Nielsen Day One: Rerun City

It's now near the end of our first day as a trial-period Nielsen family, and I have come to the conclusion that we watch way too much TV, a lot of it reruns. Granted, we're talking quality reruns: The Simpsons, M*A*S*H, Monty Python's Flying Circus. In fact, I just watched the Lumberjack Song on PBS--a classic.

I also saw a lot of commercials. The one that annoyed me the most was a commercial for Frosted Mini-Wheats or something similar. The commercial showed a little girl on stage at a spelling bee. She is asked to spell "aardvark." She begins: "Aardvark: A-R..." At which point a Frosted Mini-Wheat appears on the microphone and prompts her. She corrects herself: "A-A-R-D-V-A-R-K, Aardvark." Everybody applauds wildly.

At the risk of sounding even more like a dork than I usually do, there are several things wrong with this picture. Firstly, and most glaringly, you would never be allowed to correct yourself in a spelling bee once you screwed up. If you say the wrong thing you're just fucked, plain and simple. You're out of there. Bu-bye. And speaking of bu-bye, you can't just prompt people from the audience. It's highly forbidden. That Frosted Mini-Wheat would have been hella kicked out. And lastly, who gets asked to spell "aardvark?" I would have killed for "aardvark." Instead I got "pixilated". Screw that. On the other hand, I got a guy three years older than I was to hate me for several years because I almost beat him. But then he spelled "pixilated" right. Bah.

Perhaps I'm a bit pixilated myself right now--I just re-read that. 1.5 beers isn't exactly going to make me sloshed, though.

I forgot to mention that the Nielsen company sent us $15.00 in cash along with our TV diaries, presumably to compensate us for mailing them back. But cash?? Um, okay. Thanks. Sure. We love Nielsen. Send us more.