Different Hours

I didn't watch the video of Berg being beheaded. It was easy to find. Alarmingly easy actually. But I just couldn't bring myself to watch it. This despite a generally voyeuristic aspect of my personality. There isn't much I won't seek out if I'm curious about it. But we, as a country and people, are so desensitized towards violence through video games, movies, and the general blood thirst of the media that watching the Berg video began to feel more like tuning into a cool reality TV show. The outrage that the video is producing just seems so rote and mechanical to me. It's the same kind of emotional turnout that an episode of "Cops" produces: "Man that's so fucked up! Did you see that redneck run right into the side of that double wide trailer. That was crazy!" I think the same kind of thing applys to the US abuses of Iraqi prisoners in Iraq without the video element. I also think that the American people are applying a kind of boys-will-be-boys attitude to those appalling instances. Perhaps because we don't have a convenient video of the Iraqi prisoner abuses it makes it harder for us to "believe" in it.

It is currently an ugly world that we live in.

This show is redeeming: www.spiketv.com/shows/series/index.jhtml?seriesID=10774

There's a show on the Spike TV channel called "Most Extreme Challenge" or something close to that. The show takes a japanese game show that's basically a bunch of regular people being forced to navigate a variety of absurd obstacle course and then overdubs it with english. It's very funny in a "Mystery Sciene Theater 2000" way. The english writing of the show (the dialogue that's dubbed over the japanese contestants) is so clever and usually follows the contestants mannerisms so closely that you end up half way convinced that these people are really saying these absurd things. Anyway, very funny. Go watch.