I’m too cold and too tired of fighting with snow to blog anything super coherent tonight. I’m the only one home for a week as my parents and employees are in Orlando, FL working a convention, so it’s just me, the 3 dogs and my 85 year old grandmother, who lives in her own house on the property. So after the big snow the other day I paid a guy to blade the road and the driveways…well…there was no more snow in the forecast then! Now we are under white out conditions and everything I had accomplished is now gone. *sigh*
As of the morning of February 16th, 2007, I have officially given up on watching “Headline News”, mainly because it is anything BUT headlines.
At 10:00 AM EST, you started showing the Anna Nicole Smith hearings regarding her remains live from the hearing room….for 10 minutes. You may have gone on longer, but I wouldn’t know as I turned the channel and never came back. Your name is not Court TV, you are not normal CNN, you are “Headline News” and Anna Nicole, at this point, is nothing more than an entertainment section also-ran. This is not to mention the total lack of “Headlines” from 7:00 PM EST to 2:00 AM EST.
If I had any way to remove you from my satellite package, I would, but alas I will just have to be content with not tuning in to your channel any more when I used to leave my TV on your channel about 12 hours a day.
Thank you for your time,
Sean P. Aune
Kirksville,MO
Usually after I watch All My Children on the east coast ABC channel I get, I flip over to the Los Anegeles ABC to watch the mid-day news report. With my hatred for the big news stations for the past few days over the Anna Nicole Smith stuff, I figured a local news broadcast might be safer…
Anna Nicole Smith’s remains being fought over was the lead story.
THE LEAD STORY!
Not the President’s news conference. Not the war in Iraq. Not the Iranian weapons found in Iraq…Anna Nicole Smith’s remains.
With the 20 months to the presidential election already ramping up in to a free-for-all, the never ending drek being spoon-fed to the masses as “news”, I am giving serious thought to Tivoing the BBC news each day and watching it when I get home and just giving up on my country as a whole for news. We are too slap happy with celebrities, feel good stories, and things we THINK are important.
I have had it. I’m done. Last one out, turn out the lights.
I am going to shotgun my lovely new HD TV if I have to hear any more about Anna Nicole Smith or her baby! Basically you now have a multi-million dollar football being tossed around without anyone really caring about the human lives involved. No one has tried to claim Ms. Smiths remians even. But no, you have websites like TMZ.com running pictures of the contents of her fridge!
And the whole subject of the paternity of the child…dead men, husbands of washed up Hollywood stars, lawyers…I’m figuring an alien is going to land any day now and claim that is the result of a late night abduction of Smith.
The media should be ashamed of itself…these men should be ashamed of themselves…and I should be ashamed of myself for blogging about it, but damn it, I want to watch some actual news!
Two hours of 24 tonight and STILL no Satchel of Doom! Are they trying to torture us now? They know we want it, but yet, they don’t give it to us. GIVE US THE SOD! Jack Bauer needs the SOD like Superman needs his cape!
The other day I talked about the Snickers ad and how I thought it was being blown out of porportion. Well, one of my regular readers (I think I’m up to 3!) pointed out what the hoopla was a little bit more about accurately. I asked if I could just copy her comment:
I only want to clarify something about the Snickers thing.
The Snickers one that aired certainly wasn’t the big issue. The big issues were the football players watching the ads on the Snickers website and making comments about how disgusting it was to see two men kissing as well as other variations on the ad that they were having fans vote on what woudl air for the Dayton 500. That is why the outrage displayed by MSF, GLAAD and HRC.
On the website one such ad to vote on was titled the WRENCH – instead of ripping out their own chest hair they had one man club the other over the head with a Wrench because of the kiss only to then have retailation of slamming the other guys head in a car trunk. You can find that version on Youtube I believe still. It’s just plain wrong…
As a huge supporter of MSF there is a reason Judy Shepard and others stood up to Mars and demanded the ads be pulled from the site. It’s also interesting to note that the ad agency first contacted GLAAD to review the ads only to change their mind before showing them and that commericial industry insiders are saying that some people from the ad agency will be out of jobs because Mars is so angry about the contraversy.
This one in particular wasn’t mocking homophobia but instead displaying homophobic motivated violence against another person as well as watching ‘big macho football players’ mock how ‘gay’ the ads were….
Considering the reputation of homophobia in professional sports this isn’t surprising that was the reaction by these players but it seems very calculated that once again the gay community was used to give Snickers more ink after the SuperBowl – however not speaking up about it would have been wrong
I can already here a couple of people thinking in their head “Sean…why does this ad qualify as being offensive when the robot jumping off the bridge, which offended another group, didn’t?” Simple. These ads are showing that the most logical way to respond to a homosexual advance, even if unintentional, is to harm the other other person. They have to do something “manly” to regain themselves. Then to run the ads online with footballer players mocking them? Way to get rid of those professional sports homophobia stereotypes guys.
In conclusion…
Robots committing suicide = funny
Men hitting each other with wrenches to prove they aren’t gay = not funny
brinshannara asked me the following five questions. If you’d like me to come up with five questions for you, post a comment.
1) What is UP with the Sonic picture that follows you to like, every community you’re in? ;)
(for those who don’t know it, it’s this )
Ikebukuro, Tokyo Japan, August 2001 – I’m wandering around Sunshine Street and there’s a big Sega arcade there kitty corner with Tokyu Hands at the end of the street. Sonic is out there trying to bring in the customers, I shoot a picture to show my friends back home. Just as I snap the picture, he puts his hands up. I just think the pose is hilarious because he looks like he’s snickering. Here’s the unedited version
2) Why and how did you get so involved in the BAM storyline?I had seen a news story on the site AfterEllen.com and started researching it for fun. I actually monitored the board for awhile, but never joined. When I saw they were leaving, I figured it was now or never to join!
3) Do you write apart from BAM fic? If so, what sort of writing?
Just when I was a professional magazine writer. BAM is my first fic work.
4) Ever wish you had a more traditional job? If so, what kind?
Full time writer would be nice, I miss it.
5) What’s your favourite BAM scene?
hmmm tough call! “In to guys” has always impressed me for it’s lighting and acting, but for “I never“…Maggie finally admitting her love? *swoon*!
When I was in 2nd grade, a teacher at my school in Phoenix had been to Japan and was showing classes slide shows. She showed 2 slides and made one statement that FASCINATED me.
a. The statement was about sentence structure. Where we would say “A woman in a beautiful red dress walked in”, they would say “In a beautiful red dress, a woman walked in.” That mesmerized me.
b. She showed a slide of two houses so close together, a human couldn’t fit between them going sideways.
c. She showed a slide of 2 geishas.
I knew that day I *had* to go to Japan. I was 7, and I did nothing but read and dream about it for 22 years. I went for the first time shortly after my 29th birthday and I have been back twice since.
2. What’s your best tip for saving money?
*phew* Not eating out unless you have no choice is always #1 in my book.
3. What is your dream profession? Be specific.
Writer. Has been since I was 4. After high school I never thought it would happen due to my abysmal grades in English, but 4 years after high school I was handed a monthly column in a magazine and I spent 5 years writing anywhere up to 3 paying articles a month. I still want to write a book someday.
4. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers… a shameless ripoff of Voltron?
No. Any time you have a series from Japan featuring “teams” it is called a “Sentai” series. Sentai meaning “task force”. The first of the Ranger shows was “Himitsu Sentai Goranger“, produced from 1975 – 1977, which predates Voltron. Was MMPR (Kyouryuu Sentai Zyuranger in Japan) a ripoff of Volton? Possibly. It was the 16th series of Ranger shows, by then I am sure they needed ideas :-p (and no, I did not know ALL of this off the top of my head….I couldn’t remember Zyuranger’s full name…)
5. Would you consider living abroad for one year? Why/Why not?
In a heartbeat I’d do it. Other cultures fascinate me and I would love to immerse myself in one!
To anyone who liked Anna Nicole Smith, this rant is not about HER as a person.
Yes, Anna Nicole had a tragic life, I won’t argue that, what I will argue is the media should be ashamed of itself. In no way did she deserve the amount of coverage she received since her death yesterday. This morning, as I sat down with my morning bowl of oatmeal, CNN Headline News couldn’t shut up about her. Just on and on and on…ok, fine, talk about it for 2 seconds and then move on to something important like the war or Darfur.
I get to work, jump on the net…top story on every news site.
Watching All My Children from Los Angeles, they break in with “Breaking News” to cover the press conference for her autopsy.
This story does NOT call for this sort of coverage. But our media has become so obsessed with “news lite”, the easy story, it seemed like a no brainer to them I guess. I mean really, let’s not talk about real news when we can show the exact same footage of Anna again…and again…and again. Let’s trot out the Entertainment Tonight reporter who last interviewed her, he’s important!
You know, I wasn’t surprised when I heard the Snickers Superbowl ad about two men accidentally kissing was called homophobic. I didn’t think it was, I thought it mocked homophobia, but oh well. Then I heard people whining about Prince’s half-time show, again, overblown.
“It was inappropriate to use depression and suicide as a way to sell cars,” said Robert Gebbia, the foundation’s executive director.
and GM’s reply:
“It’s a dream sequence. It’s not a person, and it’s a robot that is a fantasy. I mean, that robot doesn’t move around. C’mon,” LaNeve said.
You know what, I agree with GM. The AFSP admitted in the article they have received 250 complaints about the ad. There are 300 Million people in this country. So 250 people were offended….that is .000000833% of the population of the country has complained. Wow…I would so pull the ad for that! I feel for people that have lost someone to suicide, but come on folks it’s a robot…having a dream…IT’S NOT EVEN A PERSON!
Is it just me, or does it seem like this is becoming an annual event now? First you have the pre-exciment about the ads, then you get the actual ads airing, and then you have the pissed off people getting publicity for their causes complaining abut the ads. You get all this media coverage running on multi-million dollar ads, and the media gobbles it up. “Oh look! CONTROVERSY!” Yeah, pre-packaged, manufactured controversy.
250 people complain and it gets on every news network, all the press wires, people (including myself) are blogging about it, all because of some silly, contrived “controversy”. How about next year all the big ads are just plain white screens, which black fonts stating the name of the company? Oh wait…the actor’s guild will complain…
Skype released the newest version of their software, and there’s a couple of nifty new features. Some of them I haven’t gotten to play with yet like Call Forwarding and Live Chats, but one I’m loving is the new extension for Firefox.
It installs in to Firefox, and it turns ANY phone number on a web page in to a clickable link that will dial that number automatically in Skype for you. You will have to have Skype Out credits to place the calls, but at $29.95 for unlimited calls in a year, or $.02 a minute, it’s well worth it.
And, it seems to be able to tell the difference between phone and fax numbers (this from one of my company sites):
It’s just a little thing, but darn handy when out of town on business!
Alas, hour 6 of Day 6 has come to a close…Jack killed a guy…he did a little torturing…life is good…but where is his best friend? His trusty sidekick? The one partner to never let him down, betray him, or be proven to be a mole inside of CTU…where is the Satchel Of Doom?
25% of the season is gone, and yet no S.O.D., I may cry…they would be big man tears, but they’d still be tears!
Luis over at BlogD has a mind numbingly shocking story of a teacher facing 40 years in prison due to an adware attack on a computer she used in class. I would give my own spin on it, but it would be pointless when he did such a beautiful job of it. It is shocking, scary, and just all sorts of wrong. A must read.
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My friend Tracy IMed me this morning with a website she had seen in the New York Post today called “The Cubes“….basically it’s action figures of office cubicles…and they are oddly compelling. I plan on ordering Sam – The Delivery Man for my long suffering UPS driver.
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Not that any of your ever really visited it, but I closed my bulletin board due to abounding spam attacks.
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