Television and hype

If you spend an amount of time browsing the actively populated areas of the internet, you're probably aware that there are several television shows with a large following behind them, and with that following, hype. Lots of it.

These shows being Game of Thrones (HBO), Breaking Bad (AMC, ended), The Walking Dead (AMC), and to a lesser extent, Mad Men (also AMC). It's no secret that I watch a lot of television - over 120 shows - but of those four, I only watch one and a half. "How can there be a half?" I actively watch Mad Men (am in the process of catching up again), and I watched Breaking Bad up to and including Season 4 Episode 7 before I finally threw in the towel. I'm sure I'll finish it eventually, but it never really won me over.

That's my issue - it never won me over. I'd heard people praising it like it was the best thing ever to grace television screens, that it's the equivalent to sliced bread and the second coming rolled into one. The Wikipedia page says it's "widely regarded as one of the greatest television series of all time". To me, it simply wasn't. It was slow paced and empty, but not in a good way. When things happened, they felt like they were just trying to ramp up the pace for the sake of it, and when nothing happened, it felt more like a bottle episode than a deep focus on the characters (see S3E10, 'Fly'). As bitter a pill as it may be to swallow, Walter White is an asshole. He started off noble (perhaps too much so) and with good intentions, but he broke bad far too soon and then roller coastered around that level. The characters in the show are just... extremes of humans in a way. I'm sure there are people in the world like that, but for them to all be in the same circle? Anyway, I'm getting distracted. The point is, it didn't live up to the hype I heard.

Mad Men is another matter. I find Don Draper's mentality fascinating, the look into the not-so-distant past equally fascinating, and all the characters very deep. Incidentally, the hype there was a few years ago for Mad Men seems to have died down, and now the only hype I see about it is from dedicated fans - not posers jumping on a bandwagon.

Maybe I'm just jaded, maybe it's all just a social construct. Perhaps people watch these hyped up shows because their friends go on about them, so they watch them and then, to avoid being different, rave about how awesome it is and all views snowball out of proportion. This could be why I 'bear' Mad Men, because the only other people talking about it are other people who actually care about it.

I am not a hipster. I don't get annoyed at certain shows because they become popular, I'm just irked when hordes flock to mediocre programming and hidden gems die because of a lack of viewers.

Why can't you add audiobooks to the iTunes queue?

I just tried to drag an audiobook into my iTunes queue, and it wouldn't let me. I then tried to add it to play next via the iOS Remote, and I couldn't there either, so it must be a lack of function rather than a UI oversight.

I understand that the two are different types of media, despite being transmitted through the same means. However, is it not feasible that I may want to chill to some music before delving into an audiobook, and then may want some music afterwards to relax themselves out of the tension of some exciting roller coaster of fiction. Better still, if audiobook publishers used .m4b files properly and added chapter markers, would it not be a neat experience to listen to an audiobook, with chapters separated by some tracks of your choosing?

One final note, I spotted in the iOS Remote app that the "Rewind 30s" button is displayed when an audiobook was playing, which is useful. However, I can't find such a button on iTunes itself.

(One last note - when viewing this post the i in iTunes looks uppercase. It is not; I wrote the i in lowercase, it just seems to display merged)

"Hot N Cold"

I am melting. The dilapidated fan is whirring away in vain, I am wearing just jeans and a t-shirt, and the window is wide open. Yet I continue to melt.

I rotate between sitting at the desk on the uncomfortable chair, collapsing on the bed until it becomes too warm, or just walking around the room with my hands on my head in exasperation.  With those fidgeting factors, this could take a while to write. Although, I don't even know what I'm writing.

The one thing I am certain of is that if I had to choose between the weather being forever cold or forever hot, I would choose cold. A psychologist or some such person may say that if the weather was cold at the moment, I would long for warm weather. They would be wrong. Even in the bitter cold of winter, I have said on numerous occasions that I would rather it was always that cold rather than stiflingly hot.

The heat makes me stressed, uncomfortable, agitated, short tempered, unproductive, and bored. If I want to get something done, I may take a shot at it, and then give up because the heat is all too much. In an attempt to embrace the warm weather, I wanted to sit outside in the sunshine and read a book - something I haven't done in a long time. One problem - the sun is not shining, there was even rain earlier, and the skies have been bland if anything. Yet I still find it warm. I'm just not cut out for warm weather. When it's cold, I can just put more clothes on. When it's warm, well, it would be awkward to remove clothes.

I have an urge to burst out and find some sunshine to sit in, yet I cannot find any.

One whole big game of catch-up

Life. That's what human life is, in this artificial construct we call society.

We spend our lives improving ourselves in comparison to others, dead or alive. But, "life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it". It seems natural to spend most of your life trying to catch up to others, such as parents. Racing to make a financial success out of your life to appease your parents before their clocks run out. But what was their success that you have to live up to? It could be working for some huge corporation that's destroying the planet, selling hours of their life just to buy a house for their own parents to live in. "Steven, I didn't sell out son. I bought in. Keep that in mind." We buy in, in an effort to meet or beat our peers, in a cyclical manner that pushes society forwards.

Instead, you do you. Ignore what society demands, so you can truly focus on what you love doing. By doing so, without the distraction of society's demands, what you achieve may better society in an even greater way than if you'd followed the preset path society carved for you.

Yes, this is cynical as sin, and may even sound arrogant or ignorant, but the bottom line is:

Be the best YOU can be. Aim for your dreams, not someone else's.

My issue with Netflix Originals

As the internet is well aware, Season 2 of House of Cards was released today. As with the past season, it was released all at once. While this is a modern, unconventional rock-the-boat strategy, I dislike it, and don't think it's wise.

With conventional broadcast TV, episodes are released one by one, week after week, in a scheduled timeslot, unless they're preempted by happenings. Either way, the day after airing, people discuss the episode, and most importantly, memory and current activity of a show can last up to half a year. With something like House of Cards, you could watch all thirteen episodes one by one at a self-chosen time and pace yourself, but with all the content already available, why wait? Especially when others will have just "binge watched" (a term I dislike because it's the sort of term old media would come up with to try and sound relevant) it all in a day. Now their minds are loaded with spoilers that, if they are a decent human, they won't share. Once you've caught up and are ready to discuss it, it's no longer fresh in their mind. What's more, House of Cards isn't likely to cross their mind until a few weeks before Season 3 is released, when the hype and 'news' starts surging.

When a broadcast TV show is off the air for a while, even just a  mid-season break, it doesn't exactly aid the popularity of the show - more casual viewers will forget about it when it returns. When a show is 'on' for one day a year and then the wait commences again, memories will forget.

Other than the broken social 'watercooler' aspect of House of Cards, where a typical conversation is merely:

"Do you watch House of Cards?"

"Yes. It's awesome, right?"

"Totally"

"Good talk"

missing any intricacies or plot details for fear of spoiling it, as far as I can see, this strategy does work for Netflix, as it's a subscription based service that people tend to visit on a whim when they've got nothing else to do, and dipping in and out at your own pace  works a lot better when you aren't then waiting for the next episode to become available. However, I hope that traditional media companies don't try this model, as it will not work.