Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Watching the news

Well, today was the one day of the year that I watched the morning news. It was by default, not planned or expected, and caught me completely off guard. I won't do it again, I promise. As my children whined about ridiculous things, I claimed, "you don't have a mother today, go away." I turned on the TV and found nothing but morning shows hiding behind the facade of reporting the news. (FYI: I had to look up the spelling of "facade" which has now replaced "choir" in my book of stupid words that don't follow any spelling rules).

I wait and wait to find out how they will help a real family save $225 each month. (OK, I didn't really wait if you consider channel surfing a sport) Then I get the history of the "real family" they are going to try to help. Oh, you poor sad middle-aged baby boomers with a son leaving for college and one in high school. Dad just retired after 30 years on the job (he's like 55). Mom is the sole bread winner and they can't pay for college outright. Oh no, you have a debt of $89 thousand...and that INCLUDES the house the car?! Need I say more?!! The advice is to take your lunch to work, skip the morning bagel, and don't eat out as much. Dad might need to go back to work if they want to send Junior to college without loans.

September 5th, for 1 WHOLE HOUR, the 3 major news stations will be banning together to "Stand Up to Cancer". During Prime Time, ABC, NBC, and CBS will broadcast the same report in an effort to bring people together to fund research for cancer. Yes, you heard that right, the whole point of this is to raise money for cancer research. I'm sorry I'm such a cynic but I'm sick of the fund raising for cures when we don't hear anything about prevention. It's all a big money game and that makes me crazy. I'm sorry that everyone that anyone knows is going to know someone in their immediate family that is affected by cancer, truly I am. My heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones and feel that loss on a daily basis. I'm just saying that maybe we should try to stop it instead of treating it. (Kind of like don't smoke to reduce your risk of lung cancer)

Food nutrition based on sugar only. What?! This guy rated foods on the amount of sugar in them, ONLY! He actually compared a box of Fruit-Loop looking cereal to of box of granola-with-blueberry cereal. The conclusion was that the granola had the same amount of sugar but way more calories and fat, so watch out. WHAT?! Let's not look at the chemical make-up of the ingredients or the nutritional value. I'm just really disturbed that some unsuspecting sole is going to think that they should eat Fruit-Loops as a diet food. No, I don't think they deserve it because they are stupid, I think that it was really bad journalism!

The Woodstock museum opened up in Bethal, New York. This was actually the best news I heard this morning, except that I had to listen to the annoying banter between the anchor of the show and the weather guy who was wearing a T-shirt with a peace sign on it. I never really thought about why Woodstock was where it was was, but I found out today. It was held on this guy's farm and he hosted it out of spite. That's AWESOME!!! Somebody had put up a hand-made sign that in effect said not to buy his milk because he supported hippies. HAH! He really showed them didn't he?! Man, I really wish I had been a part of the 60's...

And then there was the sunscreen report. I was about to turn the TV off at 9 when the next talk show (it actually was a talk show this time) said they had a report on sunscreen coming up. I was skeptical going in, especially because the report followed a segment on "Living Lohan", but was pleasantly surprised. The 3 panelists included: a woman from consumer reports; a female dermatologist; and a lady marketing analyst. Why all women? I'm not sure, but they were all blond and beautiful. No wrinkles. Bottom line: price is not everything; look for UVA protection; spray needs to be rubbed in; and reapply if you are out a long time, are sweating or swimming. They did not discuss any of the chemicals so I'm still not any further informed. I'm beginning to think that real knowledge in this area is just like everything else..."research shows" but we're not really sure. I'll get back to you with a full report soon. If you are going to the beach, right now and need to prevent getting the worst burn of you life, go with Neutrogena Ultra-Sheer Dry Touch, or a No-Ad SPF 45. I'm still trying to figure out the parabens and oxides, and working through the advertising schemes of "advanced technology".

1 comment:

Bill said...

I stopped watching the news years ago. I couldn't take the misery anymore. "Fire Kills Three People...Baby drowns in bathtub...Lady Shot To Death..."blah, blah, blah. The final straw was a night we had gone over to some friend’s house. We were all sitting around getting ready to leave when a blurb from the TV caught our attention. The talking head announced that they had a cure for stopping brain freeze. I don't know why, but it intrigued us all. So we sat down and waited for the story. Sat through the endless stories of shootings, fire, disasters...sports wasn't bad, but chances are my team lost that night...Finally! The last story of the night! What miracle cure did they announce? Eat your ice cream slower! Really? Are you kidding? We sat through torture to get that? Yep! Eat your ice cream slower...there’s 30 minutes of my life I can't have back! Never again...