Originally Posted by
freestoke
With the 4Dot clenched firmly, back straight, fingers at the keyboard, Royal Yacht a-burn, it's time for a rant! I am truly dismayed that the chemical lawn company ads have made it to TV big time. As HL Mencken observed, "No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." The ads in question want you to hire one of the little TruGreen lorries of death like the one that just passed my house, hurrying to kill things somewhere in the neighborhood. The appalling slogan written on the truck's panel and hawked in the ads is "Life is better lived outside." Sick Sick Sick. And the website is even worse -- little children playing in a sprinkler on the lawn, oblivious to the fact that they are busily absorbing more toxins than a month smoking cigars in a bar would provide. They'll see no robins or grackles in their yard again, because there will be nothing for them to eat. While the grubs and earthworms that remained alive in the ground immediately after treatment will be carried back to the nest if the season is right, and the nestlings will die. Any eggs the birds carried will be laid with shells to thin to survive incubation. It's a minor extinction even for local songbird populations. The only way these companies stay in business is by spending millions each year setting lawsuits with the proviso that the plaintiffs keep their mouths shut. Depressing.
On a lighter note, a funny tweet from Neil deGrasse Tyson: "If there is a cat Heaven, and if cat Heaven has mice for cats to chase, seems to me that cat Heaven must then be mice Hell."
