Why is Our Generation Reality Show Obsessed??

Today while looking through the comcast guide and seeing what was on the different channels, i saw that out of like 20 channels more than half of the shows were reality shows. Something i have never noticed before is just how present reality shows are, and really what is the point of them all? Or T.V. competitions like it all started with The Real World, American Idol, and Survivor and to think that now how many reality t.v. shows are on television. I tried to find a statistic or some kind of survey online but i couldn't but just to think of ALL the reality t.v. shows that we watch and just how pointless they are and how stupid they are and their concepts for example Fox's "My big fat obnoxious fiance" from 2005 and just what makes me wonder is how this craze got started and how sick and sad it is that we as a country our interested in all these stupid shows. or this picture of fox's stupid idea of anchor woman of a hot shot from L.A. came to a small town to be a reporter. I mean i would love to see the statistic of Fox's and Mtv's reality shows only aired for one season. I know i'm kind of just ranting now but also who watches these shows and why are we so interested in normal people and forced "drama"

Celebrities doing the Punking??

Tonite while channel surfing it said "Pop Piction" premiere on E! and i had never heard of the show so i decided to watch and i had rememeber in all the comercials they had been very descrete with giving the plot of the show away and so i wanted to know what it was about. Well now i know and its about celebrities turning the table on the medias outrageous rumors and the over-aggressive paparazzi and how celebrities play tricks on these people to see how gullable they are.

So when i started watching it was Paris Hilton and this guy dressed like a "guru" who was actually just some plain biker from San Francisco and she took him out shopping to a boutique and a bookstore and then to dinner and it was so funny how at the end of the night 20 paparazzi must've been around her and scoping out what this guys intentions were, and then the next day it was all over internet blogs, T.V. and magazines and what was funny is that while reading People last week i stumbled upon one of these pictures and it said Paris's new enlightener and i felt kinda stupid now for believeing it but how clever of what a huge reaction this was.

Then the next one was Avril Lavigne and her husband her husband have been rumored lately to be pregnant so finally once they were fed up; they decided to get in on the show too so Avril put on a fake baby-bump and her and her husband and their two friends and body guard went out shoping on Robertson Ave. which is where The Ivy is in hollywood and alot of other celebrity boutiques so they walked aorund shopping and all these paparazzi just sourrounded them right away and they went into this little childrens store and she was looking at cute mini-converse and boys clothes and they came out with a big and then of cource the next day again the headlines were all saying like Avril's Expecting a Skater Boy and just all these crazy ideas that they went on a shopping spree for baby clothes and everything and the clerk at the store said they just kept laughing and avril was just gowign and couldnt stop talking about the arrival of the baby. And it was just really funny how it was blown out of context when that was not what happnend. So props to E! for a good inovative show!

That number is tax?!

When talking with my mom today I learned that in Chicago the sales tax is going to go up to 10% from the pervious 8.75% and this just seems outreageous to me. Also that Chicago has the highest sales tax of any other large city in America! Paying 10% sales tax seems so high to me and i'm not even a full consumer of products. But just think if someone were to buy a $35,000 car just the tax on that would be $3,500!! I can't believe sales tax can be so high when other cities like Las Vegas don't have any sales tax at all. Just think as a kid i used to save up $3.00 to ride my bike to Walgreens and buy candy. And now if i kid were to do that and buy 3 candy bars at 99C the total would come to $3.30 not even a quarter could cover tax. Now i know i sound like a grandparent complaining about "these days" and it doesn't seem like that much but in the long one just one american is spending thousands of dollars a year on sales tax and for chicgago to have the highest sales tax today seems like a big con to living around here.

Abortion a thing of the Past?

On the travel channel there is a show called Living With the Tribes and it follows the Namal tribe who live on Tanna Island - a small island that is part of the Vanuatu Islands in the Pacific Ocean. These african people know of our modern would but like and feel stable with there practices from over a thousand years ago. Yet on the only episode i watched they were building a new canoe to go out in the ocean and fish and all the men in the tribe go and its a big deal but one man couldn't go because his wife was pregnant again with what would be their fourth child and they literally could not take care of this one child that they were about to have so the man went out deep into the jungle and cut down branches and squeezed this red juice out of its almost instinct bark and it would make the baby die and it was an old old method but to see that even a thousand years ago this tribe had a way for abortion and people still do that there and this couple had to keep it secret from the tribe because it was seen as bad luck to cut down these distinctive branches that grow in the forest. So it was interesting to me to see how it connects to our time and how if you get an abortion its all hush-hush but that a thousand years ago there was a way to get rid of a baby and it actually worked. SO i thought this realted to our class discussion recently on abortion and the media and just interesting of different contraceptive methods.

P.S. another american film where abortion is present is Dirty Dancing and when you think about it the film is almost centered around this girls need for an abortion.