The Rag Rant

How destructive, the petty diversions of our life. Americans are being destroyed by consumption, and not the Violetta type. Our TV watching is approaching a third of our lives (up to an average of 8.2 hours/day/household, according to Time Magazine), and we continually fill our waking existence with intellectual tripe. Celebrity marriages, star gossip, fashion obsession. Are these items that will help you improve your lives? Will knowing that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' baby looks like (even getting a glimpse of her bronzed shit) help you in your own marriage? Improve your work life? Become healthier, wiser, a more active citizen in this country?

No, they will not. Instead, these trivialities are distractions from your life. While entertainment is certainly not looked down upon, to spend hours of television programming, newspaper print space, and vast amounts of time in your own life ingesting, memorizing, prioritizing these tidbits is unconscionable. Why do we care? What relevance does this have to our own selves? Nada. Rather, we use these pieces of pop culture to remove us from our own reality, to escape from the difficult thoughts that lie with our own lives and the decisions that need to be made regarding our future. It is easier to think about Brangelina than about the impeding death of Social Security; Jessica Simpson's new fling is more fun to contemplate than trade deficits or poor education or the illegal immigrant debacle.

Hollywood will not be denied; and in their cunning they have isolated ourselves from our own rational brains, fractionated off a portion of it in order to serve no particular useful purpose. And we have swallowed, as a society, hook, line, and sinker. We buy trashy magazines, watch the tabloid shows, participate in useless water-cooler tirades and gossip trading, rather than trying to use those neurons, use that time, use those contacts to try and actually do something constructive. Heaven forbid that we attempt to improve our lives, indulge in our own artistic side, try to construct a more perfect union. We face serious issues, and to sit around diddling our lives away on such star-studded bullshit is beyond me, and should be beyond us. Put down People. It is not about you, it is not for you, it exists merely to waste your money and time.