KILL THE VIOLENCE THAT'S KILLING US

Into our homes comes an x-rated world.
               
Television, phone, mail, and the Internet bring the stink of everything that's shocking into our private rooms like smoke. We're breathing it, tasting it, hooked on it. Every day without fail, we are exposed to murders, violence, robbery, and prurient behavior.

In the eighties, Tipper Gore (Al Gore's ex-wife ), worked tirelessly to get warning labels for records marketed to children, and published a book, "Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society," in which she speaks rationally about the sexually explicit and violent lyrics in rock music and videos. Though Tipper promoted awareness and labeling, not censoring or banning, her efforts didn't produce legislation. You and I know that today pop songs, movies, TV award shows and specials -- as well as books and comics -- are more than ever jam-packed with violence and sex.

How dare we hope that our children are okay? The rhythms and alliterative rhymes, like favorite foods, are swallowed, digested, absorbed -- become  part of their minds and hearts.

What am I shouting about?  Surely you hear it, feel it, and see that our children are being abused by the many things in today's world that we support -- yes -- Support -- by WATCHING entertainment that advertisers create to sell their product.

Boycott the violent shows that we're hooked on?

Sure! You could join some anti violence group. You could write your congressperson. You could sign a petition if there's a petition.

Golly, there are so many things that desperately, urgently need to be protested. The only immediate way you and I can stop the violence that's deeply part of our daily life is to NOT PARTICIPATE as audience.

Am I saying DON'T watch TV?  DON'T see the blockbuster kill films? Go cold turkey?

YEP.

It's a tiny gesture. But if enough of us do that, it'll be felt by the advertisers, who affect the creators, who succeed, who make money, by imagining and inventing and selling evermore horrifying, shocking violence.

Yes, it's just a drop in the bucket, but one drop, another, and another gets to be a bucketful, another, and another.

GETTING YOUR APPLE WATCH

Got an Apple Watch?

It will help you run your life -- check the weather, pay bills, schedule appointments, including how and when you connect with relatives and friends.

With Apple apps that are already being sold, and the new apps that are planned, the Apple Watch makes your laptop and your iPad kinda slow mo, sort of dreary, old fashioned almost.

Hey, I read that the Apple Watch will be training your mind to seize, interpret, and retain an idea for nine seconds. (Right now -- your mind does all that for 12 seconds.)

Guys, friends, followers -- don't you see what the makers are doing? They're smartphone-ifying us. The smartphone is already, more or less, your parent/guide/teacher. The watch reinforces what the phone does and further turns us into ticktoc, robotized  dumb-dumbs, who do what the makers have sold to us, as the best way, the NEW way, the right way to live your life.

Here are two videos. Watch either or both, but they get kind of boring. Maybe you'll see how you've been transformed into an mindlessly obedient customer.

Yep -- ticktoc, robotized, mindless, and obedient -- that could be you, if you keep buying into the Apple religion.

(VIDEO) IS JOHN CULLUM A WORRY-WART?

Emily Frankel, calling herself a worry-wart, is amazed by the haphazard way John prepares for major events in which he's participating. He quite often, naps when some problem needs to be solved.

John jokes about her brain being big, his being much smaller. Explaining that opening nights DO make him nervous, he deliberately doesn't "worry" -- he just avoids dwelling on scary, iffy things.  

(Fun to note that before the event last night in NYC, when a theater was named the JOHN CULLUM theater, he was concerned about what to wear -- not at all worried about the speech he was supposed to give.) 

100 AND WINNING

Here's Don Pellmann, a centenarian -- 100 years old and he broke five world records last month in the San Diego Senior Olympics.

He cleared the bar in the high jump, jumping just shy of 3 feet. He won the 100 meter dash, (breaking the Senior Olympics record by 27 seconds).  He set records in the shot put, discus and long jump.

I read about him in the NY Times. Fox News, San Diego Times, NY Daily News, US Track  Field news, and a summary of his career in the Wikipedia.

Here's what he told an NPR, National Public Radio reporter right after the competition:
       "At my age, you get some good days and bad days, and this was not one of my better days. But it was good enough to compete and set some records. When I was my 90th year, I competed in a national at Fort Collins, Colo. And I had a good day that day -- set seven world records on that day. Now at age 100 where there's less competition, it's a little more difficult to keep in condition. I eat sensibly, try to do some exercise -- jog, go for a long walk a couple times a week and hope for the best. There's a Japanese fellow -- he's 105 years old, and he's still running. So we'll see what goes in the next five years for me if I can do it."

What he does, what he did, and what he said resonates.

What he's saying to us, saying loudly to me, is don't give in to aging, go for maintaining the essence of you,  doing what you know and love to do.

Hey Don, you ain't great to look at -- but you are 100 years young.

See for yourself.