I like to take a brisk walk every day. Depending on how I measure my speed, I'm averaging 1,003.5 miles per hour (mph), or 66,003.5 mph, or 483,003.5 mph, or 1,300,003.5 mph. Actually, my personal contribution towards those speeds is just 3.5 mph. The Earth, Sun, and Milky Way galaxy provide most of the propulsion:

• Even when I'm perfectly still, I'm moving at 1,000 mph as the Earth turns.
• The Earth is orbiting the Sun at 66,000 mph.
• The Sun, along with its captive solar system, including yours truly, are orbiting the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy at 483,000 mph. Even at that speed, it takes the Sun about 225 million years to make the trip around our galaxy (20 such "galactic years" have elapsed since the Sun and Earth formed).
• The Milky Way galaxy is moving through space at 1.3 million mph.

It seems like the Earth, Sun, and Milky Way are going fast, but they're way under the “speed limit” of the universe, which is 670 million mph (the speed of light). According to Albert Einstein, nobody can break that speed limit.

Click on the thumbnails below to enlarge my candidates for the five most obnoxious TV pitchmen: Billy Mays, Stephanie "Flo" Courtney, Vince Offer, John Scherer, and Kevin Trudeau.  Yeah, I know that Flo is a woman, but "pitchman" is a generic term referring to someone who delivers a sales pitch. I find Billy's monotone shouting, and Flo's Saccharin cuteness, and Vince's sideshow barking, and John's know-it-all arrogance, and Kevin's reptilian deviousness repulsive.   When any of these obnoxious and way overexposed five appears on my TV screen, I mute the sound, or change the channel, or head for the kitchen (sometimes all three). I'm not alone in finding these personalities annoying. Just Google any of them, and you'll find links to others who share my opinion. So the question is, why are they still on the air, in Billy Mays' case even after death? The answer is as inescapable as the pitchmen themselves. Their commercials are effective. Apparently, a lot more people are attracted to these personalities than repelled by them, swallowing their sales pitches like hungry trout taking hooked worms. And as long as the products these pitchmen represent are selling well, they will remain on the air, in some cases posthumously.

This "Top 5" list reminds me of another annoyance. Many websites I frequent have features with titles like "Top 10 most livable cities in the world," or "Top 20 one-hit-wonders of 60's pop music," or some other such grouping. But they won't print the whole list on one page. They make you click from page to page in a slideshow format. A recent article in the LA Times online about odd photos that looked like they were photoshoped but weren't went on for more than 30 pages. A single page of thumbnails that readers could enlarge if they wished to would have sufficed. Why do websites stretch such content over so many pages? Apparently, they want to extend your visit. Do each of your clicks count as a "hit," so the website can claim a higher number of visitors and charge more for advertising? Or is it to expose you to more advertising spread over more pages? Or is it simply easier to post slideshows rather than written content?

 

Is there a better subject for me to begin my phre.posterous ranting than the mascots of the 2012 London Olympics? Possibly, but I came across the above photo this morning and could not restrain myself. For my many blind readers, I will undertake to describe the mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville, pictured above. Their legs and torsos have the look of extracted human teeth, enormous molars, that have been chromed. They stand on their roots and their heads--which appear to be cellphones whose keypads have been cut off, after which the remaining half, with the LCD, was somehow glued or soldered onto the crown--stare at you with a single pupil centered on their screens, cyclops-like, and they wave at you with what can only be likened to lobster claws. The immediate impression is that of two extra-terrestrials recently disembarked from their spacecraft.

What could the creators of these creatures have been thinking? Or drinking? Lockjaw and Mandible are not mascots; they are invaders. We're supposed to give these, these monsters to our children, to provoke years of nightmares and bedwetting? Not this Earthling.

 

[Note: This blog is linked to http://ignoregon.com, which aggregates blogs in Oregon, whose governor once invited outsiders to visit his beautiful state, but reminded them to go home.]