Carol bought me a device, a “Digital Quartz Sports Monitor”, when I was still able to walk.  I had jogged a thousand miles the year we met and had continued to regularly jog every morning for some time after that, although what I did could be accurately described as shuffling.  I rediscovered this device a short time ago and wondered if it could be brought back to life by buying a new battery.  I thought it might be useful to follow my bike’s travels through the streets, bicycle paths and parks in my part of North Miami Beach.  I was mistaken.  It works as its little booklet from Eddie Bauer claimed and I got its time function to operate but it cannot follow the cycle of legs pumping the pedals of a bicycle.

 

            I spend some evenings in my reclining chair after despairing of writing something inspiring on the computer or looking in vain for some friendly or even unfriendly response to previous essays.  The best thing this chair does is to place me on my back with my legs raised just in the right place to see the television set.  Sometimes I would rather read in this position but this is eminently suitable for snoozing until the call this position inspires sends me to the bathroom. So, I switch to television, which in my office/den is limited to a number of channels, most of which have commercials. Last night  I remembered my little “monitor” and wondered if the battery is still working and would I be able to perform a little experiment about how much of my time is taken by commercials or, “and now a word from our sponsors.”  Acting on this itch to experiment and annoyed that almost every channel schedules its commercials at the same time so clicking the remote to another results in more commercials and words from sponsors, I tried out the device.

 

            I discovered I liked commercials better when I timed them.  They were not so interminable.  I have not yet timed the snippets of the movies I prefer (seen over and over again - even on competing channels, proclaimed as the “The World Premier of…”).  That will come later.  What I found is that the directors of such activities vary the length of “words” of the sponsors to fit the needs of cutting out segments of movies and TV shows so that the total time of a particular “slot” meets the requirements of the firms that pay the bills.

 

            One segment of five (or six) commercials jammed into its time lasted, according to my monitor, was 03.331 - 20 minutes and seconds. The “20” in this reading was half size to distinguish fractions of a second.  The next was recorded as 04.30 – 84, a minute longer. There is no sense to the jamming togetherdifferent “words” from different sponsors to make up the time they paid for.

 

            I have no idea why I took the time to do this.  Nevertheless, the device works.