Is television a doomsday weapon?

I think wasting time on the computer is just as bad.

I don’t think. The television helps to preclude that.

@CWOTUS lol.

Again, people are responsible for their own choices. You can’t blame TV, and you can’t blame fast food.

Well, it ain’t prolonging our lives, that’s for sure.

But we have so many cures for all the crap we do to ourselves.

…...We got some devastating news on Saturday. My husband has a nephew, his brother’s oldest son. His name is Tom. Tom has a wife and 3 girls. The oldest is 17 or so, the youngest is about 11. I’m always tickled when I see them, because the girls, the whole family is so cool, and so confident, and funny. He’s so involved with them.
He and his wife were in superb shape…they jogged, they ran marathons, always ate healthy.
Saturday were were in Lowe’s and Rick got a phone call. With all of his extended family it seems like we get bad news every other month….but everyone is well into their 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Rick’s dad is 93.
I was watching Rick’s face and I saw it change, so I sat down. When he got off the phone I said, “Dad?”
He looked at me in utter shock and said, “Tom died.”
He’d been jogging Saturday morning…and just had a massive heart attack. Some joggers found him on the trail, but it was too late. He was only 44.
The world really spun around me…..I’m still….The girls…his wife….

@Dutchess_III That’s a shame, I’m sorry, but I guess it just goes to show that one never knows. You can do everything right and still die young or everything self destructive and live to be 90. I know an 88 year old that has smoked for 60 years and she is still going strong.

@RedDeerGuy1 GQ! I wondered the same thing about those all-you-can-eat China/Hibachi/Sushi buffet places that offer unlimited lunch for $10! People sit there shoveling in the fattiest, greasiest, “food” they can for hours. At the end of the meal many are so stuffed they can hardly walk.
Is China subsidizing these places to weaken the US and bankrupt our health care system?

If they could start selling heroin in concentrations far above historic levels and at bargain prices they could secretly destroy or kill 30 – 40,000 young adults every year.
~But that would never happen.

@LuckyGuy They are using ecstasy as a trial treatment for PTSD.

@RedDeerGuy1 Fentanyl laced heroin is on the streets all over the US and is killing as many people as car accidents – and destroying 4 times as many lives.
Before they got busted a lab in Ottawa was making pharma grade and selling it in pre-loaded syringes sealed in blister packs at bargain prices. No need to cook or worry about infected needles.
At the current growth rate. by the end of this year it is estimated that everyone in America will know someone whose life was destroyed by it.

@LuckyGuy edit delete.

It’s all just a symptom of the times we live in. Greed, corruption, loss of hope, what’s left? Mindless TV, hedonistic escape, sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, buffets and strip clubs. Anything to numb and dumb us down ever more.
Maybe strip club buffets. lol
I was in a Pizza place recently with like 6 big screen TV’s just pumping in the mindless sports diversion. Golf, golf, everywhere!

@Coloma “strip club buffets.” I can hear the quotes now….

“I’ll have what he’s having.”
“Are you going to finish that or are you still working on it?”
“I’d like to box this up and take it home.”
“This would be even more delicious with a bit of whipped cream on top.”

@LuckyGuy Haha…perfect!

Only really unto itself. Have you seen the stuff they’re putting on the airwaves now? Clearly the TV show producers are approaching the end of the road for ideas about new shows and plots. It’s all been done. What could be left??

We need to go back to the 60’s, when TV was FUN!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFK9TO1v8H0

Laugh In!!

I was tasked with a rough problem last night.

From about 4AM to 6PM I was working. Such a clusterfuck I texted my sister to bring me 5 jr bacon cheeseburgers from Wendys. That and a gallon of water was my intake. I did make 250 bucks so I don’t have to work for the rest of the week.

But my point is that we need to make stuff here again. Perhaps, Make America Great Again. Instead of shoving Wendys in our face all day while making sweet love to mysql…...

@johnpowell You get by on 250 a week? You are almost as poor as I am.

Something is very wrong. We spend more time online than face to face. We don’t know who our neighbors are. We have lost our contact with the natural world. Add to this the likelihood that our jobs are all going to be replaced by robots, and you have the makings of a major existential crisis.

@LostInParadise I didn’t know my neighbors well before I got internet. I had no wish to.

I don’t know about a doomsday weapon but thinking about its effect on people I am reminded of the poem by T.S. Elliot The Hollow Men:

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

I’m communing with nature every day on this property, sometimes too much nature. haha

Before I had cable, I used to do loads of things. Visit friends, go out, go out for picnics, go shopping, go to the beach, for walks and all sorts. Not so much after cable. I reckon TV can change things.