Have you noticed where the Weather Channel is going lately with its commercials? We’ve been staying in a hotel while our house is being built and the TV defaults to the Weather Channel-no matter which channel it’s on when you turn it off.
OK, what’s up with the Blue Chew commercials? I honestly thought it was about chewing tobacco with food coloring until I noticed (and how could you not notice?) that there were several women with serious cleavage holding up a bag with the name “Blue Chew” on it and repeating the name over and over.
Is the Weather Channel hurting for sponsors that now they have to swing chesty women in front of you to get your attention? It used to be about barometric pressure. Now it’s about boobymongous babes.
This commercial gets heavy rotation. You notice the women more than the weather. Maybe that’s the idea. You don’t notice how bad the weather is because the in-your-face mammaries on parade compete for your attention.
I know this sounds like a guy thing-and it is. On the other hand, the big boob picture, (I mean the big picture), are all the in-your-face commercials you see nowadays: Lume, Artificial Intelligence (how many times do you see the Google Gemini jingle in a minute?), and “Bienvenido la vida mas fina?”
What’s your favorite annoying commercial? When I look back, I think of the old Rice Krispies opera style commercial in 1967.
Sena and I saw a Weather Channel segment on how to escape your car if it is sinking during a flood. It’s mainly a reminder to turn around, don’t drown. However, there were a couple of interesting things about it. One was the quiz, in the format of a “how would you survive?” quiz with 3 choices: Fasten the seat belt securely, shatter the window, or call 911. The right answer is to break the window and I’ll have more on that because there was no guidance at all about how to break the window. We thought that was an important omission.
The interesting thing about the video clip is that I thought I recognized it from a paranormal TV show, The Proof is Out There with Tony Harris. Most of the time, the conclusions tend to lean toward skepticism regarding paranormal explanations, but in this one, Tony called it a “Possible Miracle.”
In both the Weather Channel and The Proof is Out There, the vehicle was red and looked like it was bigger than a compact or standard size car. The way it moved in the flood water was very similar in both. The YouTube on The Proof is Out There was from Season 3 and it was posted on October, 2023. I’m pretty sure I saw it long before that. The video on the Weather Channel looks like a clip from the full video, and it stops early before the rest of the action.
In fact, there are a few news report videos (from the same news agency, the archives of which no longer have the video for some reason) of the incident, which happened in 2006 and which involves a woman in a red SUV in Pueblo, Colorado who drove into flood waters. The SUV sank, but not before attracting the attention of rescuers, reporters and camera crews. The SUV went underwater with windows rolled up and when it was later pulled out, the windows were still rolled up, unbroken, and all the doors were closed. It has never been clear how she escaped, although many speculated that it was a miracle.
Sena noticed that the windshield wipers were still working, something I had missed. A couple of YouTube viewers (in The Proof is Out There video) mentioned it, but nobody responded to the implication that the electric controls to the lower the windows might still have temporarily worked as the vehicle went under. That still doesn’t explain how they got rolled back up.
It’s also noteworthy that, despite the news story mentioning the driver’s name, where she worked, and that she had called her brother while the SUV was sinking, there doesn’t seem to be any record of anyone asking her how she’d gotten out of the vehicle.
This post is going to contain several YouTube videos, but I’m trying to keep them to the relevant minimum. I think, in all fairness to The Weather Channel about omitting how to shatter the vehicle window in order to escape sinking and drowning (during the TV episode mentioned above), they have posted a video in the past which does provide excellent guidance.
In this video, they mention something Sena knew about but which I was not familiar with—the little tool called a seat belt cutter and glass breaker. You can buy them just about anywhere, often for less than $20. The AAA web site has clear instructions for what to do in situations where this tool would come in handy. In that same web page, there’s a link to the AAA research study done in 2019 about these tools, which contains more helpful advice, such as that the spring-loaded tools work better than the hammer type, and that they work on tempered glass, not laminated glass.
In any case, we’re sold on the glass breaker and it’s on order. However, we would prefer to turn around, don’t drown.
We like to watch the Weather Channel. One of the meteorologists is very conservative in his forecasts. He’s always hedging:
“And here we see a radar signal that might be indicative of a tornado, not saying it definitely is a tornado, just saying it might be, and over here in this county next to a major or minor highway are what appear to be remnants of an atmospheric river although that’s according to the GPS Model mind you, and you always have to remember the European Model might say something different about what might happen, not what’s going to happen mind you, just that it possibly could transform into a manifestation of the Norse god Thor who could have a huge hammer, although that’s from mythology so you can’t rely on that definitely and if you do, let me remind you that I have a lawyer who might just give you a telephone call if you happen to make the mistake of depending on a meteorologist to forecast anything exact and reliable for goodness sake, like the occurrence of a named storm in your vicinity which might be in the Midwest, or the eastern seaboard, you just can’t know with any degree of certainty now that climate change has us in its indefinable grip as we say, so you want to be prepared for whatever might occur, which could include skies that are clear to partly cloudy to filled with UFOs as far as the eye can see but take it from me you didn’t hear that from me.”
Go Retire Psychiatrist 