April Showers...

On aggregate, take hours. I mean really, if you took all the time people spent showering in April, it'd be a rather good number of days, hours, and so on. How good? Well, I'm curious, but not curious enough to do any work. And mostly I just have that old "April showers bring May flowers" ditty stuck in my brain. I think, like many, I have a pretty short term memory with the weather. So while this April seems to have been light on showers – the rain kind – I don't even remember April as being traditionally rainy. Am I still talking about this? Do I hope the lack of rain continues? Yes. It also dipped into the mid-30s today, which isn't unseasonably cold, but since it's been unseasonably warm, complaining almost seems like the thing to do. Almost. April Showers and May flowers sound like adult film stars anyway...

If you've followed this blog a touch over the years, particularly those older, glory days, you'll note some persistent grumbling about advertising. If that's your thing, lucky you, for here's a touch more. The latest ad inspiring mild frustration within me is this Nike "Run to you" one. It's not that it's worse than a lot of other ads out there, it's that I happened to see it. I'm cool with the concept of female strength, and that this chick is all good at running, whereas the dude ends up hospitalized because he's a chump and drank a raw egg before running (among other chumpable qualities). The dude's running form actually struck me as not that bad, while his object of affection was a little more robotic in her motion (in a way that the form of many long distance runners sometimes is, due to feelings on economy of form and motion and such). But I run like a weirdo, so never mind any of that.

What I'm getting at, then, is the intended takeaway of this ad and the perpetuation of stereotypes (and even archetypes). Strong female, again, no problem. But then why is she with a weenus who sprints for a few blocks in New York and then awaits his girlfriend running 3,000 miles or so, at which point she hops on top because poor weak boyfriend can't do anything? I'm not saying the dude needs to be super strong, his girlfriend weak, and she be reliant on him, I'm just maybe looking for a meeting in the middle. For all misogynistic and patriarchal perpetuation, there is a lot of portrayal of men as idiots. It's cool, sometimes we are. And yet, even though I should be making out like a bandit on this deal — lying prostrate on my bed while a woman who, by modern concepts of attractiveness, is much better looking than me, and has just run thousands of miles to tend to me, in the biblical sense — I'm kind of against it, because it really cheapens the whole thing. Doesn't that make the woman not strong? Shouldn't she strive for a dude that isn't physically and mentally inept?

I don't know, I just get grumpy sometimes. Hell, I'd probably have portrayed that chump if it meant a nice pay day. Like the old Sprite adage goes, "Integrity is nothing, cash is everything. Obey your greed."

Obey your greed muuutttttthhhhaaaaafuuucckkkaaaas!