Crackberry World

I think it is amazing how much of the world now has blackberries and what can be done on a blackberry. I bought my first blackberry two years ago because I worked at Sprint, but I mainly used the phone for calls and texting. Now I use my blackberry for almost everything, including scheduling, email, and website usage. I feel like I almost could not live with out it. Everywhere I go there are people on their blackberries and many large companies require that their employees own a blackberry. Sometimes I wonder if this is a good thing or a bad thing. We depend on an electronic device to control our life, and in the past it was not like this. I think that blackberries and other advanced technologies have taken away from communication, and socialization. It is easier to text someone then pick up the phone and call them. Just a thought on the blackberry world, and how amazed I am with it.

Death of celebrities

It has recently caught my attention how many celebrities have been passing away recently. Although many of the deaths have been drug related, I have always still wondered if the media has had an influence on the deaths. I truly feel that people who are famous and are constantly being followed, live a much more difficult life then people think. They have little privacy, they always have to look good and they are always being followed. Although they might make the big bucks, I think the pressure puts a toll on them in the end. It is very sad that these young lives have been taken but it really seems like the media is affecting their deaths.

Half Naked Ads

I have recently noticed that many ads in magazines, as well as many commericals and music videos portray women and men that are half naked. The women in the videos are barely wearing any clothes and there is always a sexual message. I think this further proves the audience subject and what people want to see and what they want to watch. I am not a huge fan of music videos but when I watch them, I find it odd how the women are dressed and sometimes the actions in the videos are uncomfortable. Its surprising because before it used to just be rap videos that portrayed women like this, but now country videos, pop videos and rock videos are like this as well. Even perfume and cologne ads are all of sexual nature these days. I am not sure why is and why audiences are so interested in this.

Top video clips of the month

I'm not sure if anyone watches Boston FOX 25 in the morning, but I know that it has always been part of morning routine to wake up and watch the VB along with the rest of the crew. Not only do I feel like they are reliable, but I also am able to start my day off with my laughs. At the end of every month VB shows the top funniest clips/ sayings of the month and I really thought this months were priceless. One of the top five clips of the month was actually my favorite choice. The clip was of Sarah Palin talking during the Tea Party speech. She brought up the current presidency and how it has been going. She starting out by talking about all the hope and change that was thrown our during the presidental speeches and she states "Hows that hopey changey thing doing for ya." I am a huge fan of Sarah Palin and I was so proud to hear her say this because it is exactly what many of us are thinking. You can not always promise people that things will change, but you actually have to show change and that has not been done. This funny quote definetely beat the other quotes of the month, but I always enjoy hearing the video clips of the month.

Channel surfing

Has anyone noticed that there has been nothing tv shows on tv anymore. When I turn on my tv on a Saturday morning I noticed that there are no television shows to watch on tv, many of it is just infomertials and advertisent tv. EVen throughout the day it seems that the same shows are always on. The shows that are on also always repeats and nothing new is ever on. I do know alot of this has to do with the writers strike, but this is beginning to become quite insane. Whenever I turn the tv on the shows that are on are judge judy or one of those judge shows, price is right, the news, CSI, Law and Order. It does not seem like that have been accomodating to many audiences lately. I was wondering if I was was the only one that noticed this changed and if anyone knows why television is like this now.

Reality TV

So I am not the biggest fan of reality television but sometimes I do find myself watching it. I am curious to know how real some of these shows are and often wonder if they are staged. Last month I found that most of my facebook friends were obsessed with Jersey Shore, so I decided I had to watch an episode. After watching a few episodes I realized that it was not my type of show, but I also wondered if the shows were real or not and if they were people told what to say. I mean many of the situations seemed like situations that would never happen. Many reality shows seem to be like this these days. I mean, if they were really portraying what was happening in a house like that, would it even be exciting enough to watch? I would like to see if anyone has a true answer for this.

There All the Same

I don't watch much tv anymore, but I noticed that the few shows that I do watch all seem to be the same as the episode before them. I thought this fit in well with this weeks reading because of the narrative subject, and talking about structure. I used to watch CSI Miami, but I stopped watching it because the episodes all seem to be the same just with different stories. They always open in the crime scene, and the detectives are always dramatic about what happened. The next 35 minutes are spent investigating and talking to different suspects. The last 10 minutes they usually find the criminal or criminals involved and charge them. Many of the episodes end with Horatio putting his sunglasses on and walking away. It was always too easy to predict what was going to happen in each episode, and I guess I got bored of this repetition. I just cant seem to find a television show that I really enjoy anymore. I guess there all just the same.

More on Fox News

I wanted to post an article I read in the paper last week in regards to Fox News. I found it interesting because many people in the class felt that Fox news was not reliable, and many of them said they will not watch it and do not like the the channel. Most of their opinions came from the Outfoxed video and from other sources such as "Family Guy." In my opinion you can not form a bias on a news channel just from watching a video, especially one made by former Fox employees. Family Guy may be a great cartoon, but it not reliable, and most of the material on the show is not true. The article in the Herald states that Fox News is one of the most reliable News channels and has high ratings on tv. It also states that people find Fox news to be more reliable then CNN and NBC. The Herald typically isn't too liberal or too conservative, so I do not feel that this article is not biased in any way. It also seems that recently more and more people are watching Fox News and are trusting them more. I guess I was just surprised and confused as to why so many people in the class did not like the channel.

http://bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/view.bg?articleid=1228502

New VCR technology

I was reading over the blog description for the course, and got some ideas on where to go with my next blog. It has always amazed me how much media technology has changed. When I was a child my family owned a record player and several VCRs. I never would have imagined that a decade later we would have DVDs and CDs and everything else is almost impossible to find. What led me to write this blog was learning that you can now take all your VCRs and put them on to DVDs to watch. I just learned about this new technology over the weekend, and think its crazy that it can be done. I was excited because we have many childhood tapes, and no longer own a VCR. Now we can watch our memories on DVDS! I felt this tied in with the class because I started watching some of the VHSs recently and in the background of the movies on our household tv was President George Bush Senior and Michael Jackson. It was funny to see how much the times have changed and how different the news looked then.

Media and Politics

I don't think I have ever written in a blog, and if I have then it was a long time ago. Anyways, I want to talk about the recent Senate election in Massachusetts, and how the media was involved in this election. First of all I would like to say that I have never seen so many television and radio ads for a state senate election. Usually its not greatly publicized and voters will just go out and vote for whatever candidate they like or side with. In this past election almost every single commercial on the radio and T.V. was about the election, especially the few days right before the election. In my opinion these ads are a good thing, and a bad thing. They are good because it allows people to learn more about the candidates, and their policies. There are many people who don't watch the news, read newspapers or keep up with politics and they do not really care about who our Senator is. The ads during the election may have woke some of those people up and showed them that they need to start caring about policies and who makes them. The bad thing about the ads is the negative attack ads. In this past election Coakley put out extremely negative and false ads which bashed our new Senator Scott Brown. In my opinion it is awful that these ads are even able to be put on television. I understand that it is freedom of speech and freedom of the press to put these ads on the tv and radio, but it is very un-necessary to put false claims and un-true statements on them. I am very glad that her attack ads did not work for her, and hope that candidates stop using them in the future. The reason why I decided to use this topic for my blog was because of my love for politics, and how it ties in with this class. For me seeing this attack ads was only offensive, and it did nothing more then further prove to me who the honest and best candidate was.