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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1998-05-13, Page 5A Final Thought To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe. —Anatole France THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 1998. PAGE 5. But first, a word from our sponsors The power of movies to make us want almost any product is a lifestyle development that says something about us. New York Times I know' I must be the last one on my block, but I've just seen a movie called Tomorrow Never Dies. Correction: I've just seen a video advertising•catalogue called Tomorrow Never Dies. It stars Hollywood Pretty Boy Pierce Brosnan as James Bond — and more brand name products than you'd find in the West Edmonton Mall. As Bond, Brosnan drives a hyper-gadgeted BMW. His martinis (shaken not stirred) are, made with Smirnoff vodka. He tells the time by looking at his Omega wristwatch. And so on. As a matter of fact, the most enjoyable way to watch this otherwise forgettable spool of celluloid fluff is to play "Spot the Tie-:n". — See how many brand names you can spot and speculate with your date about how many' millions they paid to have their products aRpear in a Bond movie. But it's not just movies. I read in a New York magazine that kart Vonnegut, one of my favourite authors, s now in the beer business. He's putting out .1 vanity brew, with his mug pasted on the late', called "Kurt's Mile-High Malt". What next — Farley Mowat opens a Here a crisis! There a crisis! I think I have figured out why there is so much stress in the world. It is simply because you can't turn on the radio or TV without being informed that there is a crisis going on in some industry, some area of society or in some country. These are not run-of-the-mill crises; they are full-fledged ones which, if they are not solved, will mean that the world will go rapidly to hell in a handbasket. I'm almost afraid to open the daily newspaper when I get up for fear that I may have to eat my breakfast in total trepidation. Could it be that we are overdoing it just a tad?' I'm not saying that crises do not exist. They certainly do. I recall the time that the U.S. President John Kennedy called Nikita Krushchev's bluff during the Cuban missile crisis. That could have gone either way but fortunately Nikita saw fit to let his bluff be called and turned back his ships. Now- that was a crisis! Then there was the time those same Russians, this time under Joseph Stalin, decided to blockade West Berlin in the hopes of forcing the western powers out of the city. Again, the west, led by the United States, bakery to market his new line of stone- ground bread — Farley's Barley? Advertising is everywhere you look; and it's there whether you like it or not. There was a time when you could choose to avoid ads by closing the magazine, switching off the television or throwing a book at the radio, but alas, not anymore. In New York, advertisers are using light beams to cast images of logos and ads onto Manhattan sidewalks. Advertisers love it because it's cheap and inescapable. Critics hate it for the same reasons. "This is colonizing your cornea for advertising," says author James Twitchell. "What's the advantage you're getting from somebody mucking up your public space?" Would that it were only sidewalks. I read also that there are plans afoot — though not approved, so far -- to have NASA launch what amount to huge discs into orbit around the earth. Discs which would, for those who could afford the rates, become giant floating billboards, exhorting us to Wear Nikes! or Drink Sprite! — 24 hours a day. "Isn't that a beautiful full moon tonight darling?" "Yeah ... and that Windows '95 ads pretty nice too." You have to wonder when, if ever, human beings are going to turn on these relentless, money-grubbing eroders of peace and quiet and snarl "Get the @%*& outta my face!" Perhaps it's already happening. Recently, Mike Cameron, a 19-year-old high school senior in Evans, Georgia was suspended By Raymond Canon rose to the occasion and flew, almost non- stop, food and other supplies into the. three airports of the western sector so that the population of the city could be fed and kept w ann. These crises make most of the current ones look like confused disputes. I don't know how many times I heard the word used in connection with the recent drop in the value of the Canadian dollar on international money markets. One would have thought that, when the sun sank in the west, we were going to sink along with it. Well, we didn't; in fact, politicians, eager to make points with some organization, were claiming how much better our economy was than five years ago. Even today, I don't know how many commentators report a drop in the value of the Canadian dollar in almost hushed tones as if it were due to some failing on our part. It is not and I wish they would stop. When our dollar drops in value, there are actually a lot of exporters rubbing their hands in glee. One of the latest crises has been that of global warming. Everybody has a theory as to why the average temperature of this planet is rising, albeit rather slowly. I get the impression of a Chicken Little, going about in sonic distraught fashion crying that the sky is falling and thereby manufacturing a crisis. The trouble with the global warming crisis is that all the information available to date indicates that the chief culprit could well be a from school by the principal. His crime? Living in Evans, Georgia, really. Evans, you see, is only an hour or so east of Atlanta, Georgia — and Atlanta is the world headquarters of Coca Cola. The staff of Greenbrier High School — good corporate forelock-tuggers that they are — decided to have a ( I am not making this up) Coke In Education Day, in which they would honour Coca Cola executives by among other things, having the entire student body wear shirts with the Coca Cola emblem emblazoned on them. At the conclusion of the celebrations the student body was to swarm en masse on the school football field in such a way as to spell out C 0 K E for the visiting Atlanta poobahs. Which is where Mike Cameron threw a bottle cap in the works. He showed up in a shirt that featured — gasp! — the Pepsi logo. Cameron was immediately hauled off to the principal's office, told by the principal that he "might have cost the school 10 grand" and sent home under suspension. Mike Cameron may be Persona non grata with the principal of Greenbrier high school, but he's a hero to me. A trailblazer for the faceless flocks of consumer sheep that seldom utter a bleat. A guy with the gonads to stand up and say, "I've had enough". Stephen Leacock once defined advertising as "the science of arresting human intelli- gence long enough to get money from it." Perhaps we're seeing the first signs that human intelligence is getting sick and tired of being under arrest. number of things, only one of which is the greenhouse gases theory. Recently the number of clouds got into the act with the claim by some of the scientists studying the phenomenon that the number of cosmic rays influence the number of clouds which in turn influence the temperature. We will have a crisis if we, after all this research, discover that most of the global warming is-beyond our control. But that will not come for a while yet. In the meantime any crisis is a manufactured one. Maybe there is a connection between our concept of crisis and the contemporary one of labelling as many events as possible as super-events, or even super-stars. In order to get people's attention we have'to elevate our assessment of something or someone to an exaggerated height. Using the same line of thinking we can then elevate a specific phenomenon to the crisis level so that we can get everybody's attention. It becomes increasingly hard to separate the real crises from the created ones so jhat we act when we should not or fail or act when we should. Perhaps we are going to learn to tone down our language somewhat. The short of it By Bonnie Gropp Just had to laugh The air is warm, the sky is bright, our yards are green — and the paint is peeling. The natural world looks fresh and new, while around my home shedding the winter dinginess is a real piece of work. Walls, woodwork and windows want freshening, But I cannot take the time right now, because outdoors, as, nature blooms anew, my yard meanwhile has taken on a challenging new personality. Problems seem to have sprung up all over the place and unwelcome surprises greet me at every flower bed. Believe me, to a less than expert gardener, the task of trying to recall what belongs and what doesn't, what to keep and what simply has to go, can be a daunting one. While I become reacquainted with old flowering friends, I am surprised by the many unfamiliar or unwelcome things which have rooted themselves to my property. Also, with minds of their own, certain of my plants have already shown their wanderlust. Like willful children my forget-me-nots run rampant making the likelihood of their being forgotten quite unlikely. And the assault being waged by vengeful goutweed, enraged by my attempts to remove it, is relentless. Perhaps the war can be blamed on my desire to own a home with 'character'. We took possession of our century-old house in 1980. Or at least something did, as my husband swears it's inhabited by a demon everytime he tries to do any renovations. In retrospect, it has perhaps been less the dream home than we anticipated. Our plan had been to restore this piece of history, not just to fit our needs, but with the love and respect it deserved. Thinking that the dream would be realized in a few short years it has been a rude awakening that almost two decades later there is still much to be completed and, with so much time having passed, in some cases redone. So while our focus was strictly on the interior, the exterior, which had already been untended for two years prior to our ownership, has been clambering for attention. Realizing that as we zealously tried to complete our vision indoors, outside was beginning to look a little neglected. Thus, in haphazard manner, I began last summer to try and begin harmonizing the existing plants with some newcomers. Now, this year, I'm sure our neighbours are thrilled to see, we have undertaken a few more ambitious projects in the long-ignored landscape. And I must say for a couple weary of drywall dust and the frustrating unpredictability of ages-old plumbing and wiring, outdoor renovating is rather invigorating. As we wandered around the property on a balmy day last week, a gentle breeze rustling the budding leaves, where sheltered birds sang their spring music, we could easily dream and scheme. I could see the gardens, wonderful and weedless, beckoning butterflies and bees. Before me, I saw the deck and a patio, from which we will wile away summer surveying our tiny domain. And then, I recalled that same feeling '18 years ago when I stood in the middle of a musty old home and imagined its glorious, stately potential realized — and just had to laugh. Arthur Black International Scene