Long may it reign
It rained here on Thursday, and my goodness I mean it rained.
I’m not the only one who blogged about it either, but I had to go out and do a job to earn money (yay!) and so into the TankMobile I went in the bad weather. And it was bad. Lightning, rain, rain and more driving rain. I have never seen anything like it back home.
At one point, I couldn’t see more than about 5 meters in front of me and had to slow to a crawl – it was genuinely a little scary to be driving in! Large puddles – well, lakes almost – formed at the sides of the road, dragging the car over every time you didn’t see one (because one the rain) and you got sucked into it. I was 40 minutes lates getting to where I had to be.
So Charleston floods. It’s drainage problems are notorious. And this is the scene at a junction just two blocks away from me and somewhere where I couldn’t get through. It was about 3 or 4 foot deep, and wasn’t the only case in town.
Back home, dry, and away from the rain, I proceeded to spend an hour in front of the box watching crappy daytime TV. Is American daytime trash as bad as the UK’s? Well .. it’s about the same to be honest, just with more adverts.
So as I watched NBC (Actually called WCBD in Charleston – I still can’t get my head around how the local TV channels hook up with the nationals) I came up with a fun game to play:
Take a note of the next ten websites that get advertised on TV – no matter what they’re for, and blog them here! And so …
www.botoxcosmetic.com – Can’t say that I’ll be using this one too much myself too soon. I may be 34, but my brow lines don’t need padding out just yet. Still, it’s a nice pretty website, although somewhat femine.
www.floridajuice.com – “Grapefruit … it’s not just for breakfast anymore!” Brought to you by the Florida Department of Citrus. No … really, is it!
www.capitalone.com – Nothing too special about this one, it’s just like daytime TV ads back home in the UK. “In debt? – then get some more debt by signing up with our card!”. Err… thanks, but no thanks.
www.charlestoncornea.com – Ah, this is more like it – a cheesy local TV advert with website to match. Anyway, if I want cornea or refractive surgery then it’s only a few blocks away from where I live.
www.pennytalk.com – Interesting, I’m already with CallingCards, and this inititially looked cheaper until I realised that there was a 49 cent connection fee. What a rip off! I don’t recommend them.
www.speedeeoil.com – I’m so disappointed that this came up first and not “LubeQuik” or whatever they’re called round here, but I bet they’ll lube you up nicely if you ask anyway.
www.jennycraig.com – “Have you called Jenny yet?”. AAARGHH! The voice of Kirstie Alley now haunts me in my dreams at night. Leigh laughed her pants off (by which I don’t mean trousers) when I repeated the advert almost verbatim. I’ve seen it too many times.
www.lowcountrysmiles.com – You’ll want to hit ‘Skip Intro’ on this one asap. And turn your volume down. Oh my god, it’s a MIDI file of a Sting song! How cheesey is that? Cheesey website – cheesey smiles.
www.1-800-go-guard.com – This is a popular trend here. Things that are advertised with a 1-800 number have a website address that also has 1-800 in it’s name. Bizarre. Anyway, this advertising campaign is also running in the local movie theatres at the moment.
www.oxiclean.com – It’s not quite Cillit Bang (Actually called ‘Easy off Bam‘ here), but it’s almost as annoying, and has a lovely bright clean website to match.
After living in London for the first 33 years of my life and working for the 
So for ten weeks in June, July and August 2009, I drove 20,000 miles around the the lower 48 contiguous states of the USA visiting towns and places that shared the same name as places on The London
Oh my – I’ve hate having to sit through adverts at the best of times – but those most have been truly awful.
We’ve also been having very heavy rain over here, accompanied by sunshine (occasionally – it is August afterall).
My Gawd it DID rain there didn’t it? No wonder so glum..
Daytime TV here in Canada is dismal too. And the ads WILL drive you insane. So don’t watch it, I don’t. (Although I did have a co-worker who insisted on watching Jerry Springer every day at work, now THAT is a frightening phenom!)
On the Jenny Craig advert, I don’t know if it is an intentional part of the advert or just a subversive web designer, but if you just leave the main page open for 15 or so seconds you’ll see Kirsty do something funny.
Actually, to save anyone to effort of actually giving that webpage traffic, Kirsty sticks two fingers up behind Jenny’s head.
What was really confusing for us (in Charleston) is a few years back the local ABC & NBC affiliates swapped affiliations.
It was hard as hell getting your mind to wrap around a different station after 25+ years of programmed memory.
Our CBS and Fox affiliates in Austin swapped about ten years back…
You may notice if you travel that those stations only have set programming from about 8-11 at night and 7-9 am (eastern time) and random times on weekends for sports. Those are the national network programs. whatever else that they show is syndicated or locally produced or bought, so that the NBC affiliate in Charleston has a completely different daytime or late night schedule than the one in Miami, for example.
Ah, yes, rain. The English, Dutch and Seattleites think that they have a monopoly on it, until they see what a real storm/downpour is like rather than just constant drizzle. Mind you, I can’t wait until October so we can actually get some here in Austin!
Is that rain from the hurricane that never quite materialized?
We get heavy ran too but it’s the tropics. Parts of East Hawaii have received amounts exceeding 20 inches in 24 hours… and it doesn’t even make the news. The island is a rock and everything perculates right into the rock. Although sometimes there is flooding and runoff.
No, it was just a random thunder storm … a seperate hurriance is now on its way!
Ernesto is currently chewing up Florida and will hit Charleston Thursday night/early Friday morning.
thanks for info