Truth In Advertising or, somebody at Argos is asleep at the wheel?

There's just been an advert on TV for Argos. All well and good except the music they chose is two instrumental sections from Barenaked Ladies's "It's All Been Done".

It's All Been Done

Now, pardon my skepticism, but isn't "It's all been done" rather a bad connotation be attached to a catalogue shop which is supposed to be 'innovative'? I mean, "Argos - don't bother, it's all been done before"? Sure, it's a nice piece of music - but I mean, who picks these things?

And now, if you'll excuse me, the smoke detector is going off, which is a sure sign my pizza's done.

Compression Sucks or, are all cable TV operators deaf?

Do you run a cable or satelite TV network? If the answer to that question is 'yes', then read on!

STOP COMPRESSING THE ADVERTS!

The program comes on. It's uncompressed. It has full dynamic range. The quiets are quiet and the louds are loud. Our ears adjust and all is wonderful.

Then the adverts come on. They've had the living crap compressed out of them and are uniformly loud to make them stand 'louder and prouder' of the show. The net effect is you're reaching for the remote to turn the volume down before the plaster comes off the ceiling, then the show comes back on and it's too damn quiet.

Stop the compression insanity!

In Heat or, the price of warm tootsies

Well there were at least 28 days in the month last month, so according to Building Regulation number 938251, paragraph 59, section 'Q' ('Minimum Number Of Invasions of Privacy For Tennants'), we had to have our heat and water meters read. Lo and behold, up went the notice. "Please Note: By order of your building maintenance company, we will be popping round on 12th December to read your meters. Please be at home between the hours of 8am and 5pm. If you cannot be at home, we will be happy to return, at your cost, to read your meters on some other occasion."

So I'm expected to be in all bloody day. This might be possible if I could arrange with my Other Half to be around to let them in. But the fatal flaw in that plan is obvious: no Other Half. Not so much as an eighth. So I arranged with my employer to work from home until they've been and gone, then go in later if it's worthwhile (i.e. not 5pm).

The water meters are just these little guages that whiz round at a speed that defies the General Theory of Relativity, but the heat meters are interesting little buggers. They're these little vials of coloured liquid, superglued to the radiators. As far as I can make out, the liquid evaporates at a known rate and the meter-reader-guy simply reads the level off the scale and enters it on his little card.

Well the Meter Reader Operative (union title) actually arrived at 9am and started to read the heat meters.

After two readings, he started to scratch his head and mutter to himself. He read the first two meters again. He held the vials up to the light. He looked puzzlingly at his booklet ('Meter Reading For Dummies'). He took out his calculator and started totting up large numbers, sucking air in through his teeth in that 'Oooh, it's gonna cost ya' manner so beloved of car mechanics prior to quoting you a price that would comfortably re-furnish your entire home and leave cash left over for a slap-up cruise to the Bahamas.

He made me sign the readings card, with a warning that the bill was on the way and I might like to sell a kidney in preparation.

I generated a little extra heat by burning my copy of the readings card.

Fog Lights or, my eyes! My eyes!

Why do people insist on driving around with their fog lights on? There's just no reason for it. What do they hope to achieve by being able to illuminate the next town? Those lights are to mark the vehicle if the visibility drops below a certain level. And by 'certain level' I mean 'about a foot and a half'.

Full beam is more than enough, and even then they should be dipped when traffic comes the other way. But I suspect these idiots have their baseball caps pulled down so low they can't actually see the road ahead. No; they're driving by feel and the hysteria level of their passengers.

It's most disconcerting to round a corner and be presented with enough halogen lighting to put Wembley Stadium to shame. I mean, what am I supposed to do in this situation? In the theory course, we were taught to keep our eyes to the right of the road; the better to see hapless pedestrians stepping out onto the carriageway. But of course, according to the principle of 'You Automatically Steer Where You're Looking', I end up mounting the kerb, bouncing over the ditch and into the scenery, possibly by way of a stylish forward flip accompanied by acapella screaming.

And as the oncoming traffic barrels past, bass-bins a-blastin', I'm left blinking in the darkness, trying to remember if the next curve is to the right or the left and wondering desparately if my health insurance is up to date.