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Dear Actors Who Smoke In Movies, You're Killing People

(from the Center for Media and Democracy)

When I worked for RJ Reynolds and BAT, my clients regularly parroted the industry line which is that cigarette advertising doesn't increase rates of smoking. "Ve are merely helping zem switch to our brands," my German BAT client Christophe would say.

Well, now it look like zey ver wrong.

This week the National Cancer Institute published an extensive, 684-page monograph that evaluates current evidence regarding the power of the media to both encourage and discourage tobacco use.  NCI found that "The total weight of evidence -- from multiple studies, conducted by investigators from different disciplines, and using data from many countries -- demonstrates a causal relationship between tobacco advertising and promotion and increased tobacco use."

They also found that smoking in movies (not moviegoers, but actors in the movies, duh) causes more children to start smoking. They say that smoking in the movies is pervasive and has a causal relationship with youth initiation of smoking.

“Smoking in movies is responsible for addicting 1,080 U.S. adolescents to tobacco every day, 340 of whom will die prematurely as a result.” -- Editorial, The Lancet British medical journal, June 10, 2003

So, Brad, Denzel, Travolta, Crowe, Weinstein, Cohen, Farley, Bochco, Walkin,- think about that fellas.

A New Movie That's Utterly Religulous

When I die, I'm going to go to hell. In my hell there are hot tub parties, free drugs, tons of nudity, a lot of swearing, dirty dancing, and a never ending supply of good, cold Belgian beer. Sound good to you? Well praise Jesus, you're invited. Bring your friends. All you have to do is go see Bill Maher's new documentary film Religulous (in theaters Oct. 3). That's right, for a measly $10 and a couple hours of your time, you can spend all eternity in my personal juke joint corner of hell laughing, dancing, drinking, screwing, and eating Swiss chocolate. Oh yeah, I didn't mention that before: free chocolate. Come one, come all.

The point of the movie is, of course, to point out the contradictions in, and ridiculousness of, all religions. Just a bunch of popular fairy tales. A quote from the trailer:

Bill Maher: ...if Santa Clause can hit every house in the world...

Ex-Jew For Jesus: I don't, I don't believe in Santa Clause

Bill Maher: Of course not. That's what I meant. Why go around the world dropping presents down a chimney. One man hearing everybody murmuring to him at the same time...that I get.

Here's Bill Maher regarding the movie: "I don’t say in the movie that I’m an atheist. I don’t like that term, because I think it mirrors the certitude of religion. I say I don’t know. And if you don’t know—and you don’t—just man up and say you don’t know. Don’t turn to silly stories and ancient myths. That should be good enough for people. When these myths were created, when the Bible was written, man didn’t know what an atom or a germ was, or where the sun went at night, or why the women got pregnant. [Laughs.] They needed stories to answer the questions. But it’s the 21st century now, and there’s a tape on YouTube of Sarah Palin with a witch doctor! Someone who’s telling her he’s curing her of witches! It’s our country, for crying out loud. People should be ashamed, appalled, and embarrassed."

Trailer is here:

Bill's Larry King Interview (with more clips from the movie) is here...

And, of course, the Ricky Bobby Baby Jesus grace prayer is here...

Interestingly, Google searches for the movie are limited to coastal states. California and New York being the most active "Religulous" searchers.

Muslim females can get your Khimar and Naqab set (with convenient arm holes) here.

Jews can get your kosher cell phones over here.

Christians can get their Jesus Christ TV Military Cap over here

 

Batman Totals Guys Car - Insurance Company Balks

This could happen to you.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Aniston & Mayer: An exploration into whether I actually can care less

Ryan Seacrest, the host of America's Top 40 radio show, today implied that either Cameron Diaz or Jennifer Aniston is engaged to either John Mayer or Paul Sculfo - as 30 million teenagers hop on the Google to find out it's Diaz who's got the ring from Sculfo.  How's that for free advertising?

So Jen's goanna have to wait for the real thing. But in terms of actual media coverage, for some reason Aniston & Mayer are the match made in publicist heaven. Since I can remember, there's nary been a supermarket checkout counter that's gone a day without a picture of Aniston. The past year, her mug has been accompanied by Mayer's name and perhaps a smaller shot of the two of them smooching at a pool somewhere.

At first I thought to myself, "I couldn't care less." But then I thought, "You know, maybe I'm not trying hard enough." You know what I mean? I could try harder to care less. I'm not sure I'm applying my ambivalence to it's fullest potential.  Clue number one: the fact that I'm blogging about it right now means I probably could care less. I care about it to the same extent that I care about other things in the mental environment that annoy me. I could just ignore it, like lots of guys my age. But I'm a noticer. It's kind of what I do.

So the question I am wrestling with, is it possible for me to notice things without actually caring about them? Or is that like stubbing your toe and choosing not to acknowledge the sharp pain shooting up your body? Could you just say, "Oh, there's a utterly fake and cheesy exploitation of the American attention span - filling our heads full of useless information," and then just move on?

It would probably mean divorcing myself from the emotion of resentment that generally follows such noticing - resenting the countless publicity people and paparazzi that shove these semi-fake stories about real people in our faces at every single opportunity. Then it would mean divorcing myself of the frustration that I feel that I let my eyes rest on such drivel and read it. It would mean stopping myself from pondering the lives of those people who actually LIVE for these stories and wondering how they fail to see what life is actually all about. It would mean I would have to stop myself from feeling disgust for my own culture. On the plus side, I would also mean I don't go to the next logical step which is to conclude that clearly I'm an elitist and that I should be ashamed of myself. Sigh.   

I don't think I can care less. Damn it.

 

Damn you, Jennifer Aniston and John Maher. Damn you to the fiery depths of hell.

From the creator of The Bullshit Observer...a new blog

Together with some friends, I have a new blog creation called The Conceptualist. The topic will be completely fresh ideas and it will feature the same whimsical analysis that you've come to expect from The Bullshit Observer. The idea of The Conceptualist is not just to notice new things, but to celebrate brave thinkers and to marvel at their creations.

How is this different, you ask?

Well, I think it's probably the only blog I've seen that lives entirely in the world of ideas. It's not just about highlighting bizarre new inventions like Geekology. It's not about displaying new products like bazillions of blogs out there. It's about taking the new ideas and turning them over in our minds and seeing how they got that way and what they could become. It's as much about the why as it is about the what. In short, it's about conceptualism - the act of seeing past what is there to what could be and talking about it.

Incidentally, the header image is my friend's daughter, Sophie swimming underwater.

This means, of course, that The Bullshit Observer will need to take a back seat for the time being. That means that my posts will be more sporatic. To any regular reader out there, I am sorry to interrupt your BSO experience.

West Virginians Exercise Their Right To Utter Stupidity

Hi-owdy. We've got the 'lection comin' tuh West Virginia and there's quite a hub-bub raised about this O-bama fella runnin'. First of all, he's black and that makes us a little scared cuz them gots issues with us white folk from way back. And what's more, his middle nayme is Hussein. I thank we've had enough of the Hussein people - if you know what I mean. So all 'n all, O-bama makes all of us here in West Virginia prit-tty nervous. We're got to protect what we got and freedom is not something that should be taken for granted. We've got the liberties of our childrin tuh thank about for the future, ya know.

Mother nature does indeed have a plan in place to cull the human race. It's a good one, too. Although, it's not what you might think. She's not going to rub us out through natural disasters, disease or even scarcity. Nope, the plan is that we're going to rub ourselves out. Sounds pretty dumb, huh? After all, we're humans, right? We're comparatively smart.

Well, yes and no. For some reason, these days the dumber we are, the more kids we have. It appears that Darwinism has reached a point with our species where it's kinda gone sideways and turned over and smashed into a tree. The dumber of the species are proliferating and hence starting to dominate the gene pool. As a result, the quality of intelligence is getting rarer and rarer and the species is actually devolving. We're getting less and less civilized, more irrationally fearful, and more violent. See West Virginia. See George Bush. See Iraq. Oh, and please see Idiocracy:

Bullshit Observer's 500th Post

I started this blog back in 2005 after slogging through five long years of Bush without a place to put my discontent. A sentient being can only withstand so much crap before they either crack, explode or begin to wither. This was, and still is, my way to rage against the machine and institute a small degree of sanity over in my own little tiny nook of the virtual universe.

In short, it's therapy.

As therapy, it has been a huge success. I feel good about these 500 posts. As legitimate opposition to the enormous and omnipresent bullshit producing machines in the world, I will say that it has probably had very little impact. I've only had something like 65,000 page views. But, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Slaughterhouse Five, "So it goes."

I am happy that it's out there and that's really all that matters. In fact, from what I've found, I would have had more media popularity if my name was something that media outlets could mention. But that's completely fine with me.

For this 500th post, I wanted to point out ten of my more meaningful (to me) posts.

The Movies Critics Are Raving About: Is about the Hollywood crap machine.

I want to be a little girl when I grow up: is about the female self-image.

God is killing us: is about religion.

Genders: Man-tradiction?: Is about the changing roles of men today.

I'll make you famous: Is about America's fascination with fame and the industries that it has spawned.

Parents Less Upwardly Mobile These Days: Is about the challenge of a modern workplace for people who put parenting first.

America Needs More Springfields: Is about suburban sprawl and the forces that spawn it.

Advertising Needs A New Agency: Is about how the traditional agency flops around in the digital world.

Meet Your Agency: Is a little insight for clients into how their agency really works.

Dear World, Sorry About That: Is my own personal apology to the world on behalf of America.

Enjoy.If you want to comment, feel free. It's nice to know there are people out there sometimes.  I'd be writing here either way though. As I said above, this blog is really more for my sanity than anything else.

Thanks for reading!

The Bullshit Observer

Stop Loss Controversey

People out there in Google search-box-land appear to be very upset about the movie Stop Loss. They keep furiously typing in the words, "Bullshit Stop Loss Movie" or "Stop Loss Movie Bullshit" into "The Google" and visiting this here media outlet (due to an earlier post about the movie). Many of those visitors have made a pretty moving case that the movie Stop Loss, out in Theaters on March 28th, is a load of hooey.

A little FAQ for everyone else joining the conversation:

What does Stop loss mean? The retention/extension of soldiers in the service beyond their initial term.

What is this movie all about? From the Director of BOYS DON'T CRY, the movie is a fictional story about one otherwise obedient soldier's decision to either ship back to Iraq or go to Canada to avoid being stop lossed. The movie regards stop loss as a "loophole" in the soldier's contract and treats it as if it were a "Back Door Draft."

What is the controversy all about? As far as I can tell, the movie may or may not be misrepresenting the agreement between soldier and military. According to several veteran visitors to this blog, the military makes it pretty clear that the guys are signing an eight year agreement consisting of 4 years of active duty and 4 years of reserve duty and that the second part could easily mean active duty if the situation necessitates (i.e. they could be "stop lossed").  However, it has also been described (on Military.com, no less) as, "...an order forcing some members of the country's volunteer armed forces to remain in service beyond their contractually agreed-upon term." That could mean 8 years.

Still others describe stop loss as completely unrelated to that initial agreement of an 8 year term and more about paragraph 9c of the enlistment contract which states:

In the event of war, my enlistment in the Armed Forces continues until six (6) months after the war ends, unless my enlistment is ended sooner by the President of the United States.

As to whether the stop-loss policy itself is bullshit, I think it probably is. It appears that soldiers who have served 8 years ARE getting stop-lossed. One example features a soldier named Emiliano Santiago who sued the government over the policy after he was extended beyond his eight year contract to December 25, 2031 - essentially forcing him to become a career military guy. He lost. Furthermore, who's to say when this war has actually ended? What defines that? The paragraph 9c of the service agreement was probably written during the times of traditional wars where one side wins and the other loses. We don't fight those wars anymore. No, when we fight wars now, everybody loses, nobody wins, and it doesn't truly end until we send everyone home minus whatever body part they had to leave behind. Which in the case of Iraq and a McCain presidency, that could easily be 2031.

Songs Of Peace In The Face of War

Imagine coming home from the Iraq war.Let's say you're injured. Paralyzed by a bullet to the spine. Wheel-chair bound. No job. Your number one challenge is just getting out of your own house. Thanks to you're old pals Bush and Cheney, it's going to be a herculean chore just to get from one end of a day to the other for the rest of your life. The list of things that you're capable of doing just got really really REALLY short. But thankfully for you, one of those things is listen to music.

And that is exactly how this body of music came to be. The music CD is called "Body of War" and it's featured in an upcoming documentary by the same name. The gorgeous website claims that the CD consists of songs that inspired 25 year old returning war vet Thomas Young, who was paralyzed from a bullet to his spine after but a few days of serving in Iraq and not having fired a single round. 

Public Enemy performs "Son of a Bush," System of a Down performs "BYOB", Pearl Jam does "Masters of War" (see VIDEO performance below),  Bruce Springsteen belts "Devils and Dust," Niel Young plucks "Restless Consumer," Roger Waters, Tori Amos, Tom Waits. Lots of Lyrical Jabs at the criminals that led this nation into the Iraq war.

Apparently, Eddie Vetter wrote this song and one other about the Iraq war veteran featured in the movie within a week and a half.

Speaking of criminals, the movie site has a pretty active forum where I discovered information about how to support AWOL soldiers in places like Canada. The fact that Bush lied to get us into the war and himself was an AWOL Air Force Lt. makes the criminalization of AWOL soldiers utterly preposterous.