Random Thoughts: The A to Z Blog of the Overactive Mind

  As kids, we were sold a powerful lie! The Care Bears were NOT gentle creatures.... Sure, they looked like happy, pastel-furred ambassadors of love that took cues from Mary Poppins and floated down from cotton candy clouds to teach children how to feel feelings properly . Propaganda! Pure and simple. Look back on them closely. Really look... cast your mind back to Saturday mornings in the 80's by the TV, half-eaten bowl of Cap'n Crunch resting in the crook of your crossed legs. You can see it now, can't you?? Care Bears Were Running a Plushy Authoritarian Regime Here's proof: Each one had a symbol on it stomach: uniformity is step one. Those symbols evoked feelings: branding is step two. Every life they touched was sorted by emotional function; a rainbow based caste system.  Logical conclusion? Cult-like regime whose greatest weapon was colour-coded emotional engineering. Happy? Blue. Grumpy? Also blue, but angry. Love? Pastel pink, of course. And what, pray tell, h...

  Friday night in the 80's was a military operation. It required speed, stealth, an unwavering commitment to personal and family values, and a membership card. The battlefield was Blockbusters... ...where hope went to die. And die brilliantly under fluorescent lighting and inside empty video cassette shells. An entertainment starved schlub couldn't simply rent a movie on demand in the legwarmer years. There was no such beast as streaming . But there was this entity known as scarcity . Maybe better known as supply and demand. It was definitely a mood maker. All foul. If the copy of the movie you wanted was gone, it was gone. The poor teens working their after school jobs behind the counter tried to do their managers proud by saying the movie was "temporarily unavailable." Lies! And we knew it!! The tape you wanted was taken by some other schlub's family. Because they were quicker, stealthier, or more aggressive in their task handling. Or they knew people; had conne...