musings of a neurotic mind

today we (that is my mum and i) made up our mind to have our television set repaired. finally. it is not really broken, but has been acting weird since spring and it drove me really nuts during le Tour de France. when you turn it on, the picture flickers in a random pattern for about 10 minutes and after that it works perfectly. i am not really worried about not having a television set because i can watch digital satellite television right here on the desktop. besides, after the extensive coverage of le sommet de la francophonie, monsieur guintrange is not presenting le journal this week and this is the only program i actually watch on a regular basis.

two news items of the 17:00 h GMT edition of le journal (tv5) caught my attention today: “Allergie : une société américaine crée le chat hypoallergénique” and “Jeu vidéo : l’assassinat du président Kennedy reconstitué”. i find the idea of a hypoallergic cat interesting but somehow i am concerned about the tests the poor cats are subjected to. the weird part is that you can already preorder a hypoallergenic kitten for U$ 3500 by depositing U$ 250. however, the kitten won’t be available until 2007. talk about designer capitalism.
the (Matrix) Reloaded hype has finally a rendez-vous with history: now you can (re-)play the assasination of John F. Kennedy in a game called JFK Reloaded. if that wasn’t tasteless enough, here comes the real ugly part: you have to pay U$ 9.99 to be able to “assasinate” JFK and get a “full ballistic analysis” of your shot. this is simply wrong!

yet another absolutely weird tv show: brainiac. i stumbled across it accidentally (as always) while channel surfing this afternoon. it’s supposed to be a science show – sort of at least – where “brainiacs” blow things up, make strange experiments (like putting a tooth in a glass of coke for a night) or try to open a safe with the help of a tank. what is surprising though is that it is a british show. i would have never guessed that the brits are that weird.

PS: if you happen to speak french, check out those hilarious phonecalls “chez neuf telecom“. (Vero, thanks for sharing.)

green day’s new album is out for a few weeks now but i’ve never seem to get hold of the video - until now. i have been a fan of green day since their 1994 album “Dookie”. the first single “American Idiot” has some contemporary relevance, especially now after the outcome of the US elections:

Don’t want to be an American Idiot
Don’t want a nation under the new media
Can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind fuck America

Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alienation
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay
Television dreams of tomorrow
We’re not the ones meant to follow
For that’s enough to argue

Maybe I’m the faggot America
I’m not a part of a redneck agenda
Now everybody do the propaganda
And sing along at the edge of paranoia
(Green Day - American Idiot)

here are two screencaptures from the musicvideo:

something i wanted to post for a while now but never got around doing it: the french health service is promoting free flu shots for people older than 65 as a preventive measure and they produced two television commercials that i find quite amusing. “profitez de la vie, évitez la grippe”, is their slogan and you should really check out the two available commercials. it is interesting how serious medical issues can be presented in a catchy (ok, maybe trivial) and even entertaining way. i bet people remember those commercials easily once they have seen them… however, i have never seen a commercial for flu shots on German or Austrian television… i think cultural differences like that are intriguing, especially since the culture in question is right here in continental Europe…

reality television takes another leap ahead. i have been quite ignorant when it comes to this emerging genre but now it caught my attention. why do people watch ten celebrities camping in the jungle diving into tanks full of worms, spiders and other unpleasant animals? the second season of the German version of “i am a celebrity, get me out of here” is in full swing… and takes socially acceptable voyeurism yet again to a new level. this show is so sick…

what is the sudden hype with Halloween here in good ol’ Europe? don’t get me wrong, i have nothing against Halloween, it surely is a great festivity and an American tradition. so here is what bothers me: why do we have to celebrate it as well? the media is full of it: a weekend with special Halloween-style movies and shows… and this phenomenon is not restricted to Germany or Austria only… but also in France! i can hardly believe it! France! for example, most European countries that adopted it, the sub-unit of the Euro is called the Cent. France is the exception, as it gained permission to continue to use the existing term “Centime”. they even have an institution (”académie française“) that decides what foreign (e.g. english) terms and expressions are “imported” to french, but with the overall aim to keep the language “pure”.

welcome to the wonderful world of globalization. or as Rammstein put it in their new song “Amerika”:

Musik kommt aus dem Weißen Haus,
Und vor Paris steht Mickey Maus.

today i found yet another example of the so-called “perverse landscape of the media”. again, a show of MTV managed to catch my attention while channel-surfing. it is called “Room Raiders” and took “socially accepted voyeurism” to the next level. the (bed-)rooms of three male or female singles are sort of “investigated” and the investigator decides which one of the three candidates he or she wants to date. his or her decision is solely based on the rooms and what they tell (or do not tell) about their owners. it usually comes down to spicy details about the prefered choice of underwear (thongs in drawers!) or looking what porn can be found on the room owner’s computer. (and i always thought french television was weird.)

speaking of french television, which still continues to amaze me… it appears that one has to work only 4 days a week at a certain, not further specified french television station. *lol*

i enjoy watching “le journal” (i.e. the news) on tv5 as i mentioned a few days ago. usually i do not like watching the news because the anchors are mostly middle-aged men or women. but tv5 is different — big time! *g*

i hate mondays. i do not know why or when it started, but i guess it goes back to when i was still in school. it is the beginning of a new week with new problems and new tasks at hand. oh well…

change of topics: since i have purchased the digital set-top-box i find myself watching more television. “more” is realative, it is usually half an hour a day, channel surfing, trying to catch somewhere news in français, but mostly ending up with MTV. this past weekend i happen to stumble across two completely different shows on MTV that caught my interest. first off, “Pimp My Ride”, apparently a show where some guys of a garage revamp a car to fit it to the (presumably) new personality of its owner. quite impressive what they made of this old VW Bug! secondly, “I Want A Famous Face”, which is — to put it bluntly — one of the most perverse shows around! it is about people who want to look like stars with the help of a plastic surgeon. like this guy who is an Elvis impersonator who had a chin job, an eye job, botox injections, a chemical peeling and fat injections to his lips done to look more like “the king”. this is simply… wrong. what does this tell us? that we can alter our appearance as we please. but what do we get a new personality, a new identity as well? i do not think so… hence, it’s perverse or père-verse (pun intended).