Purple Monkey Dishwashers! (And Other Topics Too, I'm Sure... Take A Read, It's All Good Stuff, I Promise...)
Posted by Justin at 10:01 pmHello once again, nothing much of note to report in the past few days, though many hours of catching up with my old friend TV have proved to be very fruitful indeed. When you stop watching it for a while and start paying attention again, things suddenly make no sense. I'm talking about things such as plotlines you've missed in your favourite shows, or noticing new adverts that you don't care for.
A case in point: some ad was on for some sort of financial planning, you know, the type where you hand your money over to someone who will magically turn that $20 of yours into a million over the next 300 years (not accounting for inflation I hope)... or your money back?!
Anyway, that wasn't really the point I was trying to drive home. As this young and moderately attractive 'financial planner/actor reading a script' was telling us how we're all destined for a destitute future where the upper ruling caste will hunt us for sport, for some reason I got to wondering what kid would walk up to their parents one morning and suddenly declare they wanted to be a financial planner.
Most kids grow up wanting to be in some sort of heroic occupation like fireman, astronaut or defense lawyer (If you watch Boston Legal enough, you might think all lawyers had witty one-liner putdowns and hilarious sexy adventures played to a catchy theme tune too). But not Timmy. No, he doesn't want the day to day excitement of blue collar work, he wants to be a personal assistant to someone who's actually gone out and earned some actual currency.
If we can glamorise an occupation like financial services, any other line of work shouldn't be too hard. After all, the rise and rise of forensic shows like CSI (and other shameless clones like NCIS) did result in a surge in applications for forensic sciences. Heck, I even knew someone from high school who ended up doing that. Just imagine all those forensic scientists in the marketplace... too many graduates, too few jobs... 'Will dust for fingerprints for food' signs lying in front of people in scruffy labcoats on each street corner, what a terrible sight. The only way you could employ all those people is if there were more murders for them to solve, or as the theory goes. A small price to pay for employment I suppose. Maybe that's why the unemployment level is so low right now... more jobs and more mysterious murders? 'Cues dramatic music'
Speaking of left field influences, is it possible for the success of the film Kenny (Mental note: get round to watching that) to suddenly trigger a surge in portable lavatory attendants? The titular character certainly has the prerequisite charm and one-liner capacity to attract impressionable children to the world of waste management (Just don't confuse that definition of waste management with that from The Sopranos, that would be a far messier profession). I for one would not be surprised if this were to become reality.
Though really a show like The Sopranos would make things interesting for the youth of today. After all, if any show has the ability to show the not so negative side of a life in organised crime, this would be it. Popping a cap into some poor junkie who can't pay your more than generous fifteen points of interest per week seems fair when you have a business to run. And when you think of all the stolen goods they take home each other episode, any jail sentence or gruesome demise is surely worth it. If nothing else, it would help those poor unemployed CSI folk get a gig once in a while.
Now granted, this was not at all the point of the original ad (who remembers what it was? Anyone?), but that's the way my mind works after you've been up for 14 hours. Hmm, I really do need to sleep a bit more often. The same non linear line of thought should probably apply to these blog entries... Typing this was a lot of fun though, my initial half arsed idea spread to the usual 2000 word target my posts often exceed. At this rate I'll have my memoirs in no time. If only any of it made a shred of sense. Oh well, until next time, dear readers....