Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

There’s a lot of discussion these days about Facebook ads and Twitter ads and Russian bots and every other complication you can think of plaguing today’s U.S. society. So I’m proposing a solution to try to get a handle on this.

I still need a snappy name, but basically it’s a “U.S. Real Advertising Identification Law” (RAIL doesn’t really get headlines though).

Basically, it’d work like this:

• All advertising or promotion must be identified as an advertisement. The media in which the advertisement is delivered doesn’t matter. All advertisements must be “bordered” in some way: visual ads must be bordered with a red, unobstructed border around the entire ad and audio ads must be prefaced with “This is an advertisement” presented in a natural, non-time-compressed, unobscured, standard reading. The visual borders would be standardized regardless of advertiser. One standard shade of red. Black and white ads would used a “hashed” pattern border. The audio “borders” would use standardized language. It doesn’t matter if it’s a political ad, an ad for snack food, or an ad for the latest rage in pharmaceuticals. All ads: red border for visuals and an introductory line for audio ads.
• All advertising must identify the name of advertiser and the country of origin. These would be similar to the “Paid for by ..” tags on all political ads, but would be a requirement for EVERY ad appearing on ALL media. Any ad with an audio component would require this to be part of the spoken copy.
• All media outlets presenting advertising content must keep a record of every ad generated including the content, the company that purchased or requested the ad space, the country of origin for the party making the request, and the method of funding for the ad, including any barter or trade efforts and what was exchanged in these instances.
• These regulations would apply to every type of advertising found in the United States and any future type of advertising: television, radio, billboards, newspaper, and any ad found on the Internet. There would be no exemptions. Any content designed to promote anything would fall under these regulations.
• Any digital advertising intended for a U.S. audience, even if generated on servers on foreign soil, must adhere to these regulations.

These efforts would help curb this trend of online content providers trying to embed ads in their social media streams like just another post, much like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook do today. Any advertisement being disguised as a news source would be immediately identified.

I understand that much of what we see on the Internet is fueled by ad revenue. I’m not trying to impede these efforts, instead I’m trying to make sure there’s a very clear delineation between content and advertising.

Earl bought me flowers for Valentine’s Day. I find this simple arrangement quite beautiful; I think it looks great on the dining room buffet, but Earl is a little disappointed because it’s not the arrangement he ordered. He strives for his definition of perfection and when expectations are not met, he let’s the folks responsible for his displeasure know his feelings. There’s nothing wrong with this, in fact, I love him for it.

I still love this simple arrangement. I am going to enjoy watching it bloom and grow in front of our balcony windows this spring.

It’s the simple things that help me see fireworks on a daily basis. In my eyes there’s not much that happens outside of the realm of perfection in my life; I’m pretty easy to please and even though I’m quite opinionated and vocal on Twitter, I tend to find contentment fairly easily, at least when I’m not in a contemplative mood.

Tonight we met up with Jamie and Chris for Indian Food as a Valentine’s Day celebration. It was a lovely experience and I was very happy to be with the men I love. Blood relatives and chosen family: I have been lucky in all regards.

Now that is perfection.

Randy Gardner and Tai Babilonia, photo from ESPN.

The family room in the house my dad built for us had a hardwood floor. The room wasn’t particularly big, but building a house and relocating from a 10’x50′ mobile home (with an 8’x35′ addition) into a two-story Colonial house left my parents with little resources for furnishing the new house. We had furniture, but there wasn’t a lot of it and much of it was second-hand. We had a lot of room to move in that family room.

When the 1980 Winter Olympics rolled around, they took place in Lake Placid, N.Y., about 175 miles from where we lived. My sister and I watched the Olympics on the small 17-inch Zenith color television that sat on the bookcases that flanked the fireplace, the centerpiece of the living room. After watching various skating events on the small Zenith on WIXT-TV 9 (ABC), my sister and I would put on our socks and “skate” around the hardwood floor. We were trying to be like Randy Gardner and Tai Babilonia. We’d put a now forgotten 45 on the record player and slide around, pretending it was ice. My mother would, um, speak loudly, as she cautioned us about banging into the wall, falling into the fireplace, or do something else that was equally ridiculous. Since the room was probably no larger than 12’x10′, there wasn’t much of an opportunity to get our speed up, until I discovered if I ran down the adjacent hallway and then slid, I could get a little bit of speed before banging into a lamp that hung from the ceiling in front of the fireplace. It was the beginning of my growth spurt so I had enough height to hit that horribly placed lamp. Occasionally I’d scare a cat. My mother would yell.

Ever since those Olympics and our “skating”, I think of Randy Gardner and Tai Babilonia whenever the latest round of the Winter Olympics are starting up. Earl and I sitting here as I type, watching the Opening Ceremonies.

Before the end of the night I’m going to run down our hallway and “skate” across the wood floor in our dining room.