TV

I like watching TV. Perhaps I watch too much, but what else have I got to do? The job search is not going too well, and school doesn't start for another month or so.
So I kill time by watching Flint tease John, writing this blog, and watching TV. There's a lot of good video being offered out there, if you know where to look. The problem is, when you are in a country like Korea, you miss a lot of the really good programs (unless you know how to download), and you're very much behind people who've had access to it all along.
I sort of learned how to download in my third year in Korea, and then I started having problems with my 'puter, so I left off until Flint taught me how to do it properly. After that, I returned my TV to the hagwon and started getting caught up.
I'm still way behind, even after a coupla years of plugging away.
While I was in Korea, I started to get into shows like Dexter, The Shield, Battlestar: Galactica, and Californication. I've only just started the first season of The Wire, Damages, and Life On Mars (UK version).
I've been staying with my folks since I got back from Korea, and they had a pretty good cable package with Shaw. Then they changed it to Telus, and added the PVR function.
Hello!
I am in love with the PVR, which frees the viewer of the networks' tyranny like never before. No longer do you have to sit through boring commercial breaks or (badly) edited-for-TV versions of my favourite movies. With a PVR, you really can watch what you want, when you want it. It's brilliant.
Then, after my mom's accident, we had to stay at a hotel to be near her, and I was shocked, shocked when I saw the kind of TV being offered by the hotel, as well as to patients in the hospital.
Basic cable. (dramatic chord)
50 channels max.
Ew.
I guess hotel guests and hospital patients, being fairly transient in nature, don't need a full-on package of every single channel as well as all the technical add-ons. They just need something to look at for a night or two.
But if you're in for a long haul, the inadequacies of basic cable become more and more apparent as time goes by. Especially if you're looking for quality television, and not the drek offered up by networks and local stations.
Networks are in it for the money, and the commercial break is all important. They gotta get that ad revenue. A good show is just something to attract viewers that can be trapped into watching ads, not an end in itself.
Networks have something they call "standards and practices," which they say they use to censor offensive content like vulgar language (shit, fuck, cunt, piss, cocksucker, mothefucker, tits), excessive violence and gore, as well as sexy things like naked bodies and people making love.
Well, if you're an adult, being told by some faceless corporation that you can't watch something is like being told you can't vote or drink or stay up past eight o'clock. It's just not on.
So I go to a channel like HBO and watch a program like Deadwood, which has more nudity, violence, and people saying "fuck" per square inch than a whorehouse, but is also one of the finest programs ever filmed.
Local stations are even worse. They're always interrupting shows with "news breaks," which don't have any news, just promos for the local news teams. I've mentioned before how my folks are fans of Global Calgary, which I loathe and despise with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns.
Fucking mooks.
Even if they do run a good program, you have a tough time seeing it through all the supers on the screen. The station logo is there (as well as the network logo sometimes), and the station adds on supers that describe what's coming on next and what'll be on Thursday at nine. Talk about distraction.
It shows a fundamental disrespect of the show, as well as the viewer. I decided a long time ago that I would not tolerate it. That's why downloading shows and using the PVR is so important to me.

Planking, Again

We all know what planking is. Mooks take a picture of themselves lying prone on top of something, and then post the picture somewhere. It was just something stupid for mooks to keep themselves occupied with until an Australian man fell to his death from a seventh story balcony.
You would think that death would put the kibosh on a fad, but planking has resurfaced in the form of some players on the Winnipeg Blue Balls of the Canadian Football League doing it while celebrating a touchdown.
The TSN comooktaters were nonplussed. They had no idea what the celebration meant. It wasn't until later that they explained what had happened to us viewers.
Duh, hello! My name is Stig!
I guess some research gnome, or someone who was awake and aware and alive on this planet, told the comooktaters what it was all about.
The teeth and hair who do news, sports, opinion, etc. are not really reporters in the original sense of the word. Reporters used to do research on a topic for a story, and usually knew what they were talking/writing about.
My parents watch the news on Global Calgary morning, noon, and night. When I question the need to see the same goddamn story over and over again, my mom tells me she's waiting to hear the weather report.
Weather reporters are even more unreliable than the ones who do the news. To be wrong that percentage of the time while doing your job... well, I should be so lucky.
I tell my mom that I could do their job just by looking out the window.
But I digress.
One Global newsreader was commenting on a Youtube video. They play one as a regular part of their newscast. Yes, Youtube videos (especially ones about kitties) are news.
The newsreader made an off the cuff comment about the video, and then said that what he said might be true, he didn't know.
I thought, you're a reporter, and you don't know? And then I remembered, ah, teeth and hair. He doesn't report the news, he just reads it off a teleprompter. It's too bad his ad-lib showed his ignorance.
So the Blue Balls players and the TSN comooktaters were probably not aware of the death that had taken place when they decided to go ahead and air their ignorance.
I thought what the players were doing was not really planking, as they were laying on the ground. If they really wanted to plank, why didn't they climb up onto the goal posts?
Planking has even shown up in the comic strip "Betty." Her son discovered it and tried it out for himself.

I guess his research into the topic didn't extend to the dying part, either.
Well, it was a lot of fun, and we all had a jolly good laugh.
Until the next death.