Not your mother's, or your aunt's

Of all the journalistic clichés -- hell, of all the writing clichés -- one of the worst has to be the one that snidely refers to your parents, or aunt. It's typically an aunt (and only occasionally an uncle -- usually when he borderline fondles you at family get-togethers).

You know what I'm talking about.

• The MVP TV series is "not your mother's CBC."
• Thinking of going south for a holiday? It's "not your mother's Florida" anymore.
• Hitting the hills? It's "not your father's skiing" now.
• Businesses need to recognize that their customers are "not your father's customers."

As for the aunts, Gertrude is in for a particularly rough time (especially when it comes to those mythical sweaters she doles out as Christmas presents).

• Aunt Gertrude's memory problems make her unreliable.
• Google Reader's share feature could allow her to see what blog posts you're reading.
  
• At holiday dinners, she wants to talk about her digestive system.
  

We own a cookbook that has a recipe called "Not your mother's green beans." My partner looked at the recipe. "These are my mother's green beans," she said. A local bar advertises that "Your father never rocked like this." Given their target demographic, there are probably decent odds their customers' fathers rocked a hell of a lot harder.

This is lazy, lazy writing. And worse, it's offensive writing too. It makes assumptions about the readers, which is generally a poor technique because it alienates them. It also seems to assume that all family members are stuck in a cliché of 1950s family life, and that everybody (except of course these hip not-your-parent places) conforms to some -- again, mythical -- notion of bland mainstream life and entertainment.

And Aunt Gertrude? Not too many of us have an aunt Gertrude. The name's popularity peaked in the 1890s, when it was the 24th most popular girl's name in America. It went into a steep decline after that, ranking 939th in the 1960s, and dropping out of the top 1,000 names altogether after that.

It's all about me, baby

I recently saw a book about global warming that took a different approach from most of the others out there. It wasn't about how dire the environmental situation is; it didn't take the opposite tack -- that climate change fear has been overblown; and it didn't offer any suggestions for collective action or policy that would improve things. None of that. Instead, it was about how to ensure your own personal survival in an era of climate change and extreme weather. Kind of an update of those bomb shelter books of the 1950s and 1960s. Who cares if the world is going to hell, as long as you (and your family, of course) are safe.

Later, I turned on the radio to an ad for a Ford truck. The pitch? That the ride in the cab is so quiet, you won't believe how powerful the truck really is. But if you need a reminder, just open the window, so you can hear the engine roar. No consideration, of course, of whether or not anyone around you wants to hear your engine roar. As long as it's nice and quiet in your cab, it's all good.

Fast food photos

Even in my vegetarian days, those fast-food billboards of Big Macs and other, er, tasty treats occasionally looked appealing. I guess it had been so long since I'd eaten one that I'd forgotten how inevitably disappointing they are.

Here's a handy corrective: A page showing advertising photos versus real photos of a wide array of fast food delights. Yuck.