Rant 2

I don’t really read the newspaper.  This is why:

“Cartoon characters on box affect kids’ cereal choices”  TORONTO — Youngsters say they like the taste of a breakfast cereal more when there’s a popular character on the box, a small study indicates.

A small study indicates?  That was front page news.  While I suppose I’m happy that it wasn’t a new murder or some latest political scandal my first thought was, “Really?  Someone funded a study to discover that gem?  Isn’t this marketing 101 for idiots?” 

A few years back the government and certain private sources funded my million dollar research project.   My hypothesis was that the sky is blue.  As it turns out the sky is in fact, not blue.  The way our eyes read light is negative so what we are seeing is actually the absence of blue in the light spectrum.  The dust, gas and other debris floating about in our atmosphere reacts to the incoming light from the sun.  Technically, the sky is reddish-brown but the reflective capacity of Earth mixed with how our eyes take in light… it appears blue.

But I digress. 

All of that may be bullshit but I will tell you this:  I didn’t even need five dollars to tell you that cartoons on cereal boxes affect kids choices.  Or why McDonald’s playland is red, blue and yellow.  Or why merchandisers conveniently place candy eye level to kids at grocery stores.  Are we as consumers seriously so clueless that we require studies to point out the obvious?

If so, I can accept the Truth and invest my time in thinking up clever things to sell to idiots. 

For my next million dollar research project I will see what happens when I actually throw shit at a fan.  The reason for this is simple; I’m curious and I don’t understand where the popular saying “when the shit hits the fan” came from.  Why on Earth would shit hit or even be close to a fan?  Who would throw shit at a fan in order for shit to hit the fan?  Why do I spend my days thinking of this stuff?

But again… I digress.