you know what I mean.
- Tucker’s post-litter box sprints scares the hell out of the other cats. Our home has hardwood floors with rugs in the kitchen, halls, dining room, and foyer, carpeted in the bedrooms, office, and living room, tiled in the utility room and baths. This mixed terrain means that as Tucker takes corners and encounters the hardwood or tile, he’s sliding, scrabbling for traction, and making a lot of damn noise. The other cat’s don’t hold to see what’s going on. They react, “WTF!” and hit the pet door running. At least twice, the other two boys reached the pet door at the same time, which caused another, “Ack!” freakout moment for them.
- Cats. They are characters.
Sizzle
Have you noticed that the world is sizzling more?
No, this isn’t a climate change post about the world’s increasing average temperatures, melting and disappearing glaciers, rising sea levels, and more frequent and violent storms. We can’t do anything about that, so let’s not talk about it.
I’m talking about marketing sizzle. We can’t do anything about it, either, but many people are already talking about climate change. Not many are talking about the marketing sizzle.
The sizzle comes from that expression, “You don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.” Most companies are selling sizzle. We called it vaporware in the software business. It’s the stuff they tell you is so frigging miraculous that you won’t believe you ever did without it, the stuff that rarely lives up to the promise.
Television shows are big on selling the sizzle. “It’s the most mind-blowing episode ever! You won’t want to miss it!” They’re not usually the most mind-blowing episodes ever to me. I can usually get up during the show, go make a sandwich, feed the cats, and answer the phone, come back and find that I’ve missed nothing of substance, only a little sizzle.
Television is a sizzle pioneer, but all the companies are catching on that they’ve got to sell the sizzle. “Look how fast our car is,” many commercials claim, showing people grinning from ear-to-ear as they race through a city like Jason Bourne escaping his government buddies. “Look how much fun it is to drive! Look how free this people feel.” Weird how there’s no other cars in that city.
Beer and soda commercials aren’t slouches when it comes to selling sizzle. They now love to show healthy, athletic people surfing, singing, playing guitars, mountain climbing, or hiking. Then they stop to have a good old cold soda or brew. None of these people have problems. None are diabetic or overweight. The commercial’s slug rarely address the people, though. They speak of the beverage. “The world’s most refreshing beer.”
They state it without evidence. That’s the way it goes. Sizzle doesn’t need evidence. Just fire it up and let the hungry masses know about it, and they will come and buy, like, “The fastest broadband service ever seen.”
The government is proud about how these companies sell sizzle. They don’t want to do anything to reign in the sizzle. These companies are doing the world a public service. If it wasn’t for the sizzle, we’d be worried about things that don’t sizzle, like the wealth imbalance, corrupt politicians, investigating Russians, rebooting our routers against hackers, rising white supremacy movement, white and male privilege, the contamination of our food supplies, the growing plastic islands in our seas, increasing war and tensions in the middle East, our dwindling fresh water supplies, rising cancer rates, the Italian government and EU economy, or police officers attacking people over parking situations, escalating events in fear of phones.
It’s much better to think about the sizzle.
Michael Seidel, writer 