Revealed: The Real Reason Heath Ledger Died

When you think about it, it's obvious isn't it.

She might only have a five second part, but that's all it took.

It's all part of the Mandy Richardson curse. Stay away from that one.

Diary of a Media Cynic

As we all know, I've been a professional cynic since pretty much the moment of conception (my heart's not in it though).

My number one cynical observation of the media has to be my stunning critique that the reason they don't want us to study it (and so deride it so often) is because they don't want us to know what's really going on, and bring them crumbling down. Hey they've got to make money haven't they, and if we all know what's really going on, then maybe we won't buy their papers.

I, for one, don't buy so many papers anymore because I'm of the belief that there's a global paper conspiracy, and that if we consume too much newspaper ink, we're all going to die. And that's a fact. It must be, because I read it in the Daily Express, and we know how great they are, really.

So from now on, I've decided to keep a diary of all my cynical observations and let you lucky, lucky folk here at blog central read it. You can feel all naughty for reading someone else's diary (which I'm told you're not supposed to do, but have always found the rule very boring) and I can take some joy in deriding the world. Well let's face it, as a cynic, there's not going to be much joy felt, but that's OK, it just gives me something else to complain about.

That's all for now folks, keep media savvy, but above all, don't trust anything.

A foray into feminism.

Inspired by the debates of Tuesday and the fact that I am within a few metres of someone actually writing a feminism essay, here are my thoughts (along with some other's) on the topic of the feminist and anti-feminist reading of Sex and the City.

Because I'm not writing an essay, and because I probably should be doing some work instead, I would like to present the following thoughts for your delectation as bullet points, summised into pro and anti-feminist readings:

FEMINIST

- All of the women are successful in their careers. In this sense sometimes this is portrayed as over the top - like we are supposed to believe Carrie's lifestyle on the back of one column a week.

- All of the women live or at some point live on their own, independently rented or owned apartment.

- Despite the several boyfriends/husbands they get through in the time, they always come back to the female friendship group, which is the most stable relationship of all.

- They are shown to have a fairly male attitude to sex in some episodes, especially Samantha, viewing it as outside relationships for instance.

ANTI-FEMINIST

- Although Carrie is successful in her job, her writing is ultimately defined by men.

- They are presented themselves as being very much defined by their relation to men, relationships are very important to them, and ultimately they are all paired off and settle down into a traditional monogamous relationship.

- They are all concerned or, in Carrie's case, obsessed by fashion.

- There is very little discussion about politics, culture, travel, or in fact anything other than relationships (then again, we don't follow them 24-hours a day).

There's probably more, so if you think of them, let me know and I'll add them to list. Now I probably should do some actual work, instead of this dilly-dallying.

Keep media savvy. x

The differences between men's and women's magazines.

My conversational opposite and I, having previously discussed time-travel, multiverses and alternate dimensions soon moved on to the differences between men's and women's magazines. I can't remember how the conversation evolved into this.

Oh yes I can, it was discussing Nancy and Stacey's previous conversation involving the watermelons.

First of all I said that if you read the kind of magazines that feature watermelons so heavily, it's of course going to be very likely that you will have increased exposure to them. I also pointed out that one does not have to read every article in a magazine, there's no law against skipping a page - remember that folks.

Then we digressed into which magazines I read. My CO(conversational opposite) asked me if I had read Zoo and Nuts (I think he was joking), but I replied that yes I had. I said I think they're better than their female equivalents. At least they're not full of contradictions and confusing statements such as "Woah, look how fat celebrity X has got since she put on 2lbs", flip the page, "Why can't we be happy with our body shape?" flip the page again, "here's a diet to help you lose weight". And remember, you can't be happy with an imperfect body shape, but you should feel mighty guilty about that. Happiness = thinness, unless you go too far, then you're an anorexic disgrace, but what made you like this in the first place? What a nightmare.

Just stick to Zoo, you know what you're getting, a naked lady, something about a car, a joke, a bit about football and maybe something a bit weird. That's much better than all the crap that comes out of Cosmo and the like. I also said something highly profound about the male icons being famous for doing something such as being a good football player or an actor, whereas female ones were more likely to be famous for having a pretty face or big knockers.

I really was on a roll today.

That's it, no more thinking for ten years. Officially.

30 hours of football on television.... good Lord no!

Yesterday I was watching the no.1 current affairs program on the box - yes, The Wright Stuff on channel 5.

Matthew Wright was complaining about the amount of Euro 2008 coverage that will be on the BBC and ITV despite the fact that no home nations will be in the finals. He then went on to suggest that this added up to a the sublimely large figure of 30 hours. Given that the tournament lasts about two weeks or so - surely this only adds up to 2 hours a day? If people really cannot find something better to do with their lives than watch television for 2 hours a day then I think we should start to worry. Have these people never heard of music, books, conversation - leaving the house?

I realise that some people will be miffed because EastEnders is on an hour late or something, but seriously I don't think it warranted a fifteen minute vitriolic campaign by Wrighty. In fact it bordered on xenophobia, suggesting that nobody would want to watch foreign teams playing, adding that only Polish immigrants are going to benefit. Now, I'm not a massive fan of football myself but I know that lots of people watch it for the sake of watching a game and seeing competitors at a high level. I'm sure that many people will pick a country that they are particularly fond of/tied in some way to and follow that instead.

And never mind all this, Wrighty failed to acknowledge the several million people in Britain who don't usually have a team in such competitions anyway, yet still have to put up with blanket coverage on the UK-wide television network.

Poor show Wrighty!

Electioneering - A review of election material

A selection of "junk mail" has passed through our letter box in the past few weeks. It's not the usual endless montains of menus from Pizza Time, but a last ditch attempt to get people to vote for certain parties.

We received "handwritten" letters in the post, which banged on and on about all the good work that one party had been doing in the area, but neglected to make it obvious which party they were writing from. I don't know if they were relying on us having a knowledge of the name of the candidates, but it didn't work. We eventually figured out that it was from the Liberal Democrats as indicated in the tiny small print, that alone made me not want to vote for them.

The Lib Dems seemed to have been making the most effort to convince us however as they also sent round a free "news"paper, which basically slagged off their rivals. Again, it wasn't immediately obvious that it was from them, but was presumably intended as a "subtle" attack on Labour and the Conservatives to make us think - we must vote for someone else! The paper was very sensationalist and, in my view, made a spectacle of the whole issue. But I suppose, that's the nature of modern politics.

There are a number of problems with these electioneering tactics. It's a big waste of paper. Luckily here in Cardiff we are fortunate to be provided by the council with recycling opportunities for such wastage. Secondly however, it's sensationalist style really does dumb down the political debate.

But I'm not going to on a big rant about dumbing down because that's been done far too often. Instead I would like to suggest that at least it gets us talking about it, and it may, in at least some cases get people looking at something related to the elections, if only for a brief second.

Well after this local election double-blog bonanza I am all blogged out.

I'm off to wait for Peter Snow and his swingometer (if you were reading yesterday's blog - this is NOT an innuendo - everyone knows I'm hot for Jon Snow.)

Keep media savvy x

Fish-hooked

This advert has been deemed the most offensive of all the year. Apparently this has the ability to cause distress to kiddies.

If that's the case why don't the parents have a nice chat with the kiddies and tell them this what happens to them if you put a cigarette in your mouth, and maybe some of the 8 year olds won't take it up - or maybe they'll just bypass the cigarettes and go straight on to the crack. What a cynical outlook on life!

This got me thinking about the kind of person who is likely to complain about advertising, what compels them to do it, do they have nothing better to do or is it a good thing, a kind of regulation from outside. Unfortunately, these complainers are, in all probablity, far outnumbered by the type of kill-joys who deemed the Quorn "touch my food, feel my fork" advert as a promotion of "bullying". Oh dear. Luckily, the ASA saw sense and didn't ban the advert.

Tomorrow I will be doing a round-up of some of the election media to come my way, in conjunction with my special election day blog on my main page! It's a polling day blogging extravaganza!

That's all for now,

Keep media savvy. x