Barbara J. Hamby

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A Small Rant

A few days ago, I mentioned a pet peeve I might rant about. That is the practice of many television programs showing an audience clapping, shouting, stomping and whistling. It is certainly not something that I enjoy listening to. To add insult to injury, when I’ve attended a few of these shows, I learned that this audience participation is not always spontaneous. In fact, it may never be so.

When I was in one of these audiences, employees of the television station stood in front of the audience, at the sides of the stage, holding up signs with instructions to applaud, whistle, etc. at various intervals. All that noise is unpleasant at best, and when it is really loud, can threaten the hearing of anyone around. As I do when commercials blast on, I hit Mute on the remote, when audience response is deafening. Or, I just turn off the set. Maybe the hosts of these programs need all that solicited adulation; I don’t need the noise pollution.

I finally got all my holiday letters and cards done tonight, so I’m pretty tired. I can mail them tomorrow and scratch that off my list for another year. Next year I hope to do a better job on the address labels. They didn’t all line up right, so some look pretty sloppy. It took me many years just to learn to make the labels, now I need to perfect them.

Scanning and printing pictures is getting easier with practice. I’ll have to do more of it during the year to keep what limited skills I’ve acquired. It might be easier just to get a digital camera and learn to use it. We’ll see.