Snippets From America

The Definition of Irony

One of the fascinating things about having lived in America for the last 3 years is the radical shift from "there is always more stuff" to "oh crap, the environment". When I first moved here the car ads were all "look at my big manly manly car that gets .5 miles to the gallon", now the ads are all "look at my big manly car that gets 1.5 miles to the gallon because of magic ingredient X". Or the ads that are all about how company that makes this car has managed to con the local government into declaring the grounds surrounding the manufacturing plant a nature reserve. Its an improvement, but not much. The key point of course being that, as usual, its all about the show and not the actual, you know, doing.

So there I am, coming off a flight from San Francisco and I land at JFK. I am walking through the endless miles of corridors and I come across what can only be called the Exxon Mobil Edifice of Irony. Its an entire section of the airport devoted to pointing out how wonderful and new energy Exxon Mobil is, how every day they are saving Americans all this energy and therefore the environment... as if that wasn't irony enough, how did they choose to impart this message? Recycled paper banners? Eco friendly water paints? Oh no, they used 40 plasma screens playing the same graphic presentation over and over again. 40 X 72 inch plasma screens all pointing out the Exxon Mobil is dedicated to conserving energy...

The less said about the current American Power = Clean Coal ads the better...


Things you will only see in New York...
The weather has turned very nice here, sort of the warning shots before the insane heat of August. The other day I wombled up to Central Park. Lovely day, sun was shining, not to hot. Managed to find a lovely spot under some cherry blossom trees to read a book for a few hours. There was even some young lads without their shirts on to provide some eye candy. On my way out of the park I noticed this young lady sitting under a tree with a dog on a leash. As I was walking close, in a supreme state of relaxation, I was trying to figure out what breed of dog... it wasn't until I got within 20 feet that I realised it was a rabbit. She was taking her rabbit for a walk... mind you, the size of this thing, frankly it had to have been a descendant of the killer rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.