AAaargh!

I can watch television for about five minutes tops before something bugs me. The news this morning reported that a serial rapist was breaking into homes in an Arizona neighborhood and assaulting teenaged girls who were home alone after school while the parents were at work. So far three rapes have happened in the general vicinity of the same suburb. Now, hmm, let’s see. I have a teenaged daughter. I’m at work. She’s at home alone after school. A rapist who is targeting that profile is loose near my home. What to do? What to do? Maybe I could arrange for her to come to my workplace, or go home with a friend whose parents are present. Nah! I’ll just take my chances and see if she’s raped when I get home.

Then the newscaster asked people with any information to call the Silent Witness hotline. Who came up with that brilliant oxymoron of a name?

“Hello, this is the Silent Witness Hotline. Hello? Is anybody there? Helloooo?”

Next comes the commercial. Two pre-weighed UPS boxes (or one of those services) are sitting on a counter. The whole idea is that people can send the boxes without having them weighed at the post office, but here’s the problem. A sandwich on the counter is taunting them that the post person won’t pick them up. (Of course, she does, to the astonishment of the sandwich.)

I look at Jack and make what I think is a perfectly legitimate argument: “Why would a sandwich be talking to the boxes? Why wouldn’t it be an envelope without postage or a box from a competing service that has to be weighed before shipping? What does a sandwich care about boxes being shipped or not? Why is the sandwich competing with a box instead of another sandwich? That makes no sense!”

“I don’t know hon,” he answered.

Once again, I can tell he’s just not listening.