If there was a game/fight/battle between legendary football coach Mike Ditka and the two A-bombs from WWII, who would win? This is easy…Ditka and some Rolaids by 10 poi……hack, hack, grooooaaaan, kerflumpkmgl. Sorry, I just had a heart attack choking on a porkchop. (Can’t see the video? Try it here.)
For ages boys have been pitting their favorite heroes – real and imagined – against each other to see who would win: Superman v. Batman, Gretzky v. Lemiuex, Ditka v. Hurricane, etc. Spike TV now has a show chock full of high-tech comparisons of elite warriors throughout history: Apache v. Gladiator, Spartan v. Ninja, Viking v. Samurai, etc called Deadliest Warrior. This show contains all kinds of stereotypical man-treasures. From high-speed camera footage of ballistics gel gore to Read the rest of this entry »
Walking through a mall for the first time in a long, long time on a Friday night a few weeks ago, we passed multiple random groups of teenagers loitering and horsing around. I suppose they were dressed like fairly normal teens caught up in the fads – no matter how ridiculous. As we passed one group, I overheard one teen say to another, “O-M-G!” No sooner than my next thought started to bud in my brain, it was superseded by yet another though: Shit, I’m an old curmudgeon. This was evidenced by my thought to weep for the future. *Grumble grumble* kids these days *grumble*.
I found humor in this episode and gave myself a mild ribbing for such a knee-jerk reaction. I offer the anecdote now for illustrative purposes in a discussion regarding the state of our culture. Culture itself is so very diverse and diffuse that any kind of objective definition or definitive accounting is impossible. Diversity doesn’t mean there aren’t overlaps, though. Common themes and evolutions can be found across many facets of the conglomerated culture. How one values any facet of this heterogeneous culture is purely subjective and dependent on the individual’s point of view.
In a comment thread over at Sunni’s joint, culture was being judged from two different levels; one from the progression and desire for freedom, and one from the lower levels of pop-culture and the smaller subsets of culture without the overarching theme of the first level. I will discuss this lower level first since it offers clues to the higher examination.
Most habits aren’t thought of as addicting until the ability to participate in it is removed, or if it is realized the extent of the addiction is made painfully clear when the habit is broken. At first, the absence of the habit strikes panic and frantic attempts to restore the habit. Will power shakes at the very foundation like a communist-built apartment block on a fault line and strength of mind wavers to the point of motion sickness. A__ and I aren’t quitting smoking or even heroin, but cable television. We aren’t seeing babies crawling on ceilings yet (one can only find that kind of thing on cable), but panic washed over us as we surfed the handful of remaining channels taken up by network television, public access, and home shopping.
I’ve mentioned it before on the blog and have said multiple times I’d go through with it, but always rationalized my way out or just didn’t take that last terminal final step of canceling the cable. It is always “after hockey season,” which ridiculously doesn’t end until it is no kind of weather for ice outside of tea or sitting inside watching guys skate around on less-than-frozen ice, I’d say that I’ll cancel the cable. It took Kelly Pavlik and lots of dirt finally make me take the leap onto the wagon. After ordering HBO for a day (or two) in order to watch the World Middleweight Champion, who hails from the ‘Stout’s(sort of) hometown, put on a clinic on some poor Welsh fella, I called a day late to cancel the HBO and the momentum of that led me to carry through with the rest of my erstwhile plans. The amount of work being done on the front landscaping and the garden helped to keep me busy enough outside to think I wouldn’t miss the television much, too.
Alas, I was not completely successful, though. Like chewing on nicotine gum or cutting back to just smoking while drinking (shortly before becoming an alcoholic), I still have a box on top of the television for basic cable and kept the internet. The internet is now a necessity for completing assignments for online classes at the Penn State World Campus and considering the cost implications – this was done in order to try and save money as a primary reason; actually forcing me outside to finish and continue work was secondary – basic cable evened out the costs as the charge for the internet went up without cable (plus a “downgrade fee”). In the end, without dropping the still quite expensive cable internet, the total savings won’t buy me a tank of gas these days. If I were ever allowed to telecommute even a little to ease the cost of actual commuting, the difference would be more significant and worthwhile.
Regardless of reasons and rationalizations, we’ve made it through the first night. The complete lack of interest in anything that we could watch made the unnoticed habit of watching apparent. After whatever activities away from the television, including dinner or yard work, are done, we unwind with a bit of the boob tube; it isn’t really that much, but it is darn consistent. Last night the panic set in as we surfed through to see what was still available. The panic wouldn’t be so bad if we actually watched network television before, but the vast majority of our viewing is now gone. Like a smoker who takes up hard candy or some other substitute habit, I’ve thought of supplementing with internet video, which would include South Park. Maybe the substitute will work if a way to easily share the screen is established. Then again, maybe we won’t make it and the small fiscal gap will be easy justified and breached to re-establish the status quo. Only time will tell. Stay tuned.
Over the years we have been regaled with tale after tale of an imagined dystopia of the future. George Orwell’s 1984 is probably the most famous, but has been joined just recently in cinema by V for Vendetta and Children of Men. These typical dystopic worlds involve a very locked-down society with a dictated, structured life and lots of surveillance. The setting is usually very urban and hard and cold and gray and, despite such structured discipline, these cityscapes are usually dirty and littered with trash and discarded humans. Orwell called these discarded and forgotten humans Proles. These people have been passed over by the perceived superiors who have the air of intelligence, power and control.
In the latest dystopia tale that I have seen, the proles were in control. And while there is still the atmosphere of cold, gray, dirty and surveilled, the restraints on what we would usually consider freedom are not imposed for control, but the freedoms and choices are simply non-existent. Read the rest of this entry »
