It's a Bug's Life

All I can assume is we are getting smaller and smaller.  We are flitting around like crazed manic insects.  Maybe insects are not crazed or manic, but take what should be a human being and put them in a bugs body.  Things go faster.  Craze and mania.  Things are going so fast the the mind has no time to think.  There is little thought.  Only there is instinctive behavior.  Turn on the television. This is what you will see.  What you will see are infomercials.  When you turn on the television I will bet nine and one half times out of ten you will be viewing a childlike, inane, meaningless attempt to sell soap.  That is what television is today, selling soap.  Television always has had to sell soap to make a living, but selling the soap never became the purpose of television.  Now it is, or so it seems.  The childlike, inane, meaningless commercials fail on multiple levels.  Occasionally I will watch them simply as a test to see if I might buy their product.  In most cases the product they are selling is not well represented by the proceeding animation.  First there is the ukelele music.  Tiny Tim is hiding somewhere backstage strumming on that infernal miniature guitar.  "Tip toe, through the tulips...."  Not that ukelele music is bad.  In the proper context this instrument of Hawaiian origin can be very relaxing.  Imagine scantily clad women swaying to the hula dance.  NOT.  By the way the reason I am using the word NOT, is because late night show host James Corden issued a proclamation that we were bringing the word back into pop culture usage.  NOT!  As soon as I hear the ukelele music I know it is going to be a terrible commercial.  No four-stringed Hawaiian guitar is going to convince me to buy anything except possibly a ticket to Honolulu to see Don Ho.  (Is he still alive?)  I love the sound of Hawaiian music, as long as it is not combined with American country music.  That is a formula for disaster.  Just listen to Delores Park on a cruise.  In particular the Hawaiian slide guitar has a very distinctive and expressive sound.  This or the ukelele are not going to convince me to buy soap.  It is ironic America is so far behind in the curve in television advertising with "Mad Men" airing on AMC.  Here is a television series chronicling the profession of advertising in the l950's in America, and flip the channel and you are in Disneyland for drop outs.  That must be for what televisions is geared.  Stoners.  Listening to Hawaiian music through a bug's eyes attempting to entice you to buy soap.  We must be a fucked up nation.  On the other hand instead of disguising cures for cancer, we could intelligently describe a product and its intent to the potential user.  There is a formula for underscoring dialog in television and film, and it does not use ukelele music nor does it use jungle drums.  These are cliches of the millennium, and they are not even good ones.  In fact they have no basis in any musical concept for underscoring dialog or action.  Simply they are a plain failure.  Still turn on the television or watch a movie trailer and you will hear ukelele music and the same jungle drum cue over and over and over.  Not too original, but then again America is not original anymore.  We are cheap.  We are childish.  We are inane, and we are meaningless.