//return
So I’m back home. Got home Saturday evening about 5 and started to unpack. Had a great home-cooked dinner and went to sleep. Sunday brought sleeping in and visiting grandparents and another tasty home-cooked dinner. And then I started work on Monday. I’m back doing what I was before, web design, flash and this time some Java to boot. But I have a new cubicle. It isn’t green anymore. It’s gray.
I was watching Colonial House (PBS) last night and I couldn’t help thinking about reality television as a whole. Jean Baudrillard posits that we live in a ’society of the spectacle’ where we are disconnected from ‘real living’ by the fact that we experience everything vicariously, through images in media, and that we create these images to suit ourselves and entertain ourselves. (He had some interesting things to say about 9/11, most of which can’t be directly disproven … what were the attacks but a show for media, designed to evoke a certain response?) Anyway, I digress. I came to the conclusion that some reality television is alright: the original few seasons of Real World where people get to know each other and work toward the fun intangibles like understanding and tolerance, shows like Colonial House where modern people choose to attempt to live in a different chronological frame, and legitimate competitions like the Olympics. The others are zeitgeisty nonsense fluff, and they’re becoming increasingly disturbing. Fear Factor was pretty bad, regardless of whether or not it’s safe to eat bugs and worse. Then we had the horrid dating shows where contestants competed against each other, often viciously and by lying, to win the privelige of dating a guy who wasn’t really all that attractive to begin with. Following that, we had the shows that actually dealt with legal contracts, with such shining gems of cinematic filth as ‘Who wants to marry my Mom’ and its ilk. Now we have husbands trading wives (attention conservative Christians — go after these people, leave the same-sex-union folks alone).
This disgusting voyeurism needs to end. It’s perpetrated by lazy people living vicariously through their television sets. And we’re surprised that obesity is a problem — actually living burns calories, watching people live does not. America needs to get off the couch and out into the world around us before we destroy it via reality-tv-show-wars or reality-tv-show-pollution. (Who can pollute Lake Superior fastest? Who can invade small nations in the least amount of time? Here’s the kicker — Iraq thinks it’s on a TV show! Oh that’s right, it is.) Forgive my cynicism in this arena, but the study of International Conflict impels me to look at war from a different perspective — of the irrational conduct of two parties who, on principle, refuse to work out their issues peacefully. Sounds like a great reality show to me.
Yeah.
And go, Massachusetts for both legalizing same-sex marriage AND coming up with a provision to curb abuse of the same. Tell your friends to vote against the Constitutional amendment and urge them to write to people in power suggesting the same. The Constitution has never been amended to restrict rights (except Prohibition, which was later repealed). Furthermore, it has been amended to extend rights on numerous occasions. The Constitution is not a toy to be amended at a whim by the leaders politic. And last I checked, ‘Constitution’ and ‘Bible’ were very different things.
