Perhaps this is because due to Mr. Local Forecast I’m a captive audience of the Weather Network much of the day, but I am getting quite irritated with the commercials for tooth whitening products. Not just because they’re particularly idiotic commercials (there’s a lot of those around); rather, the companies seem to be pitting their own products against each other, which seems somewhat self-defeating. There’s the paint-on stuff and the tooth tapes as well as the toothpaste. Each commercial takes pains to point out the “problems” with the other methods (too messy, too complicated, takes too long to work, not powerful enough), but both the major brands (Colgate and Crest) have products using all the whitening methods. Of course companies try to diversify their product lines to get a larger market share, but seeing a bunch of these commercials in a row just points out how grasping their advertising techniques are.

Also, have you ever noticed that whitening toothpastes aren’t to be used by children under 12? A convenient way to make the family buy even more products.

I don’t know how Americans can stand their year-long federal elections–ours has only been going on for a few weeks (though I guess in reality it’s been several months now) and I’m already tired of it. I thought at first that it’s because I’ve already made up my mind who I’m voting for, but I suspect that even undecideds are sick of the whole process.

At least I can vote for the guy I want in; my Mom is considering holding her nose and voting strategically to try to prevent a Conservative candidate from getting in (more of a problem in BC than downtown T.O. I expect she’s more determined after the Conservatives’ bilge yesterday about the Liberals and NDP “supporting child pornography”). Yuk. I’m not sure how they’d ever get proportional representation to work, but anything‘s got to be better than this “first past the post” silliness.

A story in The Guardian talks about an upcoming book published by an anonymous senior intelligence official that condemns the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policy. What makes this book different from the (many) ones that have preceded it is that the author is still a serving official working in intelligence. Dare we hope that this sort of criticism will keep growing and eventually lead to Bush getting turfed? Personally, I’m not holding my breath–my cynicism about American politics is pretty entrenched–but I’ll be more than happy to eat crow if I’m proven wrong in November!

Here’s another US fun fact, article courtesy of The Nation: During the height of the Cold War (and until the mid 70s) the lock codes for setting off the Minutemen nuclear missles were set to “00000000”–the top military guys didn’t want any sissy, waste-of-time security features to slow things down!) Ai yi yi.

Peter and I went to see Hairspray at the Princess of Wales Theatre on Friday. Loads of fun! Excellent cast, wonderful costumes and sets, and oh yeah, the best earworm music I’ve encountered since I saw South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Marc Shaiman, not coincidently, wrote the music for both). Earworm is a direct translation from the German “ohrwurm” (pronounced oar-verm), and is a very descriptive name for a catchy tune that bores into your consciousness and won’t get out, no matter what you do. With me, earworms tend to be pieces I like (at least initially)… though now that I think of it, Jon did have a Sound of Music phase a while back that affected us (or should that be infected us?) worm-wise.

How appropriate for our blog that my first post is being written while Jon’s been home for 4 days sick with a cold, and he’ll extend it to five tomorrow. And I’ve got it too. Jon’s been very mature about his cold this time around, except for the major mood swings and sobbing, which is probably due to lack of a decent nights sleep (one of the lovely symptoms of this virus). Poor little gopher.