I shouldn't have..

But I did nothing more than watch TV and play video games all weekend. And I wasn't even able to watch TV peacefully either. Most of the time, I would tune to the NFL network and watch whatever preseason game was on at the time, however sometimes I would either be flipping around channels or they would actually run a sports ticker at the bottom of the screen during the game. Of course, the game I'm watching is usually a taped replay, and I know that when I'm watching it but what kills it for me is that I either catch highlights of the game I'm watching on another channel or I see the final score and stats of all the key players DURING the game on the ticker. :(

So I switched over to playing games. I first installed and tried to get into Planescape: Torment, a game which I've had for years and never got past the intro area of. I got a bit further this time but still I gave up pretty quickly. I don't know, I just don't really enjoy it but everyone raves about the game. My attempt at Torment failed, I turned to another game I've had for a long time and never got really far into, Fable. I fared much better with Fable than I did with Torment. I have no idea how far I am in the game now but I spent a good 6 - 8 hours this weekend with the game. I'm not really sure it's really that fun but I find it much more accessible than Torment.

So um.. yeah, that's my weekend. And you wonder why some weeks I write nothing.

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There won't be a new post this week, my apologies.

Next week, I hope will come with a lot of new things to write about.

Appropriated words, recomposed.

Driving away from the wreck of the day.

Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?

Yeah we walk through the doors, so accusing their eyes
As if they have any right at all to criticize
Hypocrites, you're all here for the very same reason.

Pay no mind to what they say.
It doesn't matter anyway.

What if I fall? What if I don't?
What if I never make it home?
What if I bleed? What if I break?

If this is giving up, then I am giving up.

I try to make it happen, try to make it alright.
I know I make mistakes I'm living life day to day.
It's never really easy but it's okay.

Let the rain fall down

One more mile. One more kiss. One more word. One more wish.

Forget about the reasons why you can't in this life and start to try.

All your worries, leave them somewhere else. Find a dream you can follow.

In a moment everything can change.

Trust yourself and don't give up.

A bit o' randomness

Well it's another Monday, and I've got nothing for you guys this morning. At least nothing structured, my brain seems to be taking a bit longer than normal to come out of its POST routine. That said, here's whatever random thoughts that have managed to escape the clutches of my mind.

Peter Jennings died this weekend at the age of 67. Everyone says that he was way to young to die, and while I will not disagree in his case, for myself, I think that's about right. 70-plus for myself. I don't really want to live too old you know. Sure I might miss out on some really cool technology or experiences but I don't want to be that old decript guy who is completely dependant on a staff of nurses. Waitaminute... staff of nurses.... mmmmmmm. But you get what I'm saying, right? Maybe it's because I'm too proud but I just do not like the idea of not being able to do things for myself. Anyway, RIP Peter Jennings.

I used to think that I pay way too much a month for cable TV, what I mean is if I had to save money on my monthly fixed expenses right away, cable TV is the easiest target. But this weekend I was thinking about this and I've decided that cable TV is only second to my cable internet service in terms of return on investment to me. I just happen to have a lot of free time and I don't know what I'd do if it wasn't for the combination of entertainment available to me from my TV, computer and Xbox. I watched a *lot* of movies this weekend. I don't even know what movies I watched anymore because I wasn't really paying attention. TV is now entertaining my subconcious more than my concious mind. As if I wasn't already a sucker for corporate advertisements.

I really can't wait for sports to start again. And by 'sports' I only recognize NBA, NFL and NCAA basketball and football. Go Bruins, Lakers and I don't really have a NFL team I root for but thank god it's on every Sunday and Monday. Add to that NCAA football every Saturday and NBA games just about every weeknight and yeah, I'm good until June. :)

Advertising and America

I was walking through the mall this weekend and came upon some ads (by Dove? or something... anyway, it doesn't matter,) which featured supposedly "normal" women (tagline: "tested on real curves"). My first thought (out loud,) was "what is that? Are they selling products for obese women?" The whole thing just strikes me as completely hilarious because traditional wisdom in marketing is to use beautiful people to sell products to ugly people.

The reasoning behind this is that us ugly folk will see those beautiful people and somehow, grasping at the few remaining straws in our shallow, miserable lives, make the huge jump in conclusion to associating the pretty person's beauty and obvious great life (well, look at them, you never see them UNhappy, do you??) with the use of whichever product they happen to be peddling this week. This would sound ridiculous if not reinforced every day with billions of dollars spent by the average, ugly American, who ironically enough is more or less directly paying for the salary and extravagant lifestyles of those beautiful people on the billboards. Money may not buy happiness, but it sure can pay for it.

So that tirade aside, the reason why I find this ad campaign so hilarious is that the conventional marketing as I've described above is all about "use this, drink that, to make your life better, like these people in the advertisement." What's being said now by the Dove ads is "buy this because normal, unattractive people like you use it. Not that hand cream can actually be engineered to work better for ugly people, but hey, look, we're a company that cares and understands." And I believe this to be a reflection of our society at large when corporations actually decide that the overweight, under-tall majority across America would actually look at the smiling but still overweight, under-tall "models" in this advertising campaign and think "hey, that woman has my rolls of fat too! Though my self image makes me miserable, I don't actually want to do any work to change that. But that woman in the ad looks exactly like me, except she looks happy... probably not because of that stupid hand cream she's selling but what the hell, as if I've got any better ideas at this point. Anything to avoid facing the real issues."

The sad thing is I've exaggerated a bit on the obesity of the women in the advertisements. They're definately "big boned" but they're also not quite as bad as the "average" women you'll see walking around. People who are sometimes in clothes so many sizes too small for them that their body is actually pouring out of any opening it can find because the fabric cries out constantly to be relieved of its torment and have its existance extinguished. At the end of the day, this advertising campaign isn't about truth or empathy, it's just giving people lower standards to aim for.

Welcome to America, leave your enthusiasm and passion at the door, here's your complimentary glass of apathy and deflection, on the rocks.