Getting Media Profiled

I'm somewhat better today. I've halved the cold medication intake, and thus feel rendered a little less dazed and staggering compared to the last couple days.

I caved: in two ways, this weekend. Caved, in the sense that with it being so cold outside; being too bothersome to tour around town, plus being sick, I holed up here at home all weekend.  My vision became too strained and made blurry by cold-medication to track any fine print, plus I lost too much lucidity to allow me to follow and mentally form any literary scenes in my mind from reading, so the other way I caved was re-subscribing to a TV service of sorts. A few days ago, I knocked some dust of my TV screen, and connected to a month long free trial of Netflix®, and I abused this privilege to the max during this weekend.

I had a good long spell of not needing a paid television service to entertain me (ten months), but being under the influence of Neo Citron perhaps weakened my resolve. I could still get some odd bits of programming, news and movies (if I wanted to) on TV through channels via my Sony Blu-Ray player and Wi-Fi network, but nothing was offered that could keep me mindlessly gluing my eyes to a screen for hours during a day (a good thing really). I find that the free movie channels, like Crackle®, have content that's too dated and festering with commercials that can't be skipped through. I just sit down with it to be a tech-geek: to explore and review it intensively around once a month, or so; not to really watch the programming per se, but to study the interactive features and formats of the Sony network system, and to see if there are any useful changes and updates. Through this setup, I get to peer into other foreign news and documentary networks/services, like Deutsche Welle, and some of the Russian programmes through Первый канал (First Channel) out of curiosity to see their perspective of the world, or else I tune into a couple of Latin American channels to see much Spanish I still understand (or be humbled, and see how much I've forgotten). I do also check out snippets from Blinkx, Wired, Epicurious, Livestrong, some video podcasts, and then I'll check and see if the YouTube interface through a TV remote is getting any less user-hostile. That's about as interesting as TV has been for me at home since I discontinued service with my former provider.

So, suffering through my cold trying to rest, I spent an abominable amount of time (for me) with my ass planted on the chesterfield all weekend watching movies and other programs through Netflix. There has been such a huge gap in my media diet with unwatched shows and films, and so with no real mental ability for reckoning of passing time, it was easy to allow myself to get sucked into this black hole. Today, I opted to leave the TV off and use this time to process it all. What is interesting (and kind of creepy) about Netflix, and other similar services, is that I don't even have to actively search that hard for the movies and shows that appeal to me, because from the first few choices that I've opted to watch, the Netflix system starts monitoring my viewing choices through my account, and begins building a profile of my viewing habits, and then narrows down, filters, and limits things to a more concise menu of some suggested shows that it predicts that I'm most likely to watch to some very pinpoint accurate and specific genres. It struck me then that there is something a little insidious about a digital entertainment system that knows what my favoured viewing interests and pleasures are better than I do. I watched the movies Layercake, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, Centurion, The Gods Must be Crazy II, the documentary Walking With Cavemen, and an episode of Spike TV's Deadliest Warrior, and some other junk. I guess what I discovered I'm into, from watching Netflix, which is watching me watch TV, is what it is recommending to me as future choices. It's automatically narrowing them down and forecasting that I'd be into Guy Ritchie British gangster movies, crime thrillers, historical/nature/science documentaries, science fiction, and action cinema (that's unnervingly accurate). The system has somehow also determined that I have enough of a quirky sense of humour, and a taste for foreign/independent films that the Netflix search engine presumes to recommend to me a set of movies centred around starring my "favourite" actors (I'll leave them a mystery), a Norwegian sex comedy, and other documentaries on rather eccentric subject material. It boggles my mind to think of all the specific variable categories, cross-referencing, and correlation of all this data to get this all so customized for me as a viewer.

Profiling of the media consumer has always been going on since mass media has been invented, and evolving rapidly into ever more intrusive ways for gathering some ever more revealing data about those who are the audience/consumers. It then becomes almost a laughable paradox to see so many, who call themselves "private" people, who are so distrustful and not prone to socializing with others in the 'real world'*, who so often opt to stay home and retreat into watching a lot of TV, or using the Internet** because they can find little else to do by themselves that keeps them engaged mentally. Yet, watching television, or using the web, in this present day, are perhaps the least "private" activities that one can do. Someone, or some organized intelligence gathering entity, is always monitoring your choice of media, inter/activity, and usage.

*- Having a flashback now of the movie The Matrix, when Morpheus asks Neo that very profound question: "What is real?"
**- I always kind of wondered why we (as English speakers/readers) find the word 'Internet' consistently capitalized? Is it because it's regarded as proper noun for a place name or something geographical (which it isn't), or is it because we are regarding it now as a proper name for something that's like a living sentient being, like John, or Mary, or Goober the hamster? The lack of use of the indefinite article is suspicious too: I've yet to see a case of  'an internet' in any formal writing. I'll leave these questions of semantics to open for debate for some other time. I'm also having the horrid realization that this thought resembles one like those circulated around the dining table at work . . . I HAVE TO GET OFF THIS WRETCHED MEDICATION!   

BYOB, Generations, TV, Creativity Gulch

My desktop console is back, a day overdue from the time I was promised that it would be ready; even when I plugged it in it still didn't work right. Not all my disk drives were connected, a very amateur mistake on their part. I cracked open the case, traced some wiring, and got lucky in deducing at the first try as to which of the numerous vacant 5-pin connector spots that one of my media/backup drives needed to be plugged into; thankfully fixing the problem without any adverse effect. On the bright side, my replacement graphics card is a couple generations more evolved than the failed one, and the slightly greater expense for it was worth it in terms of cost effectiveness compared to the few days of time and money I would have had to use to reconfigure my network and backup storage. Doing that, plus some domestic stuff like housecleaning/laundry, and making fresh dark rye bread and some borscht* from what I gleaned at the Farmers' Market earlier this morning, were the only productive things I did all day. The rest of the day was spent brooding in a depression which has been sapping energy away from me today I suppose: about all the extra bills being doled out to me lately for things I didn't want or ask for, the remaining pain and stiffness I have, plus some other issues too personal to be put in this entry. The comedy channels on iTunes aren't being very effective today.

Out of this malaise, I did some web-surfing. One thing that caught my attention that I'd really be interested in for the sake of being part of a greater science experiment involving all of the human race is the Genographic Project, sponsored by National Geographic magazine. It would be cool to see ultimately where my roots originated from through the course of a few millennia by using genetic markers. The few documentaries I've seen about this expansion of humankind amazes me.

Speaking of documentaries, I'm reminded that my TV service will resume at some time in mid-September. The only time I wish I had my digital cable this summer was to watch some of the Olympics coverage from London; other than that, I was fine and thankful to be without it. However, on thing that I am disappointed about, throughout this annual summertime media fast, is that I would have hoped to show signs of becoming a more creative thinker. I would have hoped that the absence of someone else's pre-fabricated stories would leave my mind to be freer to exercise the power of filling in blanks with its own imagery, and forced to communicate it, instead of absorbing stories and knowledge passively all the time. That doesn't seem to be happening, at least to the degree I wish it could be. After an experience from yesterday, while accompanying a friend for a 'not-so-average-everyday' activity, I realize how badly I'm becoming at instantaneous improvisation, initiating interesting conversations, making fiction, creative storytelling, and just not being able to even easily outright lie about something (if it meant using it defensively to save my own skin, or just using 'white-lies' to preserve dignity and help save face for others in embarrassing moments).** We found some laughter in that fact (which was good, since at that moment, she was trying to endure lots of pain).

As Fall approaches, along with looking into more fitness programs to keep me in form for next year's running season, and educating myself with practical skills, I think I have to check out more things on the scene that deal with the humanities, and sign up for work that allows me to have some more creative license on things.

*- Perhaps it's because the extra bills that woke up the more frugal Ukrainian half of my personal genome in me. Around here, BYOB means either "Be Your Own Baba", or "Bachelor, Yet Occasional Baker". Both meanings applied here today.

**- One would think that not being prone to bullshitting people would be a very positive attribute to have, but I know I've hurt fthe eelings a lot of people more with blunt sincerity than I have with spinning and feeding them a bunch of sugar-coated mistruths.

Cruising around Like Frodo

A couple of weeks ago, I was tuned into CBC, watching The Nature of Things, a science documentary program here in Canada. The episode I saw, The Perfect Runner, was about the physiology and biomechanics of human running. I learned some pretty interesting stuff about our evolution as a species. You wouldn’t think it to see the average person walking around today, but human beings are the creatures with the greatest running endurance out of all others in the animal kingdom. We evolved to be distance runners, not speed runners. It was interesting to see the origins and development of the people in the place with best natural marathon runners in the world: Africa, and what makes them unique at being so in an anthropological, and sociological perspective. Noting from that program some of the things that happen when people are running without the stress and confinement of a modern athletic shoe made me want to try to experiment with something.

FILA Skele-Toes, a.k.a. Hobbit Boots

I spoke of my imperfect foot development in my last entry, and my great challenge of finding properly fitting shoes. I forgot to mention my other shoe purchase. Well, not so much forgot to mention, but held off on saying anything about them until I had a chance to test them out. They are track shoes manufactured by FILA, and are called Skele-Toes. The idea of the design of these things is to provide your feet with enough of the traction and protection needed to function as a shoe, and yet allow as much of the natural mechanics of the foot to work as if one were running barefooted. That means freeing up the toes to have their natural flexion, and adjusting the heel and ball of the foot to hit the ground in the same manner as a bare foot would.  Just like we around here colloquially call sandals “Jesus boots”, I decided to call these things “Hobbit boots”: freaky looking shoes with separated toes that make your feet appear disproportionately big and wide, like the feet of the Hobbits of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

All I can say, after trying these babies out on the track today, is that I’m very impressed. I ran as long and as fast, if not more so, with these things than I have with shoes with orthotic inserts. Pain in the shins didn’t register in me until much later in the course of the run, compared to the times that I use regular runners/orthotics. New muscles were being tested on me, so I made a point of not overdoing it with my initial run with these things, but I see them serving as valuable element for strengthening and toning my legs better. Today, I felt like I was on par with the place I was at last year. At the very least, these things are novel enough to make me want to do more trials with them, which will keep me motivated to stick with doing something for my fitness.

[TV Commercials] + [Neo-Citron] = WTF???

I wasted almost an entire weekend watching TV, since I was pretty much too useless to do anything else as I sat around here all loaded up on Neo-Citron; I sure had a wildly different viewing experience when I was in this state though. Typically, I watch pre-recorded TV from my computer hard drive after I come home from work, and I generally skip through all the commercials.While the TV is on at work, my mind is usually somewhere else, or I'm too distracted by other tasks to give them any analysis for criticism. Here is just a bunch of random questions and observations that burbled up into my cold remedy addled mind, mostly inspired by the commercials I glimpsed.

I noticed that there were lots of repetitive advisories on one channel about Depression Awareness. Should I find it amusingly ironic, or fittingly appropriate that Valentine’s Day occurs right in the middle of the month of the year that generally has the highest number of diagnosed cases and medical treatment of depression in Canada? With love (or lack of it) and depression mixed together, it makes me think that this month should be renamed Emo-bruary. Of course, there was a preponderance of pharmaceutical ads for anti-depressants amidst that lot. If our society was indeed more optimistic; given the occasion coming, you’d think there would be more Cialis, Viagra, and K-Y lube commercials.

I don’t know if it’s just the medication affecting me, or if it’s more subliminal suggestion, or something else going on to create some better memetic device to accord with the coming of Valentine’s Day, but I’ve noticed that the phrase “hot and juicy” has been especially salient in fast food commercials.

When the hell did advertisers, or I guess the media in general, think that it was a great idea to make it a general characteristic for beavers to be speaking with British accents? I noticed that on a Netflix commercial, and also I remember seeing a beaver speaking that way when I saw one bit of The Chronicles of Narnia movie in passing as well. This is highly improper because, a.) beavers are native to North America and, b.) the beavers are often steadily engaged in what can be construed as doing physical labour, quite unlike the British who do speak with the upper class, intellectual, Queen’s English accent. Yes, how very unbecoming. The beavers should rightfully be feeling insulted. I suppose the key thing to making a product or service seem more reliable in the world of North American television advertising, is to anthropomorphize animals such that they speak like Jeeves the butler, or something. The Geicko gecko is another example. I wonder if that trend is somehow reversed for some of the TV adverts in the UK. Maybe their version of the Geicko gecko sounds like Billy Joe Bubba the septic tank cleaner.

If it only takes a few cents a day to feed a child in Africa, wouldn’t you think that more there would be more parents from here sending their kids over there?

“. . . the best tasting dog food your pet will ever eat.”Who were the people who went out of their way to determine this? Are these results from some kind of testing that they performed on prisoners, or thehomeless?

I discovered the hard way that I can’t watch Canada’s Worst Handyman on the DiscoveryChannel while I have a respiratory affliction. Laughing at that kind of idiocy sends me into uncontrollable and painful coughing fits.

When I see hip-hop gangster hamsters, squaring off with break-dancing robot soldiers, and a KIA Soul automobile all within the same commercial space, and knowing that there is some producer of this commercial out there thinking, “Yes, so it’s obvious that the general public will see the correlation!”, I can only conclude that the crack babies are all grown up now, and have taken careers in television advertising. Maybe they should try out Neo-Citron.