THE FUTURE IS A VAST WASTELAND (AS SEEN ON TV)

IN THE O'DARK HOURS

I don't really know what to make of the hundreds of channels that are available on cable or satellite television at 3 a.m. in the morning. That has nothing to do with my consciousness hovering close enough to sleep, yet not near enough to close my eyes. Because I could hear the clicks and whirrs of the brain computer, I grabbed the remote and the narcotizing light of the television lit up my room.

Maybe it is just me, but I don't see how it can be... am I the only one who is troubled with Rihanna's song, 'Rude Boy'? I heard it for the first time cruising MTV, and I was like WTF??

Maybe she doesn't have a standard to live up to as a role model... and it prolly is unfairly restrictive to expect that she doesn't exploit and objectify women. But the lyrics and video to that song does both and I am thinking that it doesn't matter that much to her. It doesn't matter that she is encouraging the kind of ideals that creates a Chris Brown... in again championing the 'rude boy'.

There are a lot of crappy infomercials that run on cable in the wee hours as well. Crusing around, the sets of a gang of 'em never changed, but the folks hawking their wares did. There were other informercials where they would 'demostrate' their product and enthusiastically display whatever it produced, cleaned, or mended.

There were fitness infomercials as well. I have read in a few blogs at how well P90X works and I even have been intrigued at the program. But there is this one work out video with cat who calls himself 'Shawn T', 'Insanity', that I have my doubts about.

Thing is, almost any workout routine will show results if you are true and comitted to it. The key element is the disipline that a person shows in following a fitness routine. A lot of the infomercials show a lot of intense, 'pleasantly grim' or even smiling participants. That makes people think it is going to be fun and easy...

I was watching either a repeat of Tuesday night's Countdown or Rachel Maddow show, and they had a sister girl from one of the Ivies' talking about the new climate in American society. She talked about how the people who are ranting about 'states rights' are similar to the kind of folks who last raised a big ruckus about that topic... the antebellum period before the Civil War.

Sometimes I don't think that we are that far off. Prior to 9-11, the biggest terror strike in the US was the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in 1995. Those were homegrown terrorists and Timothy McVeigh was but a tip of the iceberg.

Let's say that the tea bag thinkers constitute 15% of the conservatives in the country. So to pull a number like 2 million out of the air and say that constitutes the militant wing of tea baggers, is not at all out of the question. What would happen if a charismatic leader were to begin pulling all these 'good ol' boys' together? I mean if you like the band Lady Antebellum, the stretch isn't that far. Finding out what a word means is one thing. But understanding it is totally another.

After reading Chomsky and being forced to skip over Faux News and their negative propaganda, being dismissive of the kinds of ideas that words and images in the media, is harmful as drinking alcohol.

IN OTHER NEWS...

... don't know when, but I will be going home to Detroit in the near future. What else is there to say..?