Current Tunes: Insomnium - Down with the Sun
Man, what a way to start out a new season. If "House" isn't the penultimate of what television can accomplish, then they should just give up on the medium as a whole. Television almost without exception is terribly pointless and bad for you, but not "House." That's one of my favorite things about it.
Continuing with media related topics, my compliments to the Emmy Awards for being the first snobby, mindless, glad-handing award show in history to actually give an award to an entity that wholly deserved special accolades. I’m talking of course about the award that Joss Whedon and Co. won at the Creative Arts Emmy ceremony for “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.” I especially love what Mr. Whedon says at the end of the acceptance speech he gave that night. It’s good that the mainstream television industry is acknowledging not only good storytelling and creativity, but also a changing of the guard that’s happening. The Internet is not a deterrent to good television and storytelling; it’s a new and more efficient delivery system. I could very well seeing this as being a moment when media historians look back and say “When ‘Dr. Horrible’ won an Emmy, that’s what opened the floodgates.” My congratulations to Whedon, and I enthusiastically await the next part of the series. Especially when I consider how I think they have so many different angles to grow the show into.
I stumbled across an interesting little link today, via the Twitter account of one Mr. William Gibson. I don’t know if this report will get the needed circulation that I feel is really necessary, as the media can be quite unreliable when it comes to reporting stories that don’t involve the sex lives of pop singers. The real reason though I believe I’m pointing this article out is that it reminds and saddens me that I wasn’t more staunchly outraged by all the reports and facts surrounding how our government sanctioned torture for multiple years in multiple cases.
A younger me, a 17-year-old me, would have been so angered by such a revelation he would have demanded excused absence from school in order to more faithfully protest the extreme insanity and ignorance of our government representatives. But it was just another footnote for the current me. Perhaps though this not-so-stunning-to-me information will help awaken people to how we should proceed with not just complicated socio-political issues, but will serve as a reminder to treat our fellow man with a little more dignity and respect.
I feel I’m finally coming around to appreciate the real value in integrating positive habits into my life and routine, so now I must begin that process. I'm approaching this concept like a class; I have to assign myself practice exercises in order to teach myself the concepts and actions that represent comprehension of the material. With any process where you try to learn, where you’re starting fresh, I feel it’s probably a good idea to try first with something small. So I need a couple of good ideas for a small, almost-but-not-quite menial habit to ingrain in myself. One idea has been to just simply lie on the floor for half an hour a day, listening to my iPod and not getting up from the floor until the half hour has passed.
My other ‘simple’ idea had been to stop being so negative about everything in life, but after a moment I realized that’s a terribly complicated and difficult. Even then, it's not really creating a new and positive habit, it's eliminating a negative, preexisting one. The iPod idea isn’t great either, I feel. I don’t think it generates anything positive in my life; it’s merely ‘neutral.’ I suppose a habit is truly doing something and laying on the floor listening to music isn’t really doing. Working out daily is a highly desirable habit for me, but I’ve tried that before and couldn’t make it last. Maybe I should try again.
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Dr Horrible is most funny indeed... wish i kept up with it.
ReplyDeleteOn to habit suggestions:
1) Laying on the floor is beneficial as a stress reliever and could be seen as a form of meditation. I see it as positive, but suggest you start small - say 10 minutes a day.
2) New suggestion, start the 2 minute challenge - You will hear me talk a lot more about this again in writing... but in any case here is the quick and dirty idea. To get in shape and feel better physically is all about building the good habit always doing something. Keep is simple and do what I do - I promise it will work as long as you have an ounce of will power. Every morning directly after waking and brushing your teeth, take the same amount of time (2 minutes) and do as many push ups as you can without taking a break. As soon as your knees touch the floor or you cannot complete a push up - stop and feel good about the fact that you added to your good habit. You will most definitely stop before 2 minutes is up and you may not do as many as you like... but I promise if you do this every day and make it a habit that in 1 month from now you will probably have increased by 25% and within 3 months you will have doubled the number you can do.