No, Thank YOU

The movie, “Thank You for Smoking,” is dark humored satire at its best. Nick Naylor is the chief spokesman and lobbyist for the big tobacco industry who `spins' the industry’s appalling image into something almost viable to condone. The movie was not much to do with actual smoking but the more with “spin doctoring”. I have to say this is one of the most poignant movies I have seen this year, aside from, “The Fast and the Furious-Tokyo Drift.” Sarcasm should be noted when speaking about, “The Fast and the Furious”.





If you want to see how spin can sucker a nation into believing big tobacco companies aren’t the enemies, the organizations rallying to fight against it are because they’re really the ones hoping to dine on you misery, look no more because “Thank You for Smoking” has it all. This was shown through the scene where Naylor goes on a talk show and says something along the lines that the tobacco industries doesn’t want Cancer Boy (not very politically correct, I know) next to him to die because the companies want what’s his name to live and smoke for the rest of his life so they continue to make money off that kid. But in the case of organization groups against the tobacco companies, they are wishing more like Cancer Boy to turn up, otherwise they couldn’t get money to fund their organizations.

Almost every scene in the movie makes me think that public relations people are gods because the way the contrive stories and manipulate it so the good guys (politicians and organizations against “big tobacco”) are bad and the bad guys (conglomerate tobacco industries) are semi-okay. I especially enjoyed the scene where he and his friends who call themselves ‘The Merchant of Death” gather for dinner and discuss their company’s death toll. This movie is ruthless in its realism making it falter away from politically correctness, and I only wished there were more movies like this out there. I thought this movie was “awesome”.

Ignorance was Bliss

I live in the American bubble. Sure I know that there are other countries around us but really, are they that important? I believe that the USA is the sun and the other countries just revolve around us, comparatively speaking. That may sound conceited but I’m probably not the only one to feel that way. And that is probably why the rest of the world pretty much hates the United States.

Lilly told us to look at another country’s website for our assignment and I thought, “What? Why?” All the websites I need is in the American internet realm. But a good student must do what is assigned to them so I finally decided on BBC.The BBC is the largest British Broadcasting Corporation that produces programs and informative information through radio, television, and the internet. I took a look at their website and I saw how it can be of importance. It had news from every important country like America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and more. I was pretty impressed. And I realized that I should probably start subscribe to them because my bubble is starting to suffocate me. There’s actually a world out of the U.S. and it has important news that one should read about.

I know the news that is written by Americans are biased and we aren’t getting all the information and especially for the political news. So thanks to opening us up to an internet websites world beyond the American ones, I can be a lot less ignorant and a little less arrogant. Just a little since I’m still American.

Online Shopping

Since the introduction of the internet, businesses having been fine tuning it’s strategies to reach the internet audience. It struck gold when business realized they could sell their products and service online to the mass consumers. Oh and boy did they.

This thing called online shopping has spawned into something beyond just shopping. Online shopping have helped many people find items and objects that they have been looking to buy for years but never have found it. From wedding dresses, to the toast emblazon with a picture of Jesus, you can find it for sale on the net.

You know that saying, “Now, I’ve seen it all.” Well, those people who've said that before probably would flip their lids if they saw what is being sold on the internet today.

Take for instance, the man who posed in his ex wife’s wedding dress supplemented with a hilarious description. He tried to sell it on eBay.

” I was actually going to have a dress burning party when the divorce became final, but my sister talked me out of it. She said, ‘That’s such a gorgeous dress. Some lucky girl would be glad to have it. You should sell it on EBay. At least get something back for it.’ I’m selling it hoping to get enough money for maybe a couple of Mariners tickets and some beer.”




Or what about the one with the Jesus toast? I just don’t see the resemblance, do you?

The Golden Casino paid $28,000 for it along with their sanity. What can you say? Karma’s a B*tch. Finally after screwing people out of their money, someone screwed the Golden Casio out of theirs.

So if you’re looking to buy Satan’s fingernail clippings, you might just find in online going to the highest bidder.

You've Been Dooced!

The corporate world has a thorn on it’s side, this thorn is known as employee blogs.There’s a stigma attached to blogging about one’s workplace and we’ve seen a few of those bloggers outcome. Heather Armstrong worked at a dot-com startup company where she blogged about her work under the pseudonym of “Dooce”. She was later fired when her employer found out she was writing about the company. She later coined the term “Dooced” as a worker being fired for blogging about their work. There has been a sleuth of bloggers who’ve been “Dooced” like when Google employee Mark Jen was fired for blogging about Google or otherwise known as the Google guy who got dooced.

Apple doesn’t have a policy about blogging about their work as long as no inside information is revealed. People are now debating whether Apple should encourage, or even permit its employees to blog and how much freedom should bloggers allow their commenters?

I believe that Apple should not let their employees blog about Apple. There’s way too many pitfalls of blogging about work and commenters should be out of the question. When you blog about work you take the risk of leaking something. The ramifications of blogging about one workplace are too great and I believe that all companies should make it policy not to write about their workplace online. One day, you write about Joe from the next cubicle over about his sub-par workmanship, another day you may be collecting unemployment checks ‘cause you been Dooced. You may not even know what hit you.

About Blogging

What makes for a good blog? Is it blogging about the humanitarian work and preaching good old Christianity principles, or is it blogging about something as personal as your sexual escapades and how you stuck a bottle up the other end of someone’s pie-hole? It’s been proven that the latter suits the taste for the online audience.

Heather Armstrong is running a successful website called at Dooce. She is in Utah and blogs about her daily life but it is written in a comical take. Just how successful is she? Her audience is so big that she is able to support her husband, daughter, and her little dog too through her website by selling ad space on her online diary like website.

I think the reason why she is getting such a large audience is because she’s insightful and is a real person who has real problems. She was once put into a mental hospital because she had post partum depression after she had her baby. She is real and truthful and that is how her reader likes it. I feel that the internet is no place for privacy and Armstrong exposes that head on. Through her not so private thoughts she connects with her readers. Sometimes she pokes fun at her Mormon heritage and people like the semi-self deprecating stories she writes about.

Blogs have become a large mainstream in the internet culture. Everyone and anyone can have a blog. It is accessible to all but how does one makes theirs popular and the most read? My guess is you should connect with your readership through your stories and you probably might have to top Armstrong’s adventure with the condiment bottle.

May I Have Another (iPOD)

I have a love-hate relationship with the iPod gadget. I try to summon every fiber to suppress my rage against iPods. The iPOD is a portable media player and it has become a national sensation where every cool kid on campus must have one. So of course I bought three over the course of three years. What can I say? I ‘m a sucker when it comes to peer pressure. I’m probably one of those people who would be pushing and shoving my way to the front to jump off that bridge that everybody’s moms keeps ranting about.

One of the reasons for my pure undiluted hatred towards the iPOD are that they keep coming out with newer, smaller, sleeker versions. And it’s in your face, rubbing it in that you have an older version iPOD. Like when I carry around my 30gig 6th generation wheel iPOD, every newer version taunts my old bulky iPOD. Some can even say that they are shamed into buying the newer versions.

I’m out of $600 and have 2 broken 1 year old iPODs to show for it and that’s not the other reason why I despise the iPOD. When I brought them into the Apple store to get them fixed, it had surpassed their one year warranty. And when I asked if there’s anything they can do, the workers basically expressed that I was sh*t out of luck. Man, was I peeved.

My love for the iPOD is really a forced one because I just wouldn’t feel right shelling out for impersonators like the Zen Creative. I just can’t bring myself to buy it. I just can’t.

Since then, I have replaced my previous iPOD with a 1 gig Nano. I know, I‘m such a slave to the marketing world.

A Touch of Power, a Dash of Insanity

Oprah Winfrey, known to millions as the woman whose net worth is a billion dollars. She has the Midas touch.

Growing up, all I knew about her is she has massive army of women who was willing to do her bidding. If she says buy product X, women dash out to their car leaving only tire skid marks and a billowing cloud of smoke like in the cartoons in search for X.

Oprah build an empire from her national television talk despite growing up dirt poor. Who knew this woman, who came from humble beginnings would grow to being one of the most powerful woman today. She has the power to control millions of people through the power of her talk show.

This woman can build you up, or tear you down. In one instance, the writer of “A Million Little Pieces” was granted instant stardom by Oprah having him on her show. Oprah found out the man lied in his memoirs so she tore him a new one, practically ripped him to shreds on national TV. If you want to talk about power, you talk about Oprah. Even “South Park” did a parody on this incident.

There were even rumors circulating that Hilary asked her to be her Vice President but she laughed and said that she would rather be President. Why do I get this eerie feeling that that is possible? This woman, I’m afraid, may have millions wrapped around her fingers and there’s nothing we can do about it.

I fear that one day she’ll convince Americans that she should be queen and it’ll be a good change for us. After all, we are sheep ready to be herded to our slaughter.