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■f Qrono Weekly Times, Wednesday, May 14,2003 - 5 For our children to be happy and healthy, they need many tilings. Some are free, but many are not. The National Cliild Benefit (NCB) gives financial support to low-income families. This helps parents work towards a brighter future for their children. And it also helps to reduce child poverty in Canada. To find out more about all our services for children and their families and to receive your guide: 1800 O-Canada (1 800 622-6232) TTY: 1 800 465-7735 canada.gc.ca Service Canada Access Centres Canada Basic Black by Arthur Black ALL ADS, ALL THE TIME Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century. Marshall McLuhan Sure. Easy enough for McLuhan to say - he's dead. He didn't live, to see Madonna shilling for a jeans manufacturer, Wayne Gretzky touting breakfast cereal and Jacques Villeneuve crawling out of the cockpit of his racing car, bedecked with more decals, banners, emblems and logos than Times Square on a Saturday night. Advertising. It's everywhere. everywhere. Ads pop up, unbidden, unbidden, on my computer monitor when I'm reading my e-mail. The television screen now features a 'crawl' - a moving banner of ads that inches across the bottom of the screen while I'm watching The Simpsons. Remember when the boards along the sides of hockey rinks were tabla rasa white? Not any more. They're plastered with technicolour come-ons flogging flogging everything from Coke to car mufflers. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy advertising. In a lot of magazines, it's the best feature feature they've got. And the newspaper you're holding in your hand wouldn't exist without the ads that brighten (and pay for) all these leaden gray columns of type. But that's old-style, 'polite' advertising. If you don't, like it, you can always turn the page. New style advertising is different. It's invasive, insistent and obnoxious. Like a heat-seeking heat-seeking missile ferreting out the quiet spaces and ad-free oases that we all used to have in our lives. Take, for instance, Captivate Network, Inc. That company is busily installing advertising videos in ELEVATORS ELEVATORS all over North America. Yes, videos. Even if you close your eyes they'll be in your ear. It's all part of a satanic new development in the advertising world called the Outemet Industry. As the Los Angeles Times puts it: "The industry operates on a simple principle: find out where consumers are gathering gathering and put a screen in their face." Elevators are a natural. So are doctors' offices, commuter commuter trains and subway cars. Watch for all-new ad-video screens popping up in taxi cabs, public washrooms and the corner store. A couple of years ago, somebody erected a three-storey high movie screen at a British Columbia ferry terminal near Victoria. It carried electronic ads, giving, giving, as a BC Ferry official explained to me, "passengers waiting in their cars something something to look at." It was a very large screen, making it somewhat difficult to take in the other viewing options--snow-capped mountains, sailboats, the Pacific ocean and bald eagles performing aerial ballets with cormorants, gulls and crows. What kind of a demented mind would substitute an electronic billboard for the wonders of nature? The kind of mind that could make this statement -- which came from the lips of the president of an Outernet firm: "This (kind of advertising) is good for people. If you're standing in line waiting for a Big Mac and fries, you've got nothing else to do." The hell I don't, sir. I've got thoughts to think, tunes to whistle and a dog-eared Elmore Leonard paperback in my pocket to catch up on. I've got gum to chew, people to watch and thumbs to twiddle, twiddle, if need be. Which is all well and noble, but it won't stop the Outernet blitzkreigers from invading our private spaces. What can we do about it? In the spirit of the environmental environmental protection mantra "Think globally, act locally", I offer my personal Anacin Offensive. Many, many years ago there was an ad on TV for Anacin headache tablets. It featured a cutaway cartoon human head containing three compartments which showed a pounding hammer, a jagged lightning bolt and some other graphic display of mental pain. It wasn't the most obnoxious TV ad I've ever seen, but they played the damned thing over and over and over - until I started getting getting headaches from watching watching the ad. By way of counter-attack I resolved that I would never, ever, buy, borrow or beg Anacin tablets for the relief of pain. And for the past three decades I haven't-- even in the wake of vicious hangovers, desperate flu bouts and migraines the size of PEI. I'll take ASA, 222's, Excedrin - anything but Anacin. A small retaliation, but mine own. So that's my advice. Choose one product the advertising for which really annoys you and resolve never to buy it. More important, write to the company and tell them what you're doing and why. The premise is simple enough. Why are they hitting us over the head with ads? To make us buy their products. How can we hurt them most? By not buying those products. products. To paraphrase the Nike ad: Just Don't Do It. Living Life to the Fullest? Habitat for Humanity would like to thank the thousands of volunteers from all across Canada who have been busy building homes in 2002 with families in need of decent, affordable housing. We're going to need more volunteers next year in order to build more homes and hope than ever before. Are you living life to the fullest? Come and see what all the fun is about! Volunteer, join a committee, or donate building materials and supplies. Habitat for Humanity Call Habitat for Humanity at 1.800.667.5137 40 Albert Street Waterloo, ON N2L 3S2 Email: hibltat@hsbltat.ee www.habltat.ca