Football "look at me!" continues

I'm watching the Colts-Texans game, but they just showed a 30 second clip of some white guy scoring a touchdown for the Detroit Lions. One of his teammates rushes over to congratulate him, and this idiot puts out a hand to stop him. Teammate again attempts to congratulate him, guy again tells him to back off.

Then he does some weird "shivering all over" while holding one arm extended move which just made it clear that whoever this guy is, he ain't got no rhythm, then, after that very important "look at me demonstrate how classless I am" celebration, he finally allows him teammates to congratulate him.

What an idiot!

And I see by checking at cbssportline.com that it was some nimnul named Will Heller. Heller, you're an idiot.

Some liquor commercial...Bacardi

I've blogged about this commercial before... some large fat guy wearing a very small swimsuit struts along a beach carrying his bacardi and soda or whatever he's got. The tagline: " Be comfortable."

There's a new one now, where he's just standing around with his glass. We dont' see what he's looking at, but he's doubtless ogling all the stick-thin women on the beach who wouldn't actually give him the time of day although he doubtless thinks they're all looking at him in admiration rather than astonishment....

Is it done this way because men consume hard liquor more than women do...or because "being comfortable" doesn't extend to women who should all be skeletal and not, at the very least, comfortably plump.

Gummiebear/ Gummibar

Some abomination on channel 68, KWGN or some other alphabet soup - I'm thinking its NPR, the public channel.

Main character is a green bear - wearing underwear. His sidekicks are fully clothed, including the obligatory long-legged sexy female cat, but he is wearing Y=fronts. And when he is shown from the back, we see his buttcrack.

Why? What is this telling kids? It's okay to run around in your underwear with your buttcrack showing as long as everyone else is fully dressed? Running around in your Yfronts is funny? What?

I guess we must be thankful that they don't have the female character running around in bra and panties.

New posting schedule

Now that I've got this new full-time job, I'll be posting in this blog twice a week - on Monday's and Wednesdays.

So the next post for this blog will be on Monday.

Thanks for your patience.

The Coarsening of America....

I've blogged about the Doggie Doo game before...but I've just got to do it again. I'm watching the Scooby DOo haunted Christmas show, on the Cartoon channel, and they just showed that commercial, with a mom and her girl and boy playing this game.

And I'm loke...what person in their right mind would want to play a game like this?

It's not quite as bad as a doll for girls that poops and pees so that the girl has to clean it up - would you believe there are dolls like that???? but I'm like... who in the world, child or adult, would think this was fun? What kind of a game is it, to try to create the longest poop coming out of a dog's rear end or whatever.

Just...asinine, revolting....sad.

Ted pt 2

I walked into my Walmart yesterday and saw a large display for Ted, the movie which features a 30s something guy and his come-to-life Teddy bear... it's a Christmas display.

How many young kids are going to walk by that thing and ask mommy and daddy, Oh, look, there's a movie about a teddy bear, can we get it.

And mommy and daddy, not keeping up with things, thinks its a movie about a cute little teddy bear and get it...

Imagine their shock when they put it in and this symbol of innocent is acting like  a short, horny man in a bear suit - smoking, drinking, undoubtedly farting, and making simulating sexual movements while running on a treadmill (a scene I saw in a trailer for this piece of crap yesterday.)

Of course teenagers anxious to lose their virginity will probably just love it.

Ted - the movie

This was an evil movie when it came out, and now it's an evil movie on DVD.

Why evil?

Well, it takes an innocent childhood experience - a boy with his teddy bear - and turns it into a sexually charged fantasy.

And even if you just take it on face value of a man whose childhood teddy bear comes to life...what does the cute little teddy bear do? Act like an 18-year-old male interested in sex to the exclusion of all else, not to mention drinking beer, and I'm sure there were some fart jokes thrown in there as well.

The sad thing is not so much that someone thought this movie was worth making, got green-lighted to make it, and had some actors who were willing to do it... the sad thing is this thing is actually rated 7 and a half stars on the IMDB - after 173,000 votes.

That's sad.

It's Miller Time commercial

I've seen this commercial a few ties... a few young men are in a restaurant. There's close-ups of someone swabbing someone's face, wringing out a towel, a lot of tense looks... then it turns out all the guy is doing is trying to eat a plate of buffalo wings. He finishes, he leans back as if he's really accomplished something important and then he thrusts his hands into the air like he's a champion.

I laugh at the stupidity of it.

There's no denying that humans are competitive and they'll make a competition out of anything - young men more so than any other population group...

but seeing how many hotdogs or eggs or live minnows you can stuff into your face at any one time? How stupid is that? And to act afterwards as if you've accomplished something important, and are actually "better" then the contestants whom you beat out?

With this commercial, Miller seems to be actually advocating such childish behavior!

KFC Peace in the Family Deal

I'd actually seen this commercial a couple of times before, but never had the sound up to see what was going on until today.

So two middle aged ladies are talking to each other, while sandwiched in the middle is a bored looking middle aged man. The women aren't talking normally of course, their voices are dubbed into screechy, stereotypical nagging women type voices, although all they're doing is probably talking about some other woman...

The guy reaches into a bucket of KFC, hands each woman a piece of chicken...and ah, blessed silence.

After the KFC spiel about the special they're offering, we have the same scene except its two little boys arguing about something childishly.

Implication - whether it's middle aged women or 6-year old boys, none of 'em say anything worth listening to.

How demeaning to women!

Walmart: the cyber-monday commercial

It's the typical commercial which "wussifies" the male and shows the woman disrespecting him.

Don't get me wrong, I like commercials that show strong, confident women, but there's no need to wussify men or show women having contempt for them.

In this particular commercial, a guy cries out in pain, as he's getting Cyber-Monday cramp from ordering too many things online. His wife/girlfriend takes over, and sneers at him in contempt for getting cramp.

Is that really necessary?

Yummi Gummis Search For Santa

Just saw the commercial for this on TV

Why does the gummi bear lead character run arund in his underwear in public?

I know it's a rip-off on Captain Underpants books but I think Captain Underpants is devolution media as well.

If a boy won't read unless he can read about some nerd running around in his underwear, then let him stay illiterate!

Thunderbirds: The Imposters

Okay, The Thunderbirds is a superanimation puppetshow from 1960s, but that doesn't change the fact that watching some episodes today is damn irritating.

I'm watching "The Imposters" episode, in which a couple of crooks pretended to be International Rescue. So Lady Penelope is sent to the US to track down the villains. She walks along in her high-heeled shoes, falls into mud, and generally acts like a spoiled brat. The villains are in a mine, and she pulls out a gun and it shoots mud, so she whines about that, so loudly that the crooks here her and get the drop on them. Fortunately a hillbilly and his mother - who are agents of International Rescue, didn't believe that Lady Penelope could do the job - as indeed she couldn't - and followed them. The guy saves the day.

Pisses me off no end!

Doggie Doo Game

Oh please god, tell me it was a spoof commercial. Although if it was a spoof commercial, it was still shown....aha...and I see that the Toon network is CN, the Cartoon Network.

Anyway, a mom and a couple of boys and a girl. You stick a little piece of yellow "something" into the dog's mouth, then pump a little pump. The dog wiggles its tail, there's a pause...and then the yellow poop comes out the dog's rear end. Oh god please tell they haven't really made that game.

Meantime, I see the cartoon I was talking about in my previous post has a name, Johnny Test. Johnny Test is as far away from Johnny Quest as you can get, a punk ass kid who knows it all, likes to play hookie, etc. and has two sisters - the red haired mad scientists who try to boss him around. But of course he ignores them.

Edited
Oh, god. Oh god. It is a game.

http://www.doggiedoogame.com/

Today's cartoon animation

So, okay, the Hanna Barbera animation of the 1960s and 70s when I was growing up was nothing to shout home about, but what on earth has happened to the animation of today. It's so awful. Everyone is presented as looking really, really ugly, whether it's the men, women or pets.

I suppose the blame lies at the hands of the producers. They see some godawful piece of junk that is nevertheless popular - I think Beavis and Butthead started the trend - and I see by Wikipedia that this thing started in 1992 and ran until 1997...and the majority of cartoon producers have been following that model ever since.

So I was watching a show just a few minutes ago, and now I can't find it again because I dont' know the name of it. It's on Cartoon Network...c'mon, CN... well, my Guide channel isn't showing CN as an identifier for any channel.

Anyway, it had two female scientists - girls - both red heads, one with "big" hair and the other with very long hair, and a talking dog...

I dunno, maybe animation is cheaper if they draw everything so poorly...

Bones: The Feet on the Beach

This is the episode that made me lose all respect for Cam, who had been one of my favorite characters.

They're showing it right now on Ch 68...it's a rerun from a couple of years ago.

Cam, a former police officer and a scientist, who knows the value of truth and morals, wants her adopted daughter to be able to get into a good school.... so she sends in forged entry papers!

This is so out of character for Cam that it was pathetic. I don't know how her adopted daughter was still supposed to have respect for her after this, as Cam shows that she's perfectly willing to lie and cheat to get her daughter into a good school. (Whether she's smart enough to be able to handle her coursework once she's in the school is apparently not a concern - presumably Cam will do all her homework for her, too?).

This is so reminiscent of the "affirmative action" controvery, where kids are supposed to get into the top schools based not on their abilities but on their minority status. And since their abilities aren't taken into account, they are set up to fail. Except they're not allowed to fail because that would invalidate the program, so they're allowed to skate through, then enter the real word and not be able to do the job they've been "trained" for.

I wonder how many people who watched this ep of Bones learned from this role model that it's perfectly all right to lie and cheat if it's all about helping out your family? A bad lesson.

Haven't been watching much first run TV...

But w hen I watch football tomorrow I'm sure I'll see something worth commenting on!

Go Daddy's Latest Commercial

Every time I see one of these pieces of garbage I regret having my domain names on GoDaddy...but I've got so many of them and it would be difficult to change..

But they do sicken me.

Watching NFL on Fox, 1:35 pm mountain time, station has just switched to Atlanta vs New Orleans.

And I've just seen a GoDaddy commercial that was extremely disgusting.

On one hand we've got a middle aged, fat guy wearing a muscle shirt (with no muscles to show off, of course - (this isn't a commercial for women, it's a commercial for guys) juxtaposed with a beautiful woman eating a piece of pizza...as if she's eating something else, with an  expression on her face like she's having an orgasm.

Final shot is of some waitress bending over, with her butt angled toward the camera, and she looks back at the camera with a lascivious "yes, I'm on this planet to serve you, mr. man, don't respect me, just screw me" look. Then it cuts to the fat old guy pummelling a piece of pizza dough.

Surely there are ways of making a commercial "sexy" without making it prurient - which is what this is. Which is what all of GoDaddy's commercials are.

Prurience means - treating a woman like a sex object only. Not in the sense of two human beings who respect each other and love each other having sex, but a guy who sees an attractive woman and a woman who will have sex with him because that's the only reason why she exists. Blech, blech, bleck!

Professional football

It is getting harder and harder to watch pro football...the players spend so much time at the end of plays drawing attention to themselves with childish antics that it really gets on my nerves.

I'm watching the Broncos vs Carolina Panthers.

1st quarter. Just saw a Bronco - think it was Von Miller. He sacked the quarterback, then did a ballet movement where he hopped on one foot with his other foot up in the air. Looked so stupid. And eventual result of the drive? Panthers scored a touchdown.  Why celebrate a single play, with a drive from your opponent that is still going? You moron. Save your celebrating for the end of the game when you know whether your team has won or lost.

In the same drive, some humongous running back for the Panthers had a good run. Instead of getting back with his teammates immediately - intent as he was on getting his team a touch down, eh?, he stood on the sidelines and posed, deliberately brushing grass off his uniform. Once he'd milked it for a couple of minutes, then he deigned to join his teammates.

Childish behavior that just annoys me.

I Am Weasel - cartoon

This is one of the more disgusting of the modern trend in cartoons, presumably meant for teenagers rather than little children.

It's got that awful animation and drawing that is used these days - everyone is drawn horribly with big nostrils and so on.

The lead character is a weasel, and his "nemesis" is I.S. Baboon, complete with red patches on his bottom like actual baboons. In the episode I just watched, a descendant for somebody from Yurp needs to be found - which turns out to be IR Weasel. He sniffs his butt, he eats messily, he burps, etc.

I cannot say how disgusting this is...who watches this? Teenage boys presumably...ones with a 6-year old mentality.

This piece of crap apparently was and is very popular, running from 1999 to 2006! 7 years of this garbage that people actually watched? Talk about the coarsening and dumbing down of America.

Blech.

Moonshiners and the Discovery Channel

How far has the Discovery Channel fallen. What does Moonshining and educational TV have to do with each other???? Talk about dumbing down America. First off of course is the fact that they'd make a reality series about crooks - even if Moonshiners aren't the worst criminals in the world, the problem about it, which I heard in a commercial on the radio, is that they're laughing about breaking the law. They're sneering at the law. And from moonshining to marijuana is just a hop skip and a jump. And I'm sorry, anyone who gets their kicks getting stoned out of their mind - whether they do it by drugs or alcohol, is just stupid.

Radio Shack Commercial

Some young punk - 14 or 15 - is lounging on a couch playing with his i-Phone. A female voice, presumably his mother, says, "Tell your uncle Harry what you got for Christmas."

The punk, not bothering to lift his eyes from the phone, says, "Cool stuff."

The mother says something else..I can't remember exactly, but the punk says something rude and dismissive in return...then the rest of the commercial reveals it to be a Radio Shack commercial.

I find these types of commercials so annoying. Don't let your son - or your daughter - talk to you like that. He just got Christmas presents? Take them away until he realizes that those were presents from a mom and dad, not stuff he ordered because he's king of the world!

Latest Democrat ad

One of the Democrat ads urging women vote for Obama compares voting to having sex.

Not about having safe sex or having it with a soul mate, though...



DUNHAM:  Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy. It should be with a guy with beautiful ... someone who really cares about and understands women.  Think about how you want to spend those four years. In college age time, that’s 150 years.  It’s super uncool to be out and about and someone says, "Did you vote?" and you, "No, I didn’t, I wasn’t ready." My first time voting was amazing. It was this line in the sand. Before I was a girl. Now I was a woman. I went to the polling station and pulled back the curtain. I voted for Barack Obama.

(Let me just point out, being a girl with an illegitimate baby doesn't make you a woman. It just makes you a stupid girl.  Going out and living on your own, and supporting yourself - that's what makes you a woman!)

Leverage: unknown episode

I watched a bit of this on Channel 27 - it was supposed to be an episode of Bones but instead it's leverage.

Leverage is a reboot of Mission Impossible - you've got the fight expert, male and white, the electronics expert, black, the thief, blond white woman named Parker, the bad actress on the stage good actress in real life conwoman, and the mastermind played by Jim Hutton.

So the black guy is buried alive in a coffin in a cemetery.  The mastermind and the fighter drive up to a van that has two villains. The fighter knocks out one guy, removes the clip from his auto-pistol...and then drops the pistol on the ground to go fight, bare-handed, against the second of the two goons, who is apparently also a good fighter.

SO mastermind and the two women run around looking for the newly turned earth. The guy who'd been knocked out wakes up, takes a clip from his pocket, reloads the pistol that the idiot fighter had just dropped on the ground, and goes after them, forcing them to take cover behind some headstones.

So Parker, the blond thief, runs out of cover, turning somersaults and various gymnastics as she dives from cover to cover before coming up behind the guy with the gun and knocking him out. What utter, utter bilge water.

There's a reason why people sprinting in a race do so on their two legs, not turning somersaults along the way. That's a tremendous waste of time and would make her a sitting duck more than anything else.

But the major problem with this episode is of course the gun. If you have a villain with a gun, and you take the gun away from the villain, don't just take out the clip and drop the gun on the ground. No! You keep hold of the gun, and turn it on the two villains and tell them to put their hands up.

But, of course, if our character had been smart enough to do this - there would have been no "exciting" fight scene, and no "exciting" shooting scene, and no opportunity for Parker to do her gymnastics stuff.

Still, it was stupid.

What in the world happened to A&E?

A&E stands for arts & entertainment. It used to show quality television = "arts" and the entertainment was PBS type stuff.

I'm not sure when the transition occurred, it must have been several months ago if not longer...

So right now on A&E they are showing Billy the Exterminator. A white guy with long hair, wearing shades even indoors (how can he see the bugs he's killing?) and studded gloves goes around killing pests. At least he doesn't have any tattoos.

But jeez...what the hell is this doing on the A&E channel? And now it's Criminal Minds. That doesn't belong here either. But it gets worse. This is the channel that has Parking Wars, and Duck Dynasty - reality series that are dumbing down America on a daily basis.

Sad!

Sears commercial

Watching Tigers vs Yankees on TBS.

I've seen this Sears commercial a few times before, but it always irritates me.

A scruffy couple - young man and woman, on a beach. A typical "love" commercial.

Then the guy jogs along the beach, running along while looking behind him at the girl, and runs straight into a refrigerator.

This is supposed to be funny?

Worse, the girl runs up - and she's actually looking at the fridge, and she runs right into it too.

It's not funny, it's kind of sadistic. And yet I bet there are people watching this commercial - probably teens, who laugh and laugh when they see it.

Tattoo Rescue: reality series

What in the world is with these reality series?

I saw a teaser for Tattoo Rescue today.  The rescue expert and his team go to a tattoo parlor whose owner seems uninterested in paying attention to their advice.

Well...gee...if that's the case tell her good luck and leave. Why even go there?

Charmin bath tissue

I never did like those Charmin commercials where there are bears in the woods, using toilet paper.

For one reason, its so anatomically incorrect. Why would they have bits of toilet paper on their butt-cheeks, rather than...you know.

Bring back the Don't squeeze the Charmin guy, for God's sake!

State Farm's Discount Double Check

Okay, the first commercial featuring Aaron Rogers of the Green Bay Packers and his stupid "move' (the Wrestler's Belt" was funny - clueless folks in an Allstate office think he's doing a robot dance or what have you and don't recognize him as the Green Bay quarterback...

But of course now they're milking it dry with a couple more commercials along the same theme.

I have to say I hate these "moves" that football players dream up.

You score a touchdown? Your celebration should be spontaneous and real and with your teammates.

But no... you've got guys who literally brush off their teammates so they can do a dance or call attemtion to themselves in some way - and it's not spontaneous - you know they've rehearsed it and are doing it not because they're happy, but because they want to show up their opponents.

I hate that.

Daunte Culpepper always got ragged for his touchdown "dance" - he'd twirl his arms together and no one understood why he did it until he explained - in basketball it's the referee's signal that someone had "traveled" and I guess he'd been called for traveling once in a basketball game and it had stuck in his craw.

Aaron Rogers' is almost as dumb. He makes a move with both hands like he's putting on a wrestler's gigantic belt (and is there anything more tacky than those huge belts they aware as prizes in wrestling matches?) Talk about stupid!

Parking Wars (TV SEries)

There's a Parking Wars - the commercial for which I've just seen - and I think there's something called RepoWars - the commercial for which I saw yesterday.

All these shows teach disobedience to authority, and that getting up in someone's face and provoking violence is a virtue.

Yesterday for the Repo Wars one, a large black woman was threatening the big guy who was going to take her car. They were standing close to each other like they were going to start duking it out. And they probably did.

And there are way too many folks in the world who would watch a fight between a man and a big ol' woman and actually enjoy it... although they'd be dreaming that the woman was a hundred pounds lighter and fighting another shapely women in a mudpit, I have no doubt.

"California Woman Shot by Border PAtrol Agent" is the headline

The truth?

The woman was apparently trying to run the guy down.

Why wasn't the headline: Border Agent Kills Female Attacker?

Geico and Eddie Money

My goodness what has happened to Eddie Money?

He's in a Geico commercial, where he runs a travel agency and sings "two tickets to Paradise" while a male and female couple try to get him to talk sense.

 And he looks just awful...he doesn't look like Eddie Money, that's for sure. Face lift? And his voice...barely undertandable.

This is what drugs will do to you, I guess.

New episode of CSI: NY

Not devolution so much as stupidity...although admittedly I've got the sound down

Killer's a woman...they're chasing her...they're in a parking lot full of school buses. They're looking for her in between the school buses, meantime she's jumping from roof to roof.

Are you telling me they can't hear that????

There's a helicopter above them...but I doubt if a police helicopter gets so low that the sound of its rotors whirring would drown out the booted sounds of a woman jumping from one bus room to another...and you'd think one of the cops would have a radio so the helicopter pilot could tell them where the woman was!

Meantime, Mac has been shot and is dying, so he's talking to - and hugging - all his co-stars... yet a teaser for next week showed Gary Sinise's face, so he must survive.

And Carmine what's-his-name is getting old and gaunt!

Posts resume 24 Sep 2012

I have to take my mom up to visit her elder sister in Box Elder which is near Rapid City. They have no internet up there.

Posts resume 24 Sep 2012.

Thanks for your patience!

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/18/3822450/sarah-palin-weighs-in-on-jeffrey.html#storylink=cpy

Google.com News

When I pull up Google.com, News, I get a whole page full of what I used to expect would be... News.

But it really isn't. They combine a few news articles with gossip columns and opinion pieces, and because its displayed under the imprimature of Google News, people are more inclined to give it credence.

Memory is the first thing to go...

Quite a few "devolution media" items to talk about... but although I saw them and noted them in my memory at the time...I can't remember what they are now.

Note to self - write this stuff down!

The latest Bones episode

I missed about half of it.

But apparently the highly respected and disciplined Cam - who has always been degraded into a know-nothing parent who doesn't know how to talk to her adopted daughter about drugs and sex - made a B-movie during college.

Now...it didn't look like it was an X-rated movie where she'd bared all, but rather a Roger Corman type of schlock movie, in which she'd been the star.

But Angela and Hotchkins track down a copy of it, and Cam sees it, and instead of taking charge and saying, "Okay, give it to me," like her character should do and would do if they weren't playing it for labs, she acts all kerfluffled and embarrassed.  Yes, it was funny, but it was out of character - and diminished her character.

Latest Sprint Commercial...

Well...I *think* it was a Sprint commericial.

Dumb old dad - I had the sound down, all I could see were the expressions on people's faces - was apparently trying to get his family to bundle services together.

Mom is standing behind the butcher block counter in the kitchen, shaking her head at his stupidity.

Two teen-age kids, one male, one female, kept on looking at dad like he was an idiot.

Not the kind of commercial kids today need to see when they already think they know more than their parents.

Jack Links Beef Jerky Commercials

Jack Links Beef Jerky has a series of commercials where a group of snotty young white guys taunt a Big Foot, who inevitably gets his revenge.

The latest one, that I've just seen, has a bunch of white guys waving green flourescent light sticks to attract a Big Foot.

A girl ducks into a port-a-potty, the last one of three in a row.

A girl runs past a group of white guys standing around wasting their time, and hides in a port-a-potty.

But then the Big Foot or Sasquatch comes into the area, picks up the teenager, and throws the teen into one of the port-a-potties, such that they all fall over and the last door opens, revealing the girl presumably covered in urine or worse.

Apparently this is supposed to be funny.

Even if I liked beef jerky, which I don't, I wouldn't buy this crap. Indeed, I'd stop buying it if I did buy it!

That Arby's commercial

More people than I must have complained about that Arby's commercial that showed a guy walking along - going underneath a ladder, deliberately spilling someone's salt, then grabbing an umbrella, opening it indoors, then going outdoors to deliberately break two mirrors in front of an antique shop.

Now, the commercial ends with him inside the antique shop, just opening up an umbrella. Yet still, despite allt his bad luck, winning something from Arby's.

I'm glad the commercial was changed, but I always wonder...why did it happen in the first place? What bright bulb thought it would be okay to show someone, in a commercial for a wholesome product like Arby's, deliberately go and destroy someone else's property?

Posts resume Saturday morning

Doing some stuff to get ready for Labor Day weekend, but will be back on track Saturday morning after all that preparation work is done.

Elementary - the TV series

OK, Sherlock Homes was the first "idiosyncratic" detective.

But now, we've really got a glut of these crazy geniuses - from the guy on Numbers to the guy on Criminal Minds to the guy on Perception to the guy on Psych (with the photographic memory and the extroverted desire to be the center of all attention) and so on and so on. And of course there's the jerk that is House when you get to the medical dramas.

So now we;ve got a modern day Sherlock Holmes who is apparently going to be an absolute creep...

I suppose you can't really judge a TV show by a single 'teaser ' but it looks like that's exactly what his character's going to be.

It's too bad Lucy Liu (who plays Watson) isn't co-starring in The Adventures of Charlie Chan, as I had heard rumors this was in the works. But I suppose the Asian lobby raised a stink, which is really too bad - as I love Charlie Chan.

In the books, written in the 30s when racism against Asians was rampant, Charlie Chan immigrated from Hong Kong to Hawaii when he was 16, so English was not his first language, so of course he didn't speak it very well. But - despite the fact that he did not speak grammatical English, he proved time and again that he was several orders of magnitude smarter than anyone else. (IN the movies, the racism of the white cops was used as comic relief but also was important - because the white cop would look down on him, until Charlie showed how smart he was and how dumb the white cop was. Then the cop would invariably realize his mistake and accept Charlie as the superior police officer and an equal human being.

In this day and age where immigrants to this country who are mocked by certain individuals because they don't speak good English and a lack of good English skills is viewed as a lack of intelligence, a role model like Charlie Chan would be ideal.

Instead, we get Elementary.

The latest 5-hour Energy Ad

Have you seen the latest 5-Hour Energy ad? A woman says that 5-Hour Energy talked to 3,000 doctors and asked their opinion. She said, "70% of doctors said they would recommend a "low-cal energy drink" to their patients who drankk"low- cal- energy drinks."

You note that she doesn't say that they would recommend 5-Hour Energy specfically . Or that they would recommend such drinks to anyone other than those that already consumed such things.

So that's a sneaky way of saying that they didn't actually recommend 5-Hour Energy itself.

Reverse mortgages

Just saw a frail-looking Wayne Rogers (well, he is 80), do a commercial for reverse mortgage. I've seen them from Fred Dalton Thomas, Henry Winkler... and Rush Limbaugh has started doing commercials for them as well...

It's just that there's something not quite right about this.

The government gives you money for the equity in your home... and yet they say you still own your home?  I'd say that's a euphemism.

Once the home-owner dies, the government has to take the home - so they can sell it and recoup the money they've given the home owner.

So there's no way the home can go to the oldster's children - unless they start paying on the loan the government has made!

Wayne Rogers is apparently famous as a financial whiz kid, and so I'd be inclined to trust his recommendation more than Thomas or Winkler...but it does seem odd to me...

Chicken bites - KFC

I hate these kinds of commercials.

A grown man still lives with his parents. He's got headphones on his head and is playing a computer game to the exclusion of all else. His parents come in and want him to stop playing the game and get something to eat - he points out that he has KFC chicken bites.

Is that really the demographic KFC is looking for - losers who live in their parent's basements?

Every store that sells clothes - commercials

It's almost time for kids to go back to school...so of course stores like Walmart, K-Mart...and something called Payless I think...are hawking their wares.

And they all seem to have the same kind of commercials - little kids dressed in clothing, walking down a runway as if they were models. The girls are always swishing their hips and trying to act sexy - and these are little kids 10, 12 - and the boys, of the same age, strutting down the runway as if they were the lords of creation.

I don't care so much about the boys - boys always think they are the lords of creation - but do 12 year old girls really need to be strutting around looking sexy, reinforcing the paradigm that that's what their on this earth for - to be eye candy to boys?

Not that girls are totally innocent - many's the boy just trying to get along, til a clique of girls start teasing him. A girl wants to date him, he says no, she spreads rumors about his sexuality...

Teen magazines for girls

I went to my local Walmart yesterday and checked out all the magazines they had in their large magazine section. Three whole shelves were given over to magazines aimed at girls:

Teen Vogue
Pop
AstroGirl (not, unfortunately, an astronomy mag for girls, just a cool title for a crap mag)
Seventeen
Otaki US
J-14
Twist
QuizFest (NOT a quiz magazine asking about geogrpahy, astronomy, the sciences, etc., but rather quizzes on personal questins!)
TigerBerat
Yikes

I was so sickened when looking at these things. They were all full of fluff and garbage - "fall fashion and beauty tips" were the theme.

I mean, really. Kids reading these things are 14  years old or so...do they really need to dress in the latest fashions - that cost sooo much money? (Obviously, if they're i nCalifornia they do, but the rest of the country - the normal part of our country?)

Of course, these magazines are very popular, else there wouldn't be so many of them. And that's the saddest thing at all. Teenage girls need more in their lives than obsessing over "getting a boyfriend, keeping a boyfriend, getting a boyfriend back after he's dumped you" ya da ya da ya da.

Compare any boys magazine aimed at the same age. They're doing interesting things - making models, doing tricks on bikes, hiking, all sorts of fun stuff and not obsessed in the least bit about finding girlfriends. Of course they don't need to be obsessed - girls are trained from the get go to go after t hem these days.

I then went to the checkout counter and saw the gossip magazines there...there was one...the Star I think it was or perhaps the National Enquirer, featuring photos of skeletal women with their heads blocked out so you had to look inside to see who they were... oh my god what Angelina Jolie has done to herself - stick thin. No way could Lara Croft kick butt with those ruler-thin arms. Then there was some British model down to 70 pounds - literally a skeleton with skin on..

And I'm thinking, this is what the obsession with fashion and looking good and getting boyfriends - because you must have a boyfriend when you're 13 or so, otherwise the other girls will tease you for being unattractive to boys and god how horrible that is! - does to women.

60 is the new 40

On August 10, 2012, the Cheyenne chapter of the AARP hosted a seminar called Gray Matters - which was free and provided a free lunch - unfortunately fish and cheesecake, blech - from 4 to 6 was a reception for all travelers who had come in for the AARP National Spelling Bee to be held on the 11th.

I attended that and it was a lot of fun. The emcee introduced a few folks, we talked about words, there was a "mock" spelling bee (which only consisted of about 20 people getting up and being questioned on one word...) and so on. And there were finger foods there - Chinese food to be precise. Don't know where they got it from or if they cooked it on site (Little America is a hotel and resort where people come to play golf among other things) but it was delish.

The spelling bee started at the ungodly hour of 8:30 am (Well...8:30 is not so ungodly but I had to get up at the ungodly hour of 6:30 to get there in time for registration, etc.) It started with 4 rounds of 25 words each - which was a Written Test.

The first 25 words were extremely easy. They asked words like "Greetings" and "Navel" and "Mince." I suppose a few might have been considered difficult... "Animus" and "Lacuna."


The second 25 words were equally easy, but I did miss MUGWUMP.


I assume they did this just to help everyone settle the nerves and get new people used to what was going on. People had trouble hearing some of the words (hey, they were all over 50 and most over 60) and the Pronouncer  would come down and tell them the word face to face and have them say it back, etc. Indeed, the Pronouncer did an excellent job.


Third round was where they started asking the difficult words.


I missed:
QUESTIONARY INERCALATE
TUATARA
SKOSH
VIRIDITY
WIMBLE

The fourth round was the real killer. I only got 12 out of 25 right. I missed:

FELICIFIC
DOVEKIE
FLYTING
NAPERY
COTYLEDONARY
WELTSCHMERRZ
OPPUGNER
AECIOSPORE
SYNCYTIAL
KNUR
IRIDIUM
TUYERE
HYOSCYAMINE

I then stayed for the Oral rounds and was joined by one of my friends from my Scrabble Club. (I think an audience could have assembled for the Written rounds, too. There were chairs there and family were in them...but I think most people only wanted to come see the Oral rounds where you actually saw the speller's faces as opposed to their backs, etc.)

Two of the people I met last night at the reception made it to the Orals. One of them it was his first trip to the Bee and he was successful his first time out. Made it through about 10 rounds. (In the Orals, you miss two words and you're out.) Another one was an elderly woman from Minnesota who also got through about 10 rounds before being knocked out.

There were three sisters and a brother who had come as a sort of family reunion. The eldest sister made it to the Oral rounds but was bounced after only two rounds. This was too bad and it was because she was a bit unlucky - she got two 6-syllable words in a row while some of the others were getting much easier ones (but still, not ones I could have spelled). But she was disqualified along with several other people in the same round, so hopefully she didn't feel too bad.

The words in the Oral Rounds were extremely difficult. Several times more difficult than the toughest words in the final round of the Written.


But, had I studied for a year, I think I could have handled them.


And it is my intention to study for a year and  get into the Orals next year.


So, why is the title of this blog entry 60 is thenew 40?


Because it is.


People are living longer. You don't want to outlive your money and more importantly you don't want to outlive your sense of enjoyment of life. And learning new things every day is enjoyment and keeps the mind active.


The AARP Spelling Bee is held every year, and it gives you an excellent reason to travel to Cheyenne and see The Cowboy State. You'll meet lots of interesting people.


You do have to study.


I studied very desultorily for about a month...combine all the time I studied and it was about 10 hours. Not nearly enough, but then, I'm a good speller so the Written Rounds were relatively easy - except for that killer last round.


Why learn words that you'll never, ever say in real life?Well, because they're interesting. And the concepts of what you'll learn, you can apply in other areas. So it's a win win.


So start planning to live a long, healthy, active, intellectual life, and do it now, however old you might be!

No posts today

I'm participating in the AARP Spelling Bee held in Cheyenne on Saturday, Aug 11. Today, Friday, there's a day-long "orientation," talk about keeping active, and mock spelling bee, and I want to attend it.

Will let you know on Sunday how I did...I'm not expecting to win but I do hope to get out of the writtens into the orals. There are 60 participants which must be whittled down to 15 - done so by 4 rounds of 25 written words each. I should be able to beat out 45 people to get on to that platform for the oral round, even if I lose on the first question!

Well, we'll see.

Olympics coverage here in the USA

No, not devolution media, except in the sense that you'd think that after 40 years of covering the Olympics, NBC would be able to do it right.


During the day they show certain events. Well and good. You'd think late at night they'd show footage of different events that took place simultaneously during the day. Or more footage of participants in other events they've shown us.

But no so. They just repeat the stuff they've already shown!

Extremely annoying!

Arby's Commercial

I really dislike the latest Arby's commercial. Skinny white guy comes out of a store and says he can win anything by taking a photograph of his Arby's cup and sending it to Arby's to win prizes.

So he knocks over someone's salt, deliberately breaks two mirrors with an umbrella, and gets hit by a piano.

Not funny, just stupid.

In particular, the deliberately breaking of two mirrors, outside an antique store. That's at the very least, vandalism. Depending on how much they were worth, a felony.

Yet he walks on - but deservedly gets  hit by a piano a second later. (With fine print on the screen, "Do not attempt."  Not "do not attempt" in front of him breaking the mirrors, but in front of him getting hit by a piano.)

The New Normal - sit com

I just heard this commercial for the first time (I've seen it a few times but always with the sound down.)

The premise is as you might expect - a straight woman has an 8 year old (I'm guessing on the age) child...and lives with her mother. She also lives with two gay friends who acts as "dads" to the child (and presumably this woman is pregnant so they're going to act as dads to the new baby, too.)

First off, of course, this isn't "the new normal." The new normal is for a woman to not have a husband or male presence in the house of any kind, have an illegitimate baby, and live in poverty for the rest of her life.

But out in California, I suppose, it could be normal there. Who knows what goes on in that state?

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing loving gay couples standing by their straight friends. Not at all.

It's just that this is the typical sit-com formula. The mother verbally abuses everybody - the 8 year old girl-child is a smart-mouth who of course knows everything. (She calls her grandmother a bigot. It's true, but should a little child be talking to her grandmother that way?)

Frankly, I think parents should boycott all sitcoms - just allow their kids to watch the good ones - the Cosby show, the Brady Bunch, etc - shows in which parents know things and are not fools, and kids may rebel but always learn that parents know best.

The one thing I wish all sitcoms would get rid of is this verbal abuse character. There's always one in every sitcom, whom the other characters just tolerate and who is supposed to be, apparently, "Crusty but loveable."  (It will turn out, of course, that this homophobic grandma isn't really bigoted, she just likes to pretend she is.)

Badmintoners at the Olympics

Not really "devolution media" in the sense that it's the producers fault...just thought I'd mention it.

8 Olympic female badmintoners, - one the Gold medal favorites from China - were tossed out of the Olympics yesterday for deliberately trying to lose their matches.

Apparently the way the Badminton games are set up, if you lose one match you're not knocked out of gold medal contention - you just get an easier game the next time.

So all these badmintoners - 2 teams from Korea, 1 from China and 1 from Indonesia, deliberately tried to lose - not even pretending to play well. They'd hit the shuttle cock into the net at serve, or hit it wide, and they continued to do this even though they were loudly booed throughout their matches and even though they were warned several times by the referee.

It's interesting...what did they think they would accomplish by being so blatant about trying to lose? Did they really think they would not be thrown out of the Olympics for what they did? When they had warning after warning after warning?

Well...there's eye candy for all at the Olympics

While I bemoan the fact that the women in the beach volleyball are wearing skimpy bikinis while the guys get to wear baggy shirts and long shorts,  there is enough eye candy for the female viewer, turns out.

The guys in the platform diving are wearing skimpily skimpy Speedos.

The gymnasts get to wear shorts over their leotards...and I note that the women gymnasts have extremely high "french cut" leotards showing off more skin....

I dont' mean to sound like the women should all be wearing burqhas...- no reason why they should...

It's just that, for the last ten years or more I've spent a lot of time on sports message boards, and whenever there's an article about a woman athlete, the comments on the message board - if indeed there are any - take two forms;

"I'd do her." in response to some guy saying the athlete doesn't look attractive

and

"It's women sports. Who cares?"

And I'm sure that those posts are reflective of probably 80% of guys who watch women sports - they do it for the eye candy and that's all.

If you've got it, why shouldn't you flaunt it?

I've long been struck by the different outfits women athletes wear as to male athletes.

Track and field? Women wear halter tops and maxi-bikini bottoms.  Whereas men, while certainly wearing tight fitting clothes, don't show off their flat stomachs or their belly buttons.

Most egregious of all to me was the beach volleyball, where the women wore bikini tops and mini-bikini bottoms (so small that their butt-cheeks hung out over the edge.) Meantime the guys wear shorts hanging to their knees and baggy shirts.

If there was any competitive advantage to wearing tight fitting clothing, you may be sure male beach volleyballers would do so.

Well, yesterday at the Olympics, it was so cold that the American and Australian women wore shirts - but bikini bottoms.

The explanation given by the American women? Too much material would cause chafing.

Yeah... chafing. If that was the case, men, again, wouldn't wear all the extra material of baggy shorts and shirts.

No, these beach volleyballers are tall, slender women, with legs that never quit and small, perky breasts. And they flaunt their appearance - to ensure that men watch.

(I base this opinion on my over ten years reading of sports message boards - usually CBS Sportsline.com but a few others. Invariably - invariably, whenever there's an article about a woman athlete, 99% of the responses are along the lines of "I'd do her," and "Her body looks great." or "She's got a big butt" or, if it's the Williams sisters, something offensive about either butts or breasts or facial expression.

Do beautiful women have no problems being viewed only as sex objects? As eye candy? Actresses of course are known for their bulimia and anorexia - and how the tabloids revel in discussing women's weight.... she's either too fat or too thin...she can never win...

I walk into my local Walmart here in Cheyenne, WY. 90% of the people I see, regardless of age, are overweight and have tattoos. The women usually are wearing clothes that are too tight and exacerbate their big bellies and butts, the guys of course follow the style of wearing shorts with their underwear-clad butts hanging out the back, belted below the crotch area, ...

Just saw an ad for the male beach volleyball guys...seems like they're wearing tighter-fitting shirts this year...

And an ad for the women beach volleyballers, turned sideways to show off breasts and butts, I guess...

Ah, well...

Sullivan & Son - sitcom

I've just seen the trailers for it.

The premise is that the lead is Chinese American. Probably the first time an actual Chinese-American has had the lead in a sit com.

The bad? Well...same old humor...apparently his mom is verbally abusive. Of course this is seen as funny, but - here's a tip, a mother who puts you down all the time? That's verbal abuse.

Can't they have any decent, wholesome comedy?

I mean, think back as early as the Dick Van Dyke show. That had verbal abuse in it as well. Morey Amsterdam was always insulting...whatever his name was...the big bald guy. In the real world Amsterdam would have been fired, but in the world of sit-coms, he's tolerated.

Mary Tyler Moore Show? Betty White's character would often spar with Murray Slaughter.

Golden Girls? The mother, Sophie Petrillo, constantly abusing everyone else. In the first episode it was revealed she'd had a stroke that had removed her ability to control what she was saying, but they never referenced that again.

Then there's the abomination of Married...With Children.

Cheetohs commercials

I've probably blogged about this before...I find the Cheetohs commercials over the last several years offensive. An animated Cheetah, wearing black sunglasses so we can all see he's COOL, goes around encouraging bad behavior in people, from people putting cheetohs on the tops of cars of rich folk so that birds will come down and peck them - and ruin the car's finish - to construction workers who will do some kind of stupid dance while shutting out their nerdish co-worker

I'm like...why are you glorifying bullying - because that's what these commercials are all about.

The Exes

Whatever happened to sophisticated television comedy?

The Exes, starring lots of people I've never seen before, plus the two folks from Third Rock from the Sun, Kristen Johnson and Wayne Knight. Now...I've never watched the show, all I've seen are trailers, but really...

Kristen Johnson dressed as a ballerina, doing a ballet dance - terribly - and being all proud at the end of it?How stupid is she supposed to be?

2011 EXterra Triathlon - Guys revealing their belly buttons

NOt a part of Devolution Media. I'm just shocked.

I'm watching the Xterra Triathlon from last year, and I think the three top male finishers were each wearing shirts that revealed their belly buttons.

I think that's the first time I've ever seen that. Women of course have their athletic outfits - at least for on tv, designed with eye candy in mind, but guys, never.

But in this event all the guys (and gals) were wearing muscle shirts that revealed their defined musculature (and quite nice they were, too) and while most had full length shirts, a few, as above, had those that terminated just at the midpoint of the belly button.

I've never participated in anything remotely close to a triathlon, or any other highly skilled athletic event of a similar nature...so I can't say whether those shirts would be comfortable or uncomfortable... I have to admit they would drive me crazy. I don't like cool air on my back, which is what girls (and now, seemingly, a few guys) get when they wear a shirt that ends a few inches above their jeans or slacks or what have you. I've never lied that feeling.

But I guess you can get used to it if you're in to the "fashion" of showing off your belly button, although I admit I've never understood what's so sexy about a woman's belly button. Maybe if its in a flat stomach, but so many girls today do not have flat stomachs, and then it's just gross, surely!

What is up with this fascination for Zombies?

The Walking Dead is a TV series that's been on for two years now, I think... there are books such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. There's even a Geico commercial now that features a Zombie.

I don't even know why people would want to watch this crap.

Why is it so popular?

I suppose teens like it because they can kill people with impunity because they're not really people?  Yet they used to be people, apparently, loved ones, now turned into walking dead. It's rather sick, actually.

Soul Man - BET TV Show

Just saw a brief commercial for Soul Man - it was called something like "best family sitcom."

Family sitcom?

The preacher is formerly an entertainer, who had his share of women, apparently.

And his wife is a large woman who wears the tightest dress imaginable and her breasts look like they're an inch from popping out of their covering... maybe that's why guys will watch the show - to see if they actually do?

It might be funny - I haven't caught an episode yet, all I've seen are the commercials with snippets from the show - but best "family" entertainment? I think not.

Perception - TV Show

I don't know if it really counts as Devolution Media, but it is interesting. Yet again we have a crime solver who is mentally unstable... can we never have a crime solver who is just a normal person - not one with a photographic memory or who is neurotic, ya da ya da.

From Wikipedia:

Dr. Daniel Pierce, a talented but eccentric neuroscientist, is enlisted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to assist in solving some of its most complex cases. Dr. Pierce works closely with Special Agent Kate Moretti, a former student who recruited him to work with the Bureau. Also on the team are Max Lewicki, Dr. Pierce's teaching assistant and Natalie Vincent, his best friend.

"Eccentric" would be an understatement based on the TV ads I see, all of which paint him as somewhat delusional, unable to interact with others...

I didn't watch the show - I think it debuted last night, but I just found the concept annoying.

Vett *All* Websites

Sean Hannity is a political talk show host. He has a website, on which are discussion forums.

Someone shared the following link:
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/2221/614/Obama_Has_Signed_923_Executive_Orders_In_40_Months_-_Video.html

And stated as a fact that President Obama had signed 923 executive orders in 40 months.

Of course, the other folks on Hannity were a bit more knowledgeable. They pointed out that it was a total untruth, Obma has only signed about 190 Executive Orders.

But people are so desperate to find something about Obmama that will ensure that he loses the next election that they wont' fact check. They see something on the web and they'll share it everywhere as proof instead of doing some research of their own.

Just as print newspapers have agendas, so do *all* websites.

So before you believe as gospel some headline you've read somewhere - whether it's about Obama or Romney, or anyone, vett it yourself.

Ridiculousness - TV show

I was channel surfing when I saw this..I think it was on the MTV channel.

Host was Mark Drybek, I think, young white guy wearing a hat and moving his hands and body in the stupid "hip hop" manner.

Three guests - one a woman who was dressed normally, and thus overshadowed by the two guys. One a black guy with a black cloth cap over his head and curly black hair showing from underneath - which he fluffed. Several times!  As if fluffing your hair makes you look cool. Looks stupid when women do it, looks stupider when guys do it.

Then there was a white guy, wearing a ballcap, black sunglasses, and long hair past his shoulders. Looked like an idiot also. (Sunglasses are to be worn outdoors to protect one's eyes from the sun. Why wear them indoors when you can't see? Well, to look "cool" although how wearing black sunglasses inside makes you look cool rather than stupid I do not know.)

Anyway, what these guys were doing were sitting on a couch, while Drybeck or whatever his name was would announce some video in that condescending way that hosts of these shows have, and then they would show some idiot trying to do some stunt that goes wrong - from trying to stand up on your motorcycle and ride it like a surfboard, but of course falling off, to hitting the wrong lever on a 4-wheeler going around a race course and ramming a wall, to some groom picking up his bride to give her a piggy back ride, but falling over.

And the guests - at least the two guys, were laughing uproariously, as if these people making total fools of themselves were the funniest things in the world.

Dumbing down America.

Coming movies

This is the pap we've got coming to our theaters soon:

1.

Here Comes the Boom (2012)

Video: No. 1

A high school biology teacher looks to become a successful mixed-martial arts fighter in an effort to raise money to prevent extra-curricular activities from being axed at his cash-strapped school.

 

2.

Pitch Perfect (2012)

Video: No. 1

Beca, a freshman at Barton University, is cajoled into joining The Bellas, her school's all-girls singing group. Injecting some much needed energy into their repertoire, The Bellas take on their male rivals in a campus competition.

 

3.

2 Days in New York (2012)

Video: Theatrical Version

Manhattan couple Marion and Mingus, who each have children from prior relationships, find their comfortable family dynamic jostled by a visit from Marion's relatives.

 

4.

The Babymakers (2012)

Video: Theatrical Version

After failing to get his wife pregnant, a guy (Schneider) recruits his pals to steal the deposit he left at a sperm bank years ago.

 

5.

Anchorman 2 (2013)

Video: Teaser

San Diego's top rated newsman is back; watch the teaser trailer for Anchorman 2.

 

6.

Hit and Run (2012)

Video: Theatrical Version

Former getaway driver Charlie Bronson jeopardizes his Witness Protection Plan identity in order to help his girlfriend get to Los Angeles. The feds and Charlie's former gang chase them on the road.

 

7.

Madea's Witness Protection (2012)

Video: No. 2

A Wall Street investment banker who has been set up as the linchpin of his company's mob-backed Ponzi scheme is relocated with his family to Aunt Madea's southern home.

 

8.

The Campaign (2012)

Video: No. 1

Two North Carolina politicians tangle with one another as they vie for the same Congressional seat.

 

9.

This Is 40 (2012)

Video: No. 1

A look at the lives of Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) a few years after the events of Knocked Up.

 

10.

Hope Springs (2012)

Video: No. 1

After thirty years of marriage, a middle-aged couple attends an intense, week-long counseling session to work on their relationship.

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JIffy Lube Commercial

I've see a couple different versions of these. Some car is driving down the street. Old man gets on a little wheeled cart for checking under cars (don't know what it's called!), or some young guys on some kind of tower with wheels... they push themselves out into the street and go chasing after the car. Is this stupid or what, not to say dangerous. How many kids have actually tied such a thing to a car and been dragged along, thinking its fun, until the car stops and their little wheeled contraption keeps on going, or turns over breaking arms and legs, etc. Do we really need to give kids ideas for yet more "jackass" stunts?

Toshiba Ultrabook

Just saw this commercial. Some wimpy white young adult is being experimented on, while talking about Toshiba.

Supposed to be funny. But a little subtle dig at Big Pharma, I suppose. Those folks that conduct tests on people with medicine to help people.

KFC - Extra sides commercial

It just showed a few seconds ago, on AMC?

Anyway, teenage boy and an old man are glaring at each other, snapping "Macaroni and cheese" and "Mashed potatoes" at each other.

Turns out its a commercial for Kentucky Fried Chicken - order a bucket and you can get two extra side dishes, so no need to argue.

But in the wake of the recent adult bullying case - some 68-year old woman bus monitor on a bus verbally abused by middle schoolers - kids who were 10, 11, and 12, do we really need a commercial that shows kids it's perfectly all right to look at your grandfather - or father - in defiance and argue about whether you get mac and cheese or potatoes.

Just teaching kids that they have no reason to show respect or deference for their elders. 

Have TV Shows Contributed to Children Bullying Adults?

The news lately has been full of a group of middle schoolers (by which I assume they mean kids of 10, 11, and 12) who viciously mocked, bullied and verbally abused some 68 year old bus monitor on their bus.

And there's a lot of angst out there - how could those kids do that? Don't their parents teach them any manners?

Of course not.

But what do kids watch these days? TV shows that mock parents and glorify the "Cuteness" of know-it-all kids.

The shows where kids were shown to respect their elders - the Brady Bunch, the Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, are long gone, and shows like Roseanne - where I think each of the two daughters had illegitimate children, Married With Children, where the girl is a slut and the boy is ...well,...whatever he was...

Kids are surrounded by this stuff.

And then we wonder why they have no respect for anyone. And since t hey can't be spanked - they certainly don't have respect for t heir elders.

Adults who think it's okay for kids to masturbate in school

In an all=boy's school in California, a couple of days ago, 9 "middle-schoolers" - i.e. kids who were 12 or 13 - masturbated themselves in the class room while watching pornography on their cell phones. While the male teacher was in the room and did nothing about it.


There was an op ed at Cafe Mom about this...the author said that it was natural for boys to play with themselves, it was no big deal, and they certainly shouldn't be banned from school.


And I'm thinking, Jesus Christ.


Yes, it is natural for boys to play with themselves, in the privacy of their own homes and just because they enjoy the pleasurable feelings masturbation gives them.




But to do it in public... while watching pornography?


That's 9 boys who are going to start producing dozens of baby mommas real quick. More babies born that neither they nor their baby mommas will ever be able to care for.

Pitch Perfect - movie

I haven't seen any trailers for this thing, but I thought the poster was instructive.

Look at the poses of the girl in white and the girl in purple.

Self confident poses of self-confident women, or "Guys, Look at my butt/boobs and salivate so I can feel more like a woman. Grab a feel too, if you want, I'm just a sex object and I only feel good when I'm treated like one..."

Ted - movie

A little kid has a teddy bear that comes to life. He grows up, the teddy bear stays alive.

And of course there's the obligatory sex jokes... the bear sitting between several scantily clad women, ya da ya da.

I hope it tanks!

Conan O'Brien needs to be thrown off the air

His show is filmed in front of a live audience. And everyone in the audience appeared to love the humor... I thankfully only saw it as I was channel surfing... He had on a masturbating bear - a bear wearing a diaper, and a masturbating bear - a guy dressed in a Bears football uniform... And they were actually pretending to masturbate themselves! One of the most disgusting things I've ever seen. Who in the world would find this funny?

Lots of Devolution Media Out There

I've seen lots of Devolution Media out there in the last week..I just haven't had time to post about it.

I see the "buddy cop show" is being trotted out in full force - the twist of course being that the buddies don't like each other. And they're always male. We've got Rizzoli and Isles, which are two women... and that's it. All the rest feature male partners. Not that that's devolution media - just dull and boring stereotypical programming. Nothing new under the sun.

MTV, which apparently has not been a music video station for decades, is showing Teen Mom (I've got my TV Guide scrolling up right now on my computer.

Title for the episode showing now: Trials and Tribulations
And the one at 10 am: Trick or Treat (Must be Halloween Themed

It's not so much that MTV would produce such a show, the frightening thing is that there are apparently people who watch it.

Sorry not to have posted in so long

Will get caught up tomorrow!

Rob & Big - reality show

I tuned in to this for the first time today, never heard of it before. White guy who goes around with a baseball cap and talks "street", and a big fat black guy, tooling around the country.

Reality shows really dumb down America.

Letr me check Wikipedia to see what this stupid show is about.

Rob & Big is an American reality television series that follows the lives of professional skateboarder/actor/producer Rob Dyrdek and his best friend and bodyguard Christopher "Big Black" Boykin. Over 70 million viewers watched the show's first season, and it was ranked #1 in its time slot for its target demographic among other cable TV shows.^[1]
Produced by Ruben Fleischer, the show premiered on November 4, 2006. After 32 episodes, it ended on April 23, 2008.

Synopsis 
Most episodes of the show follow a central task or event in the daily life of Rob and Big, such as: attempting to break Guinness world records, having their home exorcised, skateboarding, and random things such as buying 12 remote-control helicopters, and Rob's obsession with a net gun. Also, during the show the two of them purchased two animals, a mini horse named "Mini horse" and a bulldog named "Meaty."

Ah, so this show is 4 years old, but they have nothing better to show so they're showing this?

Seems kind of stupid...can we not have shows that show people trying to become astronauts, or geologists, of something of that nature? Why do we always have to glorify the dumb-bells. I mean - professional skate boarders, for goodness sake!

Back to our regularly scheduled blogging

Visiting relative  has left, traveling has done, and I'm ready to devote myself to this blog again.

So thanks for  your patience!

All State Commercial

People dancing because they've saved money on all state - an appeal to...god knows what... not the brain. Quick note only today, because: My mother's sister is visiting for three days. My mom's deaf as a post, my dad can't be bothered to get out of his chair, so I will be doing the entertaining - the chauffeuring and the talking and the communicating - for the next three days. So I'll be posting back here Thursday. Thanks for your patience.

Fed Ex's "Nothing's More Important Than Your Clubs" Commercials

I know I've complained about these before, but I see them every time I'm watching a golf tourney and they infuriate me each time I see them.

The reason is simple. It's invariably the male who is treating his clubs like they were babies or little children, while the wife stands aside with their actual children, looking resigned.

Why do I find these so offensive? Because they strike close to home. How many dads do absolutely nothing for their children, but will treat their own toys with respect? (And this is not necessarily the guy's fault, admittedly. How many women have babies that the man doesn't want, because she thinks "having a baby will make us closer" when usually it just drives them further apart.

But once you've actually sired a child, the least you could do is take good care of it and have a presence as a dad. And we've got the black community, where 75% of children are born out of wedlock, and they live in poverty all their lives... and the unwed motherhood percentage for white mothers is the fastest rising percentage...so that's another generation of children that's going to live in poverty and whine about how the rich and middle class folks are "keeping them down" because they don't pay them enough welfare so they can live well,...

These are the thoughts that go through my head as I watch these commercials.

First we've got the one where an African-American couple is sleeping in bed. There's a child camera in another room, which is on the bag of golf clubs. Man wakes up, hears something, looks at the camera, and then we see that he's talking about golf clubs and not a child. "They're okay. I'm going to check on them anyway." Rather sad when you consider most African-American biological fathers probably do care more about their golf clubs than their children. (Again, just look at the statistics of children born out of wedlocks.)

Then we've got the white dad strapping something into the back of his SUV, talking to it tenderly like he's talking to a child. Camera pulls back to reveal he's talking to a bag of clubs. "How do you get so dirty," he says sweetly, licking his finger and then wiping off one of the club heads. Meanwhile the wife or girlfriend is holding a little girl, both of them looking a bit resigned as they know they are certainly not the most important things in this guy's life.

The rest of the commercials are more acceptable, in that although one of them is kind of stupid and over the top, they are enough over the top to be funny, and the humor does not come at the expense of human beings - aka children or wives.

So we've got the guy who wants to test Fed Ex by sending his cold fusion invention somewhere before he trusts his clubs to them.

And finally, the one commercial that I actually enjoy, some black executive has invented a shrink ray and is shrinking his clubs. A white exec says, why don't you send them Fed Ex. My favorite line: "You've obviously mistaken me for someone who doesn't have a shrink ray."

House - TV series

I don't know that this show counts as devolution media...I just find it so sad that it is so popular.

Hugh Laurie - a British comedian - plays the American doctor House, who is a complete and total jerk. And yet he somehow gets the affection of his beautiful interns (there's at least one female intern, plus two male interns) and the head of the hospital.

Apparently women like "bad boys" even when they're total jerks....which is very sad not to say frightening.

(I remember many years ago a movie called The Fisher King, the main character played by Jeff Bridges tells his girl friend that he only stays with her because of the sex. She's hurt - but does she dump him, despite knowing how he feels? No, of course not. Then, to cite only one other example - there was some show on BET, a black teacher, and an overweight black woman has a crush on him, he insults her all the time, yet she continues to pine for him and love him despite all this verbal abuse - I just wanted to kick both him and her).

Anyway...watching House today, he comes back from having been in a coma and received a Ketamine treatment that has helped his leg (though, if I remember correctly, at the end of this ep it wears off and he's back to having to limp and be in pain all the time). His three interns greet him and he ignores them. But the woman of course is not offended and continues to try to talk to him like he's a normal human being.

 In times like this I always say...what would happen if a woman were in the role? Would *she* get the same respect that a male doctor would get, or would she be excoriated as a ball buster and would the series be quickly cancelled?

Almost Naked Animals -Cartoon Network

Jeez I feel so sorry for today's kids. When I was a kid, I got quality cartoons. Sure, the animation by Hanna Barbera was typically primitive but at least people looked like people, and everything had a clean, unsullied look.

Contrast that to the utter, utter garbage that kids are watching today. Garbage that does not uplift or create heroes (like Spiderman or Superfriends) but degrades and panders to the lowest form of humor.

So I'm watching channel 40, the TOON channel, otherwise known as Cartoon Network.

So right now there's an octopus wearing Y-fronts, with fur or something all over him. Some kind of a rabbit, in underwear...indeed, they are all in underwear.  All ugly.

The plot of this particular episode is apparently that the octopus, when afraid, ejects ink, (at least it wasn't feces) which turns into paintings that are valuable which the rabbit character can sell. So the rabbit spends the entire episode trying to scare the octopus into "inking" his pants, and finally succeeds at the end because he's scared of clowns.

What utter, utter, utter garbage.

Then there's the preview for Revenge of the Island - a bunch of teenage age kids on an island - drawn in today's way with large, square heads, and skinny bodies.  One of them is trying to do a pushup, can't, there's a green mushroom cloud from his butt as he apparently farts... jesus.

Jee-sus!

Lifetime: The Houston Family Chronicles

According to the Huffington Post, Lifetime TV has ordered a reality series called Whitney Family Chronicles, chronicling the lives of Houston's family since her death.

Why? Why? Why?

Aren't there any successful black families out there whose lives can be chronicled? Why focus on Whitney Houston, who had it all and threw it away on drugs? I can't tell you how much that annoys me... it's one thing for poor folks who see no way out to take to drugs - of course they definitely won't stop being poor if they do so, but.... but it's another for someone beautiful and wealthy to start taking drugs when they must know what it does to people... John Belushi? River Phoenix?

Of course it's not jut the poor and the super wealthy who do drugs... lots of middle class and wealthy white folk apparently can;t figure out anything better to do with their money either - they're all stupid and should all be deported to Mexico. Well,deport isn't the right word - exiled to Mexico. If they want to throw away their lives, let 'em throw it away in Mexico and stop being a waste of space in the US.

Times Magazine's Breast Feeding Cover

The cover isn't "devolving" in itself, but the article is interesting. Apparently there are some mothers who will go on breast feeding their children - at least, their sons - until they are four or five, long past the time when they are capable of holding a spoon to eat solid food and holding a sippy cup to drink liquids.

What does this tell these three year old boys, who already think they are the lords of creation and that their mother exists only to service them? Pretty much that that's how they should look at all women - as creatures to provide them with sensual gratification, and no need to concern yourself about them as human beings at all - no need to pay attention to their feelings - it's nagging and it's alright to ignore it!

Sad state of affairs when there are women who will actually buy into this claptrap, just as there have been women since the dawn of time who keep their sons tied to their apron strings.

Goodwill - commercial

Watching KGWN - perhaps a local Colorado channel. 10.30 pm, just before the abysmal Two and a Half Men started.

Woman standing in front of some kind of a store, wearing a wig kinda like Uma Thurman in one of the Kill Bill segments. She rushes into the store and rushes out again carrying a dress or something. A "getaway" car stops by her, she gets in, and it zooms off.

The slogan: "Goodwill. Prices so low, you'll think you're stealing."

Then a clerk comes out holding a couple of dollars, saying "Ma'am, you forgot your change."

What kind of a revolting commercial is this? How many people actually go into stores and do some shoplifting - teen girls usually, but still... do we really want to glorify the thrill of stealing something - which is what this totally offensive commercial does?

Men at Work - sitcom trailer

1.55 pm, watching Everybody Loves Raymond on TBS, just saw the trailer for the upcoming sitcom, Men At Work. Best as I can figure out from from the trailer, the show consists of 4 men who act like pre-pubescent teenagers.

They're in a restaurant or somewhere, beautiful blond gives someone, supposedly the main character, a tray or something, and behind him these three guys are doing pelvic thrusts or other forms of celebration that he apparently got a date.

It's one thing to go throughout your life enjoying collecting model trains and ships, and maintaining a child-like demeanor, it's another to go through your life being childish, which is apparently what is being celebrated in this particular show - men's obsession with women as sex objects, not people.

Shelldon - cartoon

Just came across Shelldon today, a cartoon for very young kids. Features some kind of creatures in shells, snails I believe.

Shelldon, the lead, is a boy, of course. Has a bucktoothed crab friend named Herman (Herman the Hermit Crab) and a female snail friend whose name I don't remember.

So I'm watching, and the lead characters are going to school, and they get to go on a field trip - a turtle being their bus.

The class teacher, a squid, asks, "Can you guess where we're going on our field trip?"

And of course a girl character says excitedly, "The beauty salon?"

And a boy character says, "To have adventures hunting sharks?"

Typical.

Herman wants to follow a character named Cranky Crab for no good reason, and Shelldon won't let him go alone. The girl doesn't want them to go off on their own, but rather than calling a grownup to stop them, she just goes following after them. So then they all get lost.

They are washed up onto a beach. Shelldon goes for help while the girl stays behind to protect Hermit, who has gotten stuck in some branches, while a big bird menaces them. At least this shows that girls can be brave and not abandon their friends...

Finally Shelldon returns with someone bigger to rescue them - having had to blackmail first Cranky and then this big fish, because they won't help just because someone needs help. That's a rather disturbing lesson to teach little kids, I thought.

At the end of the show some character comes on and tells the audience always to carry their address with them, and to know their phone number, but most important, never to wander away from their teacher or parents.

Merry Melodies - Cartoon Network

I stopped my channel surfing at 11 am on Merry Melodies today. It starts with a baby Yosemite Sam, wearing a diaper but complete with bright red mustache, etc. He gets up and starts singing a rap song about blowing his top whenever he gets angry- complete with those stupid hand gestures that rappers make. But that wasn't all. He had three backup singers - human females, dressed skimpily. Not as skimpily as if they were showgirls in Las Vegas, but pretty damn skimpy for a cartoon being shown, presumably to kids, at 11 o'clock in the morning. And of course they were thrusting their hips one way and their bosoms the other way as they sang.

That's disgusting at any age, but isn't Merry Melodies aimed at children - it's a show with Bugs, Daffy, Porky Pig, etc. Do they really need to learn at an early age how to look like a rapping fool, and of course, using women as sexual props which is what rappers do? (Along with professional cheerleaders at football games to name only one other business that continues to perpetuate the woman as eye candy theme.)

The Pirates - claymation movie

I've only seen the trailer for this on TV... but what are we shown?

It's an all male crew.

Apparently there is one female pirate. We see her from the back. Her buttocks are curved in pneumatic fashion, and she wears her pants down so low that we see her butt-crack.

And she walks in a seductive way past a group of pirates.

One of them tries to cop a feel, and she slaps his hand away.

What message does this send little girls, and little boys?

Why, that it is a woman's function to dress provacatively to be eye candy for boys, and it's perfectly all right for boys to cop a feel. The girl will good-naturedly slap his hand away and won't feel violated at all. After all, why would she, since she's dressed that way for that specific purpose?

No, I'm not saying every female character (or every female, come to that) should go around wearing a burkha. But wearing pants so low that they show off a butt crack (if show off is the right word) and buttocks tilted up invitingly?

Wearing shirts that are little more than bras to show off the belly button, not to mention the breasts that have been augmented and are just a leeetle too big for the bra and the tight shirt?

And then women wonder why they get no respect?

Dress a guy in that kind of clothing, and first off you know he's gay, and second you know he's a rent-boy. And that same subliminal message goes to guys looking at girls dressed like that.