Plug-In Cat Juice

My wife and I saw an ad on TV the other night and we both had the same reaction – Why the hell are we seeing commercials? I thought we were done with all that!

Then we remembered that we’re too cheap to pay for the no-ads version of some of our streaming apps, so we just sat and endured it. They make it so you can’t fast-forward them, and if you try to skip over the ads, they just play anyway, so you’re kind of stuck. At least you can still mute them.

It’s an interesting place advertisers find themselves in with streaming services, now that anyone can just pay more to never see their ads. They don’t get any of that extra money, so you’d think they would be at a place in the history of their business where they would be going all out. Knocking it out of the park. Creating ads so interesting, exciting, hilarious, or shocking that I would not be able to take my eyes off them, and there would be no thought of hitting the mute button.

Not the case. In fact, they’ve gone the other way. I guess they’re putting all their ad dollars into TikTok now, because the TV ads on streaming services are starting to look like they were shot on someone’s phone with a budget of six dollars and a happy meal.

There’s one ad we get for an appliance store, and I swear it has to be meant as a gag. The “actors” appear as if they were chosen by simply going to a Walmart blindfolded with your arms outstretched, and using the first two people who voluntarily hugged you. The husband in the kitchen appliance-needing couple has so much neck hair protruding from the back of his shirt collar that I originally thought it was a crappy remake of Teen Wolf. Middle-Aged Wolf Den Remodel. Sadly, no.

And occasionally we get ads that are in Spanish. The whole ad. In a foreign language. You guys obviously know the show we’re watching is in English. I don’t even have Spanish subtitles turned on. I don’t get it. Why on Earth would you advertise to me in a way where I can’t understand what you’re saying? That’s just plain dumb. Save your money and put those on Telemundo, amigo.

With all the crap out there, there was one ad recently that caught my attention and made me come off mute. The lady took what appeared to be one of those Glade PlugIns air fresheners things and (appropriately) plugged it in to her wall outlet. Then the imaginary cartoon fresh smell waves wafted over into her cat’s nostrils, and it became clear that this was some contraption meant for her cat, and not to mask the fact that she feeds her cat nasty three-day-old fish.

I unmuted in time to hear that this was an ad for a “feline calming diffuser.” I’m sorry, a what now? Upon further internet investigation, it turns out there are Glade-like plug in things that pump out cat pheromones into your home. I don’t think I have ever wanted anything wafting through my home less than cat pheromones.

The cat calming juice apparently “mimics cat’s natural facial pheromones they mark their territory with, when they feel safe, secure, and in control of their environment, which may help your pet feel calmer in common stressful situations.”

Hmm…

What could a house cat possibly have to be stressed about? They are the laziest animals on planet Earth. They do nothing. Cats are naturally good at one thing – hunting and killing rodents – but house cat owners seem to hate it when they do that. We’ve absolved them of all responsibilities. Suburban cats are like spoiled rich kids. Spoiled rich kids aren’t stressed about anything. Why would your cat be?

The 110-volt pheromone pump is said to reduce scratching of furniture and urine spraying.

Hmm…

Do you know what else reduces furniture destruction and flying urine, and doesn’t involve pumping cat juice into the air in your home? Not having a cat, that’s what.

I’m just sayin’.

Now, what I really need to know is if they have some sort of diffuser to calm a Labrador retriever when the garbage truck comes on Wednesdays? That would be useful. Dogs really object when the huge smelly truck comes to steal their hard-earned garbage.

On second thought, probably not a great idea. To calm down a 70-pound Lab in that situation, the diffuser would basically need to be a fog machine of chloroform.

That seems problematic.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Disney Plus a Kidney

I stuck it to those cable companies a few years ago. I really showed them when I “cut the cord” and canceled my cable subscription!

I’m tired of your high prices. I’m going to get all my TV from the internet now. I don’t even need a home phone anymore.

That’s right, I don’t need you. Come get your stupid cable boxes! Wait, except for the internet modem and router. I’m still going to need those.

How much is it for just internet? You’re kidding me. OK, well, that’s still cheaper than your stupid cable TV, so I’m good.

Let me just buy a separate Roku box for every TV in the house so we can start streaming. OK, that wasn’t exactly cheap, but check us out, just streaming away. Umm… where did all the TV shows go?

They’re all on Hulu? OK, let me just subscribe to Hulu. OK, there’s all the shows. What’s that? I can get them without commercials for just a few dollars more? Done.

What about movies? Netflix, you say? OK, great, let me just pay for that. Using it on more than one TV? That will be extra. Yippee.

Is that new movie we wanted to see on Netflix? No? What movies are on Netflix? Hmm… Those are pretty old.

Hey, you know what’s cool? We already pay for Amazon Prime, so we’ll be able to get tons of movies from that. Let me just fire that up. Wow, look at all the movies listed. Let’s watch this one. Why is it asking me to pay for it? I already pay for this. What’s that? Oh, some of these cost extra? Where’s the free stuff? Ah, it’s over here on this really short list. Super.

OK, now where are all the sports? On Hulu? No. Netflix or Amazon? Nope. Looks like I can pay the individual sports leagues to watch games on their apps. Just not my home teams. Those need to be blacked out just in case someone who was a fan wanted to see them play. Makes sense.

What now? Oh, YouTube TV has arrived. They will show me all the sports any time I want. Great! Let me just get that. How much did you say it was? That’s not too bad… Wait. Per month?!?!? Holy crap, that’s almost as much as I pay the cable company for the internet to make all this stuff work in the first place.

Well, sign me up, I guess. We need sports, after all. And I’m probably still paying less than I did for cable. Maybe? I’m afraid to add it all up.

OK, that covers everything. We can watch most TV shows, we can pay to rent movies any time we want, and we can watch sports as long as we don’t eat much or drive any of the cars. All set.

What’s that, now? Disney what? Disney+? What is that? Disney is pulling all their content from everywhere else and making me pay for a special Disney channel to see it? And all the Marvel movies, too?

No! This is the last straw! I can’t keep buying these different streaming services. The total bill is getting out of han… Wait, they’re making new Star Wars stuff? Disney+ has a completely new storyline called The Mandalorian? What is it? I must know. Wait, it has what?!?

Baby Yoda?!?!?!?!?!?!

Shut up and take my money!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

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Sesame Street Blues - Repost

‘A’ is for Axe. In light of the news that HBO just fired lifelong Sesame Street regulars Bob, Luis, and Gordon, I thought a repost of my column from a year ago on the subject was in order. Who could've seen this coming? Enjoy.

As if Legos that now actually fire projectiles and the intolerable addition of swamp-idiot Jar Jar Binks to Star Wars weren’t enough of a slap in the face to my generation, yet another thing from our childhood has changed forever. Sesame Street is leaving PBS and moving to HBO.

The PBS press release was disconcerting at best.

“We here at the formerly nonprofit PBS are sad to see our friends from Sesame Street go, but we are greatly comforted by the giant mountain of money we now have in the middle of the office. We will spend the next few days climbing up to the top and rolling down into the champagne moat we have constructed, and then we plan to take a year or three off and travel the world. As we search the globe for new programming inspiration and expensive shoes, have no fear about a lack of quality content on your local PBS station. For the near term we are rolling out a brand new format of 24/7 live-broadcast fundraisers. Enjoy!”

HBO’s press release was troublesome for the Sesame Street purists, but it met with guarded approval from many industry insiders.

“Since 1969, the Sesame Street franchise on PBS has been an amazing success. Now, in 2015, we here at HBO are thrilled to announce that we are ready to take Sesame Street to even greater heights. All great sums are a function of their parts, and that’s why we have decided to launch the iconic show into several exciting spin-offs.

As always, Big Bird leads the pack, and his new show is no exception. Our giant yellow friend will star in “Big Daddy,” a gritty New Jersey crime drama about one bird’s rise from the mean streets of Sesame Hill through the drug gangs and organized crime rings of the big city. He’s in for the fight of his life to stay on top and keep his massive empire from crumbling when his top lieutenants start to believe that someone else might really be calling the shots. Is the mysterious Mr. Snuffleupagus just a drug-induced hallucination of the giant feathered crime boss, or is he the power player who’s really pulling the strings?

Oscar the Grouch reveals his dark side in the new bone-chilling murder-mystery, “Trash Day.” A mysterious year-long rash of pet disappearances on Sesame Street ends abruptly one cold week in January. Hardened SPCA detective Elmo Van Buren’s gut tells him it’s the work of a serial killer, and he can’t ignore that the last report coincides with the disappearance of one of Sesame Street’s most notorious figures. Oscar “The Grouch” Plovich, the trash can-dwelling derelict from the wrong side of the street, has vanished. With his marriage on the rocks, the fuzzy red detective follows Oscar’s trail all the way to the Louisiana bayou, where Oscar’s trash can has been found in an abandoned shrimp processing plant. Tensions mount when Elmo learns the truth about Oscar’s past. Could the dirty green hobo be his long-lost father from a loveless Dumpster encounter thirty years before? Reports of missing pets have spiked in Cajun country since Oscar’s arrival, and now Elmo must unravel the mystery. Coincidence or murder? What will the squeaky-voiced detective find when he lifts the lid?

The neighborhood grocery store is the setting for our new paranormal thriller, “Hooper’s Revenge.” Since Mr. Hooper’s mysterious death in the ‘80s, Hooper’s Store has had unsteady management at best. David was left the store in Mr. Hooper’s will, but soon he couldn’t wait to sell it. Mr. Hanford took over the reins, but quickly sold out to good-natured and unsuspecting Alan, the current proprietor. None of the owners could ever manage to get any of the Sesame Street regulars to work in the store for any length of time, or even help out on weekends. What are the puppets from the street hiding? What do they know? Alan soon finds out what many have suspected for years. Mr. Hooper may have died, but he never left the store. Alan struggles to maintain his sanity as the ghost of Mr. Hooper wreaks havoc on his life and his business. Will Alan uncover the truth behind how David really acquired Hooper’s Store? And will Alan find a buyer before he buys the farm?

Bert and Ernie team up again, this time as detectives on the San Francisco police narcotics squad in “Partners in Crime.” The City by the Bay has a major new player in town, and he’s brought in the highest grade heroin anyone has ever seen. Overdoses are rampant, and the mayor is breathing down the police chief’s neck to put a lid on the new smack, quickly. Bert is forced to go deep undercover into the seedy world of underground nightclubs and motel room drug deals, while Ernie can only watch helplessly from the sidelines. Tempers flare on the job and at home as Ernie confronts Bert about his reckless behavior. Bert knows that to bring down this kingpin, backup is not an option. As Bert seems to spiral out of control into his undercover role as a high-priced male escort, will Ernie be his lifeline, or will the duo finally be forced to split, permanently?

And last, but certainly not least, comes the new original series, “Crank Street.” Fun-loving, mild-mannered, and mustachioed science teacher Gordon has lived an ideal existence at 123 Sesame Street for years. His perfect life is suddenly turned upside down when he’s diagnosed with Bubonic plague. Hit with the realization that he only has twenty-seven cents to leave to his family, he levels his sights on a grim future. Gordon’s knowledge of chemistry is the one thing he has to work with, and as his health rapidly deteriorates, he lures Grover, the neighborhood meth tweaker, into his web of despair. The brownstone at 123 Sesame Street soon becomes one of the most productive meth labs in the tri-state area. More innocent victims soon fall prey to Gordon’s insidious plan to leave his family millions instead of pennies. Count von Count can hardly keep up with the influx of drug money in need of laundering. The Cookie Monster regrets his decision to join the crew as the enforcer, but the steady supply of Chips Ahoy from Gordon keeps him reluctantly on the payroll. As rival gangs move in on the crew and Grover becomes more and more self-destructive with guilt, Gordon struggles to keep his meth empire intact. Will he cash out before the plague - or his own enterprise - does him in?

We here at HBO are excited about the acquisition of Sesame Street, and confident that the resulting new lineup of shows will blow you away!”

Sesame Street was brought to you today by the letters H, B, and O, and the number $.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

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The Dad-cation

What’s the next best thing to going on vacation?

When your wife takes your three kids and goes on vacation, and leaves you home. It’s called a dad-cation. You still have to go to work during the day, but you are back to being a bachelor in the evenings. My wife gave me a dad-cation recently when she took the kids to the coast for a week. She even helped out by emptying the refrigerator and taking all the food with her, so my temporary bachelorhood was more authentic. The only thing I ever had in my fridge when I was single was hot sauce, beer, and olives.

A dad-cation differs greatly from the old bachelor days in one regard. What the old bachelor me would have considered a very boring evening, the dad-cationing me considers bliss.

I would come home from work and the house would be quiet. For a while each night I would just listen to the quiet. Then, I would go up to my office and pay bills, or organize the health care files, or balance my checking account. It was great! And I would sit and think.

I never get to sit and think anymore. I’m fairly sure the human brain is only good for so many minutes of hard work in any given day. When you come home from work to a house full of kids, the brain up-time you have left over from work is quickly exhausted by your children. Rapid-fire questions, helping with projects, refereeing disputes, coloring, reading children’s books, and pretending to be the leader of a gang of puppies who are also spies who have laser beams and force fields and can also be cheetahs who are also truck drivers and jet pilots takes a lot out of you. By the time all the force field cheetah pilots go to bed, your brain just needs to be off. There is no thinking power left over for anything else. On the dad-cation, however, a man can think.

A man can also watch his own TV on a dad-cation. One of the big problems with trying to raise kids who are only allowed limited screen time each day is that you, yourself, get limited screen time as a result. During a typical day, the only thing I ever see on my TV is a Disney show. By the time the kids are in bed, I am too tired, or have too much to do, to watch a grown-up show. On the dad-cation I rented an R-rated movie and watched it while I ate dinner! How crazy is that? I also watched an entire baseball game, and even a comedy with questionable language. It was awesome.

I slept soundly on my dad-cation, too. Ever since we had kids, my nights have involved a lot of pee. I occasionally wake up to pee, but with three boys down the hall, someone else always has to pee, and 99 times out of 100, I am involved somehow. I either hear it, hear about it, help with it, or clean it up. There are far less pee-related activities on the dad-cation.

I slept well, too. When my wife is gone, the hump is available. You know the hump. The big ridge in the middle of the mattress that separates the 10-year-old sleeping divots on either side. I moved to the middle of the bed and slept on the only part of the mattress that still has its original firmness. My back loves the hump!

When my wife returned with the kids, I was well rested and in good spirits. I was also totally unprepared for their return. Now, don’t misunderstand. I missed them and was very happy that they were home, and thankful that they were home safely. I missed being a truck driving spy puppy, and I had been looking forward to their return, but as it turned out, I wasn’t totally ready for it.

Two minutes after I walked into the house from work I was refereeing an argument about who called who a butt face. Three minutes later, when one of them came to me complaining that his brother had punched him in the stomach, I looked at my wife incredulously and asked, “What happened while you were away? Have you been feeding them sugar the whole time?”

She smiled sweetly at me, the way you smile at an idiot, and said, “Honey, they’ve always been like this. Have we been gone too long?”

It’s amazing how fast you can slip back into bachelor mode on a dad-cation. They’re my own kids, but after a week off I was on total patience overload inside of a half-hour of their return. It was as if I was brand new to the whole thing. So, I have decided there needs to be an ease-in period from the dad-cation, much like getting into a hot tub slowly. You either need to be re-exposed to one kid per day for three days, or all three kids for 20 minutes the first day, an hour the second day, and so on, to ease yourself back into full-strength parenting.

The only problem with that is, your wife has been a single parent for a week and wants nothing more than to throw the children at you and run back out the door.

Oh, well. It doesn’t matter. Bachelors don’t know what they’re missing. It’s loud, you can’t think, you can’t watch TV, you can’t sleep, and your back hurts, but you wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

Bachelors hardly ever get to be motorcycle-riding saber-tooth tigers with jet packs and exploding throwing stars.

I do all the time.  

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?

Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Losing Our Remote Control

Our whole world changed this morning. Our oldest son learned how to use the remote control. Now, granted, he is only a few months away from being seven years old, so before you accuse him of being of below-average intelligence, allow me to explain. He already knew how to use the remote control, in the sense that he could turn the TV on and change the channel. We actually taught him that at an early age out of a desire to sleep in. Our boys naturally get up much earlier than my wife and I really want to, so it was either teach him how to turn on the Disney channel in the morning by himself, or we would need to go to bed earlier. We chose the TV option.

I know some of you out there are now thinking, “How much TV do these people let their kids watch?” I can assure you it is way less than nine hours per day. We actually tried other forms of pre-parental-consciousness morning activities, such as Legos, sword fighting, and wrestling, but watching TV was the only thing that didn’t consistently end in a loud argument or an even louder head injury.

Up until this morning, Son Number One was able to turn on the TV in our upstairs game room and change the channel to 303 for Disney. At 6:00 in the morning, the Disney channel is a safe bet to be appropriate for all age groups. Up until this morning, this was a satisfactory morning activity for Sons One, Two and Three. Up until this morning, I didn’t have to worry about what they might see on the TV screen.

That has all changed now.

We have a whole host of children’s shows that we record on the DVR (that stands for Digital Video Recorder, for those of you over 50 years old) for the kids to choose from when we parents are awake and able to operate the menu to get them going. Apparently, Son Number One has been paying close attention to us when we navigate the recorded shows menu, because that’s exactly what he did this morning.

Our soon-to-be-seven-year-old powered on the big downstairs TV that has its own remote, changed the TV’s input to the DVR, switched remotes, navigated his way through the main menu to the recorded shows menu, scrolled through the list until he found Tarzan, selected it, scrolled through the list of eight Tarzan episodes that were recorded, found the sequel to the episode they had watched the night before, selected it, found “play” among the list of options, and fast-forwarded through the commercials to the beginning of the show.

My wife silently witnessed the entire event from the kitchen, and after she picked her jaw up off the counter and regained some amount of composure, she came to find me upstairs and tell me that we had a big problem. “Number One can work the TV.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t understand. He just played Tarzan from the DVR.”

“He did what?!?”

Now, our shock and apprehension about this new skill our son has developed has nothing to do with Tarzan, or any other show we recorded for the boys. Those are fine. Even the commercials on the Disney channel are pretty harmless, although, my boys really want me to buy an ultrasonic noise maker that is supposed to keep pests like deer and raccoons out of our garden. I’m having trouble getting them to come to grips with the fact that we don’t really need that in our suburban backyard. They’re pretty insistent though. I think it’s because on the commercial it shows the imaginary semi-circles of sound emanating from the cheesy-looking green plastic device. I have tried to explain that they will not be able to see - or even hear - the sound in real life, but they’re not convinced I know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, our apprehension about Son Number One’s remote control skills has nothing to do with his shows. It has everything to do with our shows. We record a lot of police and detective dramas, and I don’t have to tell you that today’s shows are over the top. If our kids get curious one morning and end up witnessing an NCIS autopsy scene, or catch some of the dialogue from Law and Order: SVU, I’m not sure even a team of professional child psychologists could reverse that damage.

Now, AT&T U-Verse has already envisioned this problem, and they were kind enough to include Parental Controls software with the DVR. Apparently, we could simply set up a password, and block access to any of the shows we choose, thereby protecting young impressionable minds from adult language, descriptions of violent crimes, and the dissected spleens of unfortunate sailors. Sounds great in theory, but there are a few problems here in reality.

I’m not sure there’s a really delicate way to put this, so I’ll just come out and say it. We’re afraid if we add any more steps, we won’t be able to operate the TV ourselves. We already have three remotes, and at the very least, a nine-step process to actually watch a show. One more level of difficulty might very well put us over the top. And don’t even get me started on the grandparents! It’s like teaching Chinese algebra to a goldfish every time they come over to babysit and need to operate the TV. One more step in that process will not be good.

I guess we could teach Son Number One to help them with the operation of the Parental Controls, but that seems like a flawed system, somehow...

Maybe we should look at this new development not as a challenge, but as an opportunity to change what we watch and record, moving toward a more wholesome Discovery Channel and History Channel-only type environment. Or maybe abandon the idiot box altogether and move to a books-only lifestyle.

Naw… I think I’ll just start hiding the remotes. I’ll put them with his shoes. He can never find those.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!