Couple rants here, brothers?

"Plasma cannons charged and ready."
"Cannons? I thought you said plasma cathodes and TVs!"

With all due respect to the advertising industry, I’ve some pretty harsh stuff to say. :(
You know a restaurant chain’s really got nothing better to do when it starts installing plasma TVs in its joints and pipe in ads that shout yer all hip n’ unique so lay up, join the revolution n’ be yer own person, innit? Somehow uniqueness and individuality means dressing alike in clothes two sizes too small if you’re female and too big if you’re male, doing the same things, following the same crowd. (OK, there are exceptions; but this is the general impression.) But my point is, does any of this have anything to do with their food?
Maybe I’m just a message-blind sucker who can’t see hidden meanings for nuts. I always thought advertising was about clearly getting a brand image to the public in a way that makes them want to buy from you. Instead, what I wanted was to find the executive responsible for this, and delete ALL his computer files.
Anyway installing plasma screens to pipe in said ad all day long (and by the way, some choice Discovery Channel programming) is a nuisance at best. You don’t usually spend too long eating fast food (fast, duh), so for any TV programming to have meaning, material must be short, informative and to the point.
It wasn’t.
A half-hour (or so I thought) documentary on space travel played for 10 minutes. I thought hey, this looks cool. So when they cut to a commercial break I didn’t much mind. So I ate and waited and ate and waited… the show began again when I finished my last crumb 10 minutes later.
Another 10 minutes of show. Another commercial break for just as long… by then I’d finished my drink too, so I got up and left.
Fast? Coherent? I think not. Someone should clean up this pathetic mess before it really starts to ruin our appetites.
But what really cheesed me off was this: an ad played to any companies interested in advertising on the plasmas, proclaiming that more than 2 MILLION Singaporeans watch them every month. Watching a screen is one thing. Extracting meaning is another, dear advertisers. Remember that.

Medal of Dis-honor: Audio Assault

Just one more rant. Please.
I was in a branch of a VERY well-liked bookstore chain the other day. Bookstores attract me like a hardware shop would Dilbert, but this one had me fleeing in terror and swearing never to enter will that horrifying attack was going on.
I’m referring to piped-in children’s narratives, of course. Apparently the idea is that children pick stuff up better if you say it REAL slow, REAL loud, and with un-nat-tur-ral-ly long pauses between syllables. No complaints against that—I sure would hate to teach my kids that way, but to each his own here. What bookstores do NOT have the right to do is have a loudspeaker yell “I’ll – HUFF – and – I’ll PUFF – and – I’ll – blow – your – HOUSE – down!” while customers are trying to choose between Horowitz and Colfer, Dickens and Austen. People are trying to read here!
As the blitzkrieg went on I felt my heart accelerating. Every instinct screamed at me to flee as fast as my legs would take me—hell, I think I was beginning to hyperventilate too. So I replaced the book I was checking out, turned for the exit, and ran for dear life as hyper-loud, hyper-pitched syllables raged around me.
Great job on your customer, guys. I’ll never forget this.