I really don't want to work today. Maybe it's the change in weather, or the void that is having Love and Capes done, or even the time change. But it's taking effort to be at the drawing table today. And, given that I've been lured over here to post a blog, obviously that effort is faltering.
Anyway, I'm going to create a new category here on the Thom Zahler Weblog… randomness. Every once in a while I see a link or a story I want to comment on, and I just needed a place to put such things. I won't go overboard with it, think of it as a place to vent about things.
Things like last night's Football Night in America. It's NBC's pre-game/halftime/post-game show. I watched some of it during the Cowboys/Eagles game. (The Cowboys won, which is good, as the Eagles are an evil, soulless blight on the NFL. But, Dallas is my adopted home team and the Eagles are a hated enemy, so I may be biased.) But I don't want to comment on the game. I want to comment on NBC/Universal's "Universal is Green" week which caused them to do their show in the dark!
Yeah, to show their environmentalism, they did the show in the dark. Well, except for a couple of carbon-spewing candles and three or four huge plasma screens with the sponsors' logos. Cris Collinsworth had to read his notes by a flashlight. It was one of the silliest things I've ever seen. And the stupidest. They were talking about how much of a benefit not running the lights was, while NBC's Rockefeller Center's well-lit, water wasting fountain was performing non-stop in the background.
When I saw it, I thought it was an Saturday Night Live skit. Heck, next week's SNL would probably make fun of it, except for the Writers' Strike.
Look, I've got no problems with conservation. I'm not going to get overly political, but I think most people like the idea of conserving resources. They may disagree about how much good it does, or to what lengths we should go to conserve, but the underlying principal is a good one. Hey, if you can make me a car that looks and runs the same as the one I have, but uses a third less gasoline, I can't imagine anyone, left, right or otherwise who wouldn't think that was a good thing.
I do have a problem with silly symbolism. The NFL guys doing their show in the dark just looked stupid. Do it with the lights at half-power and say how much even that little saves, donate that week's salary to some green cause, drink free trade coffee out of your NBC licensed mugs.
Instead, they gave us the symbolism of cutting their nose off to spite their face. Personally, I recommend they show much they can keep from polluting the atmosphere and the airwaves by dumping Keith Olbermann. But that's just me.