Protesting Proverbs

You know that proverb: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Is it though? When was the last hellish thing that started with good intentions? Sure, we can all come up with examples of trying to do something good and it went wrong. But the saying isn't, "The road to mild unpleasantness is paved with good intentions." — that's a statement I could get behind. No, it's the road to hell, where you're headed straight to Satan but you couldn't afford the same toll as AC/DC. How often do truly hellish things happen because of good intentions? There's a few, but probably not enough to act as a practical paving surface. 

The other problem with the saying is that it doesn't consider that the road to heaven is probably paved even more completely with good intentions. You know, not often that heavenly things begin with bad intentions. Okay, continuing the metaphor of second-rate versions of religious rock allegories, it would be the ladder to heaven because you couldn't find the stairway. See, even if good intentions sometimes result in a little satanic asphalt, it's far more likely to actually do some good.

Really, this saying just exists as an excuse to be an asshole. You know, i'd like to help, but this saying tells me that it would only result in our eternal damnation. Sorry, my hands are tied.

And good thing your hands are tied, because Idle Hands are the Devil's Plaything. Or the Devil’s Playground, though that sounds more like a documentary on pre-safety-code city parks. Either way, it’s another convenient-religious-excuse saying. First, have you seen idle hands? The fidgeting is annoying, but if that's what the devil is working on these days, then humanity has nothing to worry about. Secondly, if you have to keep your hands occupied to keep from doing evil, you're either in a really low-rent horror movie, or you're not that good to begin with. In that case I'd rather you stay idle. Just get yourself a nice fidget spinner.

Ink’s Awakening

You know what’s weird? I never got used to symmetrical nose piercings. See, as a kid in the seventies and eighties, piercings never strayed from the earlobe, unless you wanted to completely leave society behind. Then in the nineties, people started piercing the side of the nose. That was pretty unprecedented in western society, but I thought it looked good. Some time around the turn of the century they moved to piercing the middle part of the nose, and I never could get used to it. I’d like to think that there’s some aesthetic principle at work here, but more likely, it’s just the old fact that adults aren't able to accept new ideas that the kids come up with. If that is the case, it’s a strange example, since middle-nose-piercing became common only a few years after nose-side-piercing, which would imply that I went from open-minded free-thinking youngster to grumpy and intolerant adult in the short space between the two trends.

To be clear, this is just the gut reaction I have. I realize there’s no good reason that one type of piercing is acceptable and the other isn’t. I don't look down on people because of piercings, I'm just being honest about my emotional reaction, and hoping young people will understand that it's a nonsensical habit cast years ago, now continued unconsciously and with some regret. Same with putting two spaces between sentences. I know it makes no sense; but I had to learn to do it to pass typing in grade nine and now I can’t stop.

Tattoos had a similar story. In the nineties, tattoos started getting wider acceptance, but people were just getting small tattoos. Again, this was something I found easy to accept. And then tattooing went from a minor accent on the body to something you turn your entire body over to. Again, this came after I became an adult.

So there're still some aspects of tattoos that I  struggle with. First, tattoos don’t fit the person. I mean, the stereotype of the person. You know, everyone has a picture of what the heavily tattooed person looks like. And yet, so often it’s their polar opposite who has the full-back skull tattoo peaking over their neckline. I’m used to seeing large tattoos, but less-so when they’re peaking over the neckline of a conservative sweater, rather than a Slipknot T-shirt.

And this leads us to the odd fact that the need to conceal hasn’t gone away. In my previous post about tattoos, I referred to the nineties trend of small, easily-concealed tattoos to let people feel badass without anyone actually seeing that you have a tattoo. What’s weird is that people still place a value on the idea of tattoos you can cover up. The difference is that we’ve gone from a tiny tattoo on the ankle that can be covered with a boot or a sock, to a full-body tattoo up to the neck that can be covered by a full set of clothes. But the principle remains bizarrely the same. That's a commentary on today's society: we want to stick it to the man, as long as the man doesn't find out.

Of course, there are people who bravely cross that threshold and get a tattoo on the side of the neck or back of the neck, or maybe behind the ear. But  there’s still an aversion to tattoos around the face and front of the neck. Yes, there are a few who cross that line, but they're rare compared to the total number of people who have tattoos. Mostly, the parts of a person we interact with are off-limits. I’m sure there’s some cognitive scientists who could explain that because we see faces in a different way than we see others objects, we prefer to avoid artificial changes to that area. Or it could be that the face is the ultimate uncoverable place. If it's on your arm, a long sleeve will cover any embarrassing testament to an ex, or The Bloodhound Gang, or the Sega Saturn or something. But the face is the ultimate commitment.

And the fact is that people aren't really committed to anything that much. Another thing that hasn't changed is that people want a tattoo, not a tattoo of something. In another old post, I mentioned that a big reason I have no tattoos is that there is nothing I’m so dedicated to that I would want it permanently on my body. But that clearly doesn’t stop most people. There are so many tattoos of generic things that it’s clear that they want a tattoo, and the subject matter is less important to them. I suppose that's a strange commentary on our society too: people want to make a public, life-long commitment to something, but they aren't sure what.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #44

The theme music for Monday Night Football is a cover of “In The Air Tonight” performed by a country star and a rapper.

Winning (More) Time

How about this NBA in season tournament? It’s an idea borrowed from soccer and grafted on to a North American basketball league. It's a new and unprecedented idea in basketball <does some research> Oh, the WNBA has already done it three times? Well, I'm just going to blame their lack of Canadian teams for that, rather than examine my own latent sexism.

Anyway, I would have thought hockey was the sport where an extra tournament makes the most sense. As many have pointed out, hockey playoffs are infinitely more intense than any regular season game. So artificially creating even more playoff hockey would sound like a good idea. I mean, except for the whole hockey culture-hates-change thing.

But I actually like this idea of the NBA in-season tournament, and the biggest reason is that it gives some intrigue to the NBA's neglected middle. So many teams get trapped in that Catch-22 of not good enough to contend for a title, not bad enough to draft the superstar they need to contend for a title. So the only intrigue for fans of those teams is whether they'll just miss the playoffs, or get in and get smoked in the first round.

This tournament will offer them a bit of hope, and thus, more reason to pay attention. Yes, the favourites for the in season tourney will be the same as the favourites for NBA champion. But as a single-elimination tournament (after the brief round-robin) there's some randomness thrown in. With one game to decide who goes on, there's more chance of an upset, and those good-but-not-great teams can dream of riding a hot streak to glory.

It also addresses one of the big, but rarely-mentioned aspects of modern team sports: there are a lot of teams, but not much glory to go around. If your league has thirty or so teams, you’re going to be waiting a while for a championship. Unfortunately, our ideas of what to expect from team success were set in an era when there were half as many teams. We expect to win lots of championships, when really, we can expect to see just two to three in an average lifetime. Having more titles available is one way to make it more tolerable as you wait that couple of generations between championships. 

I know, lots of pundits will complain that it’s not a real title. There will be plenty of hot takes the first time a team raises an in-season tournament banner — especially if it goes to a team that’s never won a championship. There have been plenty of complaints when a team commits the sin of celebrating a win in the play-in games to get the final playoff seeds. But I don’t think there’s any danger of watering-down the importance of the overall championship — just look to European soccer to see that. And the in-season tournament will be worth something — I know those hot takes are even now looking for a way to compare it to a participation trophy, but it will be a difficult thing to win. You could make the argument that a single-game-elimination tournament has too much randomness to be a good test of merit, but that argument would invalidate March Madness, so I don’t think we’ll hear it too often. And having special courts with wild colours for the tournament, thus distracting all the hot takes, was a stroke of genius.

Say My Name, Say My Name

In the U.S., companies can advertise prescription drugs, but there are a lot of requirements, most notably the requirement of reading the list of side effects, however long and embarrassing. They can be kind of gross and scary, but I actually like hearing those lists. It’s refreshing for ads to have to present both sides of the story, and it’s amusing to think how much money was spent to tell you about all the humiliating shortcomings of their pill. But most of all, it reassures me about the structures of society. We often think of government as being a puppet of big business, but if a multi-billion-dollar pharma conglomerate still has to warn you that their product may cause 'anal leakage,' then it’s clear that regulations still have some teeth.

(Fun fact: The U.S. and New Zealand are the only countries that allow the advertising of prescription drugs.)

In contrast, here in Canada, we have pretty severe restrictions on these ads. You can advertise prescription drugs, but you can’t mention what the drug does. And I have to say, these ads are even worse than the fast talker trying to sneak anal leakage past us.

For one thing, if you can’t tell anyone what the drug does, there’s not much else you can do except repeat the name of the drug over and over, in an aggravating and blatant exercise in name recognition. In their defence, the advertisers do try to make a joke of it. And in their offence, even that is really annoying.

It’s the most insultingly cynical that advertising can get. I mean, advertising can, theoretically be a good thing: a business is making the case of how beneficial their product is. That’s how it should be, and — I assume — how it once was, when advertising first crawled out of the primordial goop. But we all know most ads are not really very useful; it’s mostly just psychological tricks, trying to associate the product with a catchy jingle, or sex, or a promise of restoring confidence in your masculinity. We know all this, but we tell ourselves advertising can be a good and useful thing to justify to ourselves that this is all acceptable.

But these prescription ads puncture that pretence, because they’re the purest form of anti-intellectual advertising. You can’t pretend they’re a useful service to the public, because they tell you literally nothing other than the product name. These ads are actually dumber than showing half-naked women in a beer ad; that ad is at least making the (ridiculous) case that the beer will make you attract women. Prescription ads don't even do that. There's no hiding the fact that it's pure repetition aimed straight at lodging the brand in your lizard brain.

And I have no idea how this regulation makes sense. As I said, it’s good to have some limitations on the advertising of prescription medication, but in this case it’s not helping. They’re telling us what is available, but not telling us anything else. Even the American ads warning us about anal leakage are at least giving the public some info. (And don’t worry, by the comic rule of three, I won’t bring that up again.)

It should also be noted that there is another kind of ad allowed in Canada, which is essentially the opposite. In this case you’re allowed to talk about the medical problem, and even tell people that there are one or more solutions available, you just can’t tell anyone what it is. So essentially it sounds like a non-profit public service announcement, except for the note at the end to talk to your doctor about prescription medications, hint-hint, nudge-nudge. For some reason, these kind of ads are mainly used to tell us about toenail fungus cures. Apparently there’s a lot of money in that: It's at the top of the list of things I can't believe are sold so hard, ahead of home-delivered mattresses and reverse mortgages.

Anyway, if you’re like me, you’re hugely curious about what some of these commonly-advertised drugs are for, but you never actually look it up, because that would feel like you’re giving in, and you can’t let these ads win. Well, I figured I’ll take that on so you don’t have to. I looked up the drugs being advertised in name only in Canada right now: Ozempic, Rybelsus, Saxenda and Contrave. The answer is, they're all for weight management and diabetes. There are differences in how they're administered, and what specifically they're used for, but they're all after a similar market. I guess I should have guessed that, since these ads are among the few with actors of a variety of body types, a Sherlockian hint that came dangerously close to giving us real information.