I have seen this advert several times now, and you know it simply makes my blood boil beyond belief. I believe it is for a Jeep vehicle of some description. It features two young boys looking up through glass at various pictures of fishes, sharks etc., they are going "cool, oh that one is cool" "ooooh that is my favorite one" then it shows this Jeep vehicle driving out of the ocean (with said two young children in the back seat), perfectly safe and sound after supposedly having driven underwater in the sea. Okay so lets assess this point by point. 1) vehicles unless they are submarines cannot be driven under water, 2) pretending that vehicles can be driven under water has so far been reserved for James Bond movies 3) the majority of people who die in floods die because they attempt to drive their vehicles through water 4) anyone who drives his vehicle into the ocean with two children in the back seat is obviously attempting to commit murder/suicide 5) as far as I can see there is no teeny tiny disclaimer on this add saying "do not drive your vehicle into the water" (a la "professional driver on a closed course" which is how they usually tell you that while their vehicle can do 120 miles per hour you shouldn't). What part of PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE AND YOU ARE GOING TO GET SUED do these ad agencies not understand? Some idiot is going to get behind the wheel of that particular Jeep, see a river or a flood risen creek and merrily attempt to drive through it cause Jeep says their vehicle can be driven in the sea they are going to die and their families are going to file the biggest lawsuit in the history of christendom. Am I the only rational person on this planet who thinks that this ad is the biggest mistake in the history of advertising? Whatever, here is the only way you should look at fishes, through the glass of the walk in aquarium at Ripley's Aquarium in Myrtle Beach (which if you ever get the chance to visit you really should).

ps) I removed the photo until I can resize it. If there is one thing that annoys me it is having to scroll sideways to read something and my picture was so large I was having to do that. Please talk amongst yourselves while I get it sorted. Thank you

I went to a band competition this weekend. Our band did not win, but we wowed the crowd, who absolutely loved the kids version of the Michael Jackson "thriller" dance. Alot of the shows on display were "concept" shows, you know those high brow type things, one was actually a high school band half time show based upon spices, ya know curry powder and such, yup your average high school football half time viewer REALLY appreciated the nuances of that one NOT! While I understand the need to pursue art in all its forms one has to remember one's audience and ignoring them makes you a darling with the judges (who are the ONLY one's who appreciate the nuances of an "artistic" show) but a flop with the crowd, who, for the most part want to be entertained. Anyhoo, where was I. Oh yes, I wrote a column several years ago, about the need for the arts, particularly music in schools. After my delightful weekend spent watching my husband's band delight the crowds I thought it would be a good opportunity to re-post the column here. Now I suppose I am going to have to find a photograph to illustrate it, oh well, talk amongst yourselves for a while so I can look....

If music be the food of love

''If music be the food of love" is a very pretty quote as is "music can calm the savage beast." However music specifically and the arts in general are what set us apart from the animals. Unfortunately in this current technology driven age we are constantly being bombarded with the importance of technology and science which are being promoted at the expense of the arts. All over the United States music and art programs are being cut to enable the funds to go to computers and to concentrate on science and technology. They have traded their band rooms for computer labs. This continues despite the fact that clinical studies have proven that children who have an arts education have better learning abilities and achieve better grades than children who do not.

The arts are how we dream, how we romance, how we aspire to greater things. Don't get me wrong, I love my computer, and I love the internet(obviously), but I have never been moved by my computer, nor moved by anything I have seen on it. At least not the way I was moved the first time I ever laid eyes on "Sunflowers" by Van Gough, nor moved the way I was moved when I saw Jonathan Pryce in "Uncle Vanya" in the West-End, nor moved the way I was moved the first time I heard "Far Above the Clouds" by Mike Oldfield, nor moved the way I was moved the first time I ever saw Michael Flatley dance.

Without the arts we are simply shells without souls, we lose our identities as creatures with feelings and we become simply an extension of the machines that now rule our lives.

Slowly we are becoming an equivalent of the mouse, simply an attachment to a computer to make it work. We must fight this, our very souls depend on it, what we are, what we have always been depends on our ability to dream, on our ability to create, on our ability to appreciate the beautiful and the profound. If we lose that, if we raise a generation of children whose entire psyche is based on technology then where does that lead us? It leads us to darkness, it leads us to a world of automatons, with blank empty eyes, and cold silent hearts. Without music, dance, drama and art we become what we fear the most, a machine with no soul. A machine with no soul, a machine that kills without pity, that plans to slaughter without any thought for the human suffering it will leave behind. We will create a world of children to whom killing means nothing more than exterminating an alien on a computer screen, there is no difference between that virtual reality and real reality, because that is what we have taught them to be.

We must dance, we must sing, we must play, we must act, we must paint..... we must because it is our soul's way of expressing itself, it is the only way to show the world what is in our soul, and our soul, like a rose in the dark, will die if the world doesn't see it. Save your soul.......

This is not my husband's band by the way, I just happened to notice a brilliant sunset while another band was on the field and I couldn't resist it.

for some reason my link to "evil eye" didn't work, I have no idea why, it was an almost identical link to the one for "fina; approach" so why didn't it work, who knows, I am as I said, a dino, at some point during this entire web building thing I am going to throw the entire computer out of the window and be done with it because it will just make me feel better you know. Here I go again, I am attempting to repost "evil eye"

So I have been building my website (which by the way can be found at crittersbybritty.com) now you have to understand that I am by no means a computer expert, in fact it could be said that when it comes to computers I am like the dinosaur lumbering into the rainforest muttering to itself "damn computers". Or, if not that, I am like that wonderful cartoon there was when computers first rose to fame, Snoopy with an axe "compute this you b**tard" So it is with a great deal of snarling and gnashing of teeth I am building my website. Of course the biggest problem for me right now, other than the fact that I am basically computer illiterate is trying to choose the photographs that will go on there. I have, much to my disgrace, already "killed" a computer with my photographs, it now sits, sullen in a corner of my living room, its sole purpose to store my photographs and its only saving grace is that it looks a little more interesting than a shoe box. If you try to do anything else on it but look at photographs a nasty "low memory" icon greets you, despite the fact that I have stripped it of every single programe that microsoft has ever created in an attempt to free up more memory. In my defense it didn't have that large capacity memory to begin with so how was I to know that uploading a 52mb memory card on a daily basis would do it any harm? My new puter has a huge memory that I dare say even I couldn't fill up (but don't count on it, cause you know when it comes to taking photographs I am a little intemperate). So faced with all of these photographs which ones do I choose? Okay so there are the obvious ones, the really stellar, you cannot mistake that is a brilliant photograph shots that I have no doubt that I will post, then there are the next step down ones, the ones that I think are nice, but which other people have told me are brilliant, then there are the not quite so good shots but lets face it they are cute shots, which ya know, photographically are not so brilliant, then there are the silly shots, which might not be artistically pleasing are just fun to look at. It is hard work, I can tell you. I can tell you however, that the following two shots will definitely be on the website. First up, a shot I call "final approach" during the winter I am invaded by every type of finch you can imagine, the gold finches return for the winter, the house and purple finches are here in droves, so when the thistle feeders are full to capacity the platform feeder is ground zero and it becomes standing room only.



oh and for those who are interested in visiting my "under construction" website right now it is here crittersbybritty.com once I get the photo albums linked to the main page I should be set. And I would also post this shot, I call it "evil eye" a nice juxtaposition with the grackles trying to feed with the mourning doves... it almost seems like devils and angels

http://photobucket.com/albums/v641/MsNick40/EvilEye_filtered.jpg