A while back I wrote an entry on our society's tendency to lie to one another rather than to issue any form of rejection, and I vowed to refrain from doing so in the future. Then this morning I was standing in my bathroom, half-dressed and thirty minutes from a dentist appointment when I realized that I would rather be mounted by an angry water buffalo than get my teeth cleaned today. And considering one of the perks of being an adult is that you don't have to do anything you don't want to, I decided to call the dentist and make up a lie about my keys being hidden somewhere amidst all of the move-related flotsam littering my apartment. Clearly, in this instance the lie was a better option than calling to say I just changed my mind or simply pulling a no show. Nevertheless, the question remains: Did I break my vow, or in this instance was my fib a justifiable action to take? The honorable thing to have done would obviously have been to show up for the appointment, but that wasn't about to happen. Hmmm..........Oh, who cares?
My girlfriend and I have come across our first hurdle in living together. We both are obsessed with reality television, but unfortunately our tastes differ greatly. As such I am subjected to two nights a week of So You Think You Can Dance, everything related to the curiously named The Real World, and endless reruns of America's Next Top Model. I am convinced that you can find Top Model on TV at any hour of the day, seven days a week. It drives me crazy. And seeing Tyra Banks continuously condemn high fashion's desire for anorexic models while doing her best to facilitate and encourage women to try to conform to that same image is absurd. Oops, Righteous Tony snuck in there for a minute. Get back in your cage! Anyways, why can't my girlfriend just like the same terrible shows I like? You know, the ones that center around the humiliation of minor celebrities and a total absence of any sort of cohesive plot. Has any couple ever broken up over television? At least I'll have my revenge once football season starts. College football every Saturday from 11 in the morning until the last game of the night ends. I can't wait.
In keeping with my penchant for stealing links from my friend Jeff's blog, I felt it my duty to pass along a link to this cyber-paradise of distraction. I went to this website around 10 this morning and spent the next four hours exploring its wonders. I'm a sucker for lists, and there are a multitude of wonderful lists on various rediculous topics related to pop culture. The one I have linked to is my favorite, "Top 15 Most Outrageous Claims In Pop Music History".
Regarding the Michael Vick saga, I find it interesting how much outrage has been stirred up by his alleged involvement in dogfighting. As this MSNBC article points out, from a PR standpoint he may have been better off being under indictment for sexual assault. Because so many people have dogs, myself included, there is an emotional component tied to people's reaction to dog fighting that warps their view of where it actually stands in the hierarchy of crimes. That's not to say it isn't a disgusting practice, but were people similarly outraged by Kobe Bryant's alleged rape of a teenager in Colorado a few years back? I don't remember that being the case. I'm not often intrigued by questions of a sociological nature, but this one makes me wonder.
And one final link to a video I saw this morning on some news outlet. It shows a baby water buffalo being attacked by a lion pride, then a crocodile joins the fray and plays tug of war with the lions, then the herd of buffalo returning en masse to stage a last minute rescue of the youngster. I couldn't find the edited version of the clip and the one on youtube is long, but it's pretty cool and you can skip through it to find the good parts.
-T
