Too Much Conscience

Starbucks introduces a coffee liqueur.

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I've got strong opinions about alcohol, in case that hasn't been clear. I spent a lot of time as a traffic manager (in duties, if not in title or pay--ah, the Belo way...), and that means working with commercials all day. Best placement, separation, best rates... it's all about squeezing the most money out of the advertisers.

And of course, I always felt that if I had to place a beer commercial or somesuch there would be a serious problem. I do not want my fingerprint on that. I want no hand in the process that peddles booze to viewers. It destroys too many lives. My shrink does not understand my hardcore stance on this, believing that my one little part would have no discernable impact on the decisions of someone with a drinking problem anyway.

It never came up, so I guess I'm off the hook. Beer ads tend to be national, whereas I worked almost exclusively with local ads.

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The 2003 NCAA Finals aired 939 advertisements for alcohol products. That's more than that year's World Series, Superbowl and NHL playoffs combined. Do not doubt that the alcohol industry depends upon advertising to viewers who are below the legal drinking age of 21.

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"Here we are now--entertain us," in case anyone was wondering, was from the Nirvana breakout song, "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

I actually loved that album, and it's really odd for me to love something popular. But I can't stand Nirvana anymore. Everything of theirs now just sounds like Kurt Cobain's suicide note to me. I don't know if that makes any sense. I just can't ditch the knowledge of what the guy did to himself and enjoy the music.

Stevie Ray Vaughan's CD Live Alive affects me similarly. He didn't commit suicide or anything, but I know that during the recording and mixing of this album his drug problem was peaking, and the whole process was a miserable wreck. So I can't let that go and enjoy the music. And hell, it's really not that good anyway.

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Too much conscience? Is that possible? I'm doing my best to ditch a job with incredible security, one from which it is apparently almost impossible to be fired, so that I can work with drug addicts. I'm going to do my best not to end up in a position where I'm a tech or something, emptying bedpans and puke buckets. But you know, I fully expect that getting into the recovery field will involve some time "in the trenches," so there's likely to be a rough stretch.

Still, I have to do it. It's just how I'm wired. I have absolutely zero respect for my industry, my medium, my employer. I'm sorry. People who know me realize that I'm rather far-removed from caring about sitcoms or celebrities or reality TV. I'm programming shit all day long, and I have no idea what most of it is.

My heroes are guys like BB King, Billie Holiday, Nolan Ryan, Larry Brown, etc. I don't mean to sound "highfalutin'." God knows I enjoy something vapid now and again (like Most Extreme Challenge on Spike--watching Japanese people injure themselves is very funny for some reason). But at the end of the day, staring into the television kinda feels like another escape from reality, like another illicit substance somehow.

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Hell, I'm spending 6-10 hours a week on stats homework anyway. Watching TV isn't something I even have much time for.

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I love Dog the Bounty Hunter though. See? I'm not trying to be Socrates here or anything (in case THAT wasn't painfully obvious). But television, ultimately, is brain candy. Fun, but not healthy.

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How long before I get so full of myself that I take the family to live in a shack in the woods, Kaczynski-style?

(Is that too harsh of a joke? Damn this conscience of mine...)

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The weekend is coming, and I'm looking forward to having my sister up. She really deserves a break, so she and Kelli are going to get to be girls together for a while...

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A great song that sounds like it's about something important but is really about nothing at all: "Larry" by Buffalo Tom.

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It's Thursday. Holy crap, we just might manage to cheat Death for another workin' week...