Thursday, September 29, 2011

Carlinesque: Unexpected Accidents?


A local radio advertisement has forced me to channel George Carlin again.

Last time I wrote something like this, it was about a spot that at least sounded like it was referring to old people as “seasoned citizens,” which, to me, seemed to call them more food than people.

This time, there's a local law firm that says it offers services to people who have had “unexpected accidents”.

What the hell is an unexpected accident, anyway? My understanding of the word “accident” is that it applies mostly to things that a person isn't expecting to happen until it's unavoidable. This gets me to wondering how one might expect an accident. If you're expecting something like that, wouldn't you take steps to keep it from happening so that you don't have that particular injury or problem? Or, at the very least, make it so that it's not bad enough that you might need to get a lawyer?

Besides, my understanding of all this leads me to think that having foreknowledge of something that might cause injury or damage and doing nothing about it doesn't lead to accidents. Granted, these things might not be intentional, but I also don't think they'd quite qualify as accidental, either.

It's one of those things where I would think better words and phrases for expected accidents would be “neglectful” or “just plain stupid”, amongst others. But that's just me.

I'm not about to try claiming an understanding of how the legal system works, or that I know much about how others should run their lives. That would be the just plain stupid thing I mentioned above. It's plain to see that I come across that way without any outside help.

Oh well, it's just a radio ad. Maybe I should just calm down and let it go.

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