I've been house-sitting for my parents for reading week, it's just been myself and our pets. I've been semi-productive.
I almost burst the pipes when I forgot to turn on the furnace before I left saturday morning.
Spent an hour or two talking to a pattern matching chat program: basically a computer program that is made to try and pass as human. I wasn't convinced, but it was fun trying to teach it the relationships between various words.
I also watched some tv. Now, I do watch the office at my house, but other than that I avoid it. It's horrifically boring. But I've had a few shows on here and there, mostly out of novelty. What I've found most interesting are the commercials.
I haven't actually paid attention to any sort of advertising in a long time and I'm struck by how irritating it all is. First, the sexism is blatant--so many commercials rely on 'woman love shoes! shoooooes!', sometimes to sell a product not even aimed at women (for instance, I just watched an insurance commercial that was going on about the husband working for his family, while the wife stayed at home and passively worried about the insurance payments). Mostly, though, they're just dumb. Unfunny, unoriginal dregs that shriek that we need to consume more. I'm not okay with someone yelling into my ear for twelve minutes of every half-hour to buy more junk in order to make myself happy.
Plus, out of train wreck curiosity, I watched a reality program called 'Paris Hilton's My New BFF', where a bunch of girls (and two guys) competed to become Paris Hilton's new best friend, basically by doing whatever she told them to do. The whole thing was such a consumerist, celebrity obsessive orgy that I had to do extra pushups just to calm myself down.
tv is the worst. Reboot did just come on, which is pretty awesome.
2 comments:
You just summed up all my thoughts on tv and advertising. I can't even listen to commercial radio anymore without getting angry.
I think its kind of funny how I've gradually become allergic to advertising. I used to be indifferent to it, then I found I could tune it out, then I really started to notice how bad it is, and finally I reached a breaking point where I couldn't handle watching tv just because of the advertising.
I've gone a few years now without so much as rabbit ears and I don't miss it a bit. Glad to hear I'm not the only one. I like the idea of focusing rage into pushups, excellent use of energy.
"I think its kind of funny how I've gradually become allergic to advertising" <---YES
I may not be religious, but when we lost sattelite for two years i think it was a godsend. This is different from not being involved in world affairs. Don't confuse that.
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