I have a confession to make. When I first went to meet Poppy in ”France”, I was in shock. No, not from her amazing beauty, incredible intelligence, or the weakness of her bladder in the final moments of Cloverfield. I was in shock because the Dunkin’ Donuts in ”France” closes at 6:00pm on a Sunday. Literally.
Living and working in New York City itself leads you to believe that life is lived a certain way. A New York Minute actually equates to 40 seconds of Everywhere Else Time… 30 seconds if it has to do with coffee. We put the word “convenient” in Convenient Stores and for them to be “convenient” they need to be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week… otherwise we call them Bodegas.Time is money… and here in the city neither is cheap so if its convenient enough to save us a few New York Minutes, we’re all about it. Really.
So last night while driving home I realized my trusty antique iron steed was low on the petrol. I pulled into a local Exxon to fuel up. Getting out of my truck I got out my debit card and then looked up into the face of the brain child from the think tank all those windfall profits the oil companies are making is going to…
Yes, gas stations now have their own television station. GSTV monitors were mounted to the tops of all the pumps. Out of the 8 screens, 5 of them were bouncing the logo seen above while the other 3 showed a color test pattern. Naturally curious, I chose a pump with a logo.
Inserting the debit card, my hands became sweaty with anticipation as to what they were about to show me. Would it be a bigger peek at the new season of Heroes? Perhaps the extended trailer for The Day The Earth Stood Still? The red-band trailer of Zack And Miri Make A Porno? Would it be a lip-stick wearing pig Governor Palin re-enacting that scene from Flashdance (you know the one… with the water)? What kind of convenient goodness would they award me with for my loyal patronage?
I pumped the fuel… mesmerized by the screen… waiting for my reward.
$57.15 later… and I got nothing.
Corporate mongers.
First of all… why the hell do I need a television on the pump? Does this mean that it’s going to take longer to fuel up because the idiot savant in front of me wants to watch the end of Mr. Ed? Why am I paying a fuckton of money for fuel to additionally get what will undoubtedly be useless crap thrown in my face? That what pop-ups are for! More advertising maybe? That’s what personal blogs are for! More political dogma spewed out from pundits and surrogates? Holy hell people! Input overload!
The ONLY rumor I heard about GSTV that was somewhat positive is that possibly… they’ll be showing episodes of Cereal Wednesday. Now THAT is something I’d be interested in.
So what about your over priced fueling stop… does it have its own television station you’ll be paying to shove unwanted programming down your gullet?
