Yearly Archives: 2002

TV Addiction is Real

I was visiting a friend this weekend and somehow conversation wandered off into a discussion about TV Addiction and he started rambling off about a Scientific American article that he read back in February. As i was buried in my own research, i never even heard about this little bit flying by. How great is it to finally feel justified in my hatred of the TV for its addictive powers!

Apparently, we are biologically programmed with an orienting response that handles situations that provide a quick change in scenary. This is crucial because when something changes rapidly, we need to focus on it. Blood rushes to the brain to handle the thought processing necessary to react to such stimuli. Unfortunately, it takes upwards of 16 seconds to adjust to such changes in order for blood to leave the brain and stop focusing. Television capitalizes on this because scene-shifting is so common. Thus, we focus on the TV and never let go. Our processes slow down below sleep levels, making us feel even more groggy because we aren’t actually metabolizing at a high level. This sudden shift in reduced body processing is what makes us feel initially relaxed by sitting down in front of the TV – everything grinds to a halt. But the result is problematic and we start to feel gross with continued sitting, but are unable to break our gaze away from the addictive box. The initial draw to the TV becomes both a habit and an addiction, as we want that sudden stress relief, regardless of feeling even grosser hours later. Mental note: TV == heroin.

Now i can feel better knowing that i never want a TV in my home.

Keywords for search: Csikszentmihalyi

too emotionally involved

I went to bed horrified; i woke up crying as NPR articulated all of the ways in which we are becoming a society in which i have no interest in associating myself with. A Republican House & Senate??? Mitt Romney?? Mandating English-only in classrooms? Female candidates lost almost everywhere (and Hawaii gets a Republican one!). All major drug reform laws shot down (even those that would have instituted rehab over jail). At least there were two smiles: Rendell in PA and Cicilline in Providence. But dear god, it’s been a painful morning and i’m way to emotionally involved with politics.

Must remember: a grown-up activist no longer gets angry or depressed, but just finds everything in life absurd. One day i’ll be there..

blog culture

I love that blogs are reaching a certain level of mainstream-ness, complete now with a Portrait of a Blogger. What i love even more is that V-Day is willing to let me explore the potential uses of blogs in non-profit land. Yippeee! Coming soon: a full revamp of the V-Day web presence!

Out of control..

Ok… at 11PM last night, i had reached a breaking point. I had been working my toosh off in a freezing cold apartment to help get a feature launched for the lovely V-Spot. My body ached and screamed at me: all it wanted to do was dance. Well, you can’t dance in Boston most nights, which was where i happened to be located. So, with a little bit of begging and a complete dump of my *entire* car, i grabbed my dear friend and off we wisked to NYC for the most beautiful bouncing that i’ve had in a long time. The party was located in a beautiful space, on the 9th floor of a warehouse in DUMBO, overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge with 2 story windows that let me peek out and have great conversations with the East River about the way in which life flows. The decos were great, the music was contemplation-style and i was in heaven. I bounced, watched the sun rise, floated around and did spirals with my friend. Then, with the party over, we drove up 15 on an unbelievably beautiful day, seeing the magical fall leaves in all of their red/orange/yellow glory. Still not exhausted from seeking adventures, i donned a skirt and we went off to play in playground land, acting like little children, so excited about everything. We swang on swings, walked the railroad tracks, played cribbage and saw Spirited Away before finally reaching the point now of sheer exhaustion. But OMG was it a magical and most wonderful adventure!!!

dreams

Ok.. so i never remember my dreams, which is why i never recorded them here even though old friends of mine used to use their blog for precisely that. But somehow, today, i managed to actually hold on to bits of mine…

I was standing in line to get Howard Zinn’s autograph. Although i wanted to get it on People’s History, i only had one of a million copies of The Vagina Monologues on me, so i planned to get his script there (which is weird given my reasoning for getting authors’ signatures). When i got to the front of the line, the book’s cover fell off, but he signed it anyhow like it was no big deal. And then he started giving me advice about life before he was joined by James Bond who was also giving me advice. Somehow everyone else disappeared and we all got into this really fascinating discussion about the meaning of life. Then, we were outside of the school hall where signatures were happening and were on a cruise boat and Zinn and Judith Butler were sharing a cabin and trying to get me to join them for lunch, but somehow i was busy and had to go….

When i woke, NPR’s Connection was just starting a piece on James Bond… I wonder what other NPR discussions i slept through (luckily there were no sniper conversations in my dream).

implantable chips

Ack! The FDA just approved implantable ID chips for humans! Can we say privacy?

Frankly, it’s just a very weird world. I cannot honestly follow the logic that underlies these (and many other) government decisions. The decisions that seem to evolve in our society follow corporate and power monger’s temporary needs, without contemplating the long term effects on society. And of course, as we’re allowing for scary chips to be implanted into people, we’re taking away the right for people to put what they want into their systems (the latest: Salvia Divinorum).

Certainly, i have a thing about the War on Drugs and how problematic it is economically, socially and culturally. Rather than letting people live & let live, we create arbitrary rules about what we determine to be drugs and what we determine to be economic powerhouses and therefore get separate classifications (tobacco, alcohol, caffeine). But even beyond the War on Drugs, what’s up with our housing policies where we spend far more money to put people in shelters than to provide low income housing because we don’t want to put that in the budget? Or the death penalty which costs 10x more than life in prison and doesn’t provide any other useful social service?

As a youth, i was confused… As an adult, i’m truly lost.