Category Archives: Entertainment

TV is Wasting Your Life, Modify Your Watching Behaviour

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Over my lifetime, I’ve watch many many hours of TV shows, cartoons and bad movies…  Today, I’ve decided to write about why TV is a bad form of entertainment, and I’m going to suggest alertnative ideas to do instead.

 
 
 

 

Trash the TV

 

Why TV is wasting your life and brainwashing you:

  • A television show, movie or news program is still 1 (or a few) writers viewpoint and perspective on matters.  So as you watch a TV show of the person who created the show, realize that it’s not reality, just an opinion.
  • Television News (especially political), only present the data that make their case sounds like it’s the only answer.  Again, the media is just an opinion of 1 or a few writers.  They are brainwashing you with bogus statistics, and false righteousness.  All to often, news shows paints a picture of a poor arrested person that really was guilty, but they spin it like the criminal was the victim…  This is what I call media sensationalism.  Don’t believe it, especially if you don’t know that all the fact.  If you do follow blindly, then you are pretty much just a puppet, please don’t be this.
  • I use to come home and turn on the tv, watching it for hours (or play video games, which isn’t any better, especially the violent ones).  Now I have nothing to show for it, except fading memories of shows that nobody wants to remember anyway.  I’m definitely not a better person for it.
  • Watching TV robs you of time that you can spend on creating a hobby, doing charity work, making extra money with side work, hanging with friends, etc…  The idea here is that TV is an inferior form of entertainment.  The problem it that it’s too easy to just turn the ole B00b tube on.
  • When you are old and no long able to do young things, you don’t want to look back fondly of the the TV shows you can’t remember… Do you?  You need to get out there and do stuff, taking pictures along the way!  Make real memories!

Okay, those are my rant points… so now,

My advice and tips for limiting TV watching:

  • Okay, everybody like a good movie, keyword being a “good” movie!  I don’t want to waste the money going to all the movies that come out in the theater!  So I wait a week, then go to www.imdb.com and enter the movie title.  The beauty of imdb is that movie viewers like you and I go there and rank movies when the come out.  Anything less that a 6 rating, I generally pass on.  While watching any movie isn’t a great way to optimize you “life” time, watching a crappy movie really bites.  Use www.imdb.com!!!  They also have a top 250 movies list based off of ratings by people like us!!!
  • With TV you’re limiting yourself.  It’s better do multitask by listening to an audiobooks while you do some type of chore or work.  That way, you force your mind to create the characters as you listen to the audibooks, and at the same time get something else accomplished.  My father-in-law used this method while he worked his primary job, and today, he’s a very smart, well versed man.
  • Call me odd, but I can’t understand why anyone would forgo living their life to watch other people live there lives. (the dreaded reality tv…)  Please stop this, I know it’s easy to get hooked (yes, I watch a little every now and then while flipping channels), but please go out and play basketball, volleyball, catch, whatever… with friends, brothers, sisters, mom or dad. 
  • If you must watch the b00b tube, limit (budget) your allotted TV watching time per week (this is what I do, I’m still addicted to TV…)
  • Other things you can do instead of watching tv include,
    • Go for a walk, hike, job around the park, neighoorhood, mall, gym, etc. 
    • Clean something or do some other chores
    • Fix something (use google if you don’t know how to fix it)
    • Coach you child’s team (if you don’t know how become an assistent coach first, or get a book or video on how to do it)
    • Try inventing something in your garage or basement.
    • Customize your basement into something cool.
    • Form a club that meets weekly (maybe a book, investment or a “I hate TV” club)
    • Dabble in music, perhaps learn to play the guitar or piano, or whatever…

The possibilities are endless, we are very fortunate to have the leisure time to be able to do some incredible cool things if we stop watching TV so much. 

Create an “Activity Journal” of what you do during the day and write the activities down right before you go to bed.  Keep it simple, keep the journal in one spot and jot down what you did.  Start out slow and expand your activities.  Maybe even grade yourself on how well you believe you maximized your day.

We can all do this, and in the process, live a much better healthier life.

-D

Perfect Snow

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Snowing is a one of the few magical occurrences on our planet.  What else can materialize out of the sky float down in a meandering fashion, and then lightly land on the ground like it was meant to be there all along? 

Sledding

 

As you can tell, I like snow, it’s one of my life’s little enjoyments.  Here are the free things that you can do with snow: 

  • Sled Riding (the cheap cousin of skiing)
  • Build a Snowman (my kids love doing this)
  • Build a Snow Fort!  Another thing my son loves.
  • Snowball fights, great fun for me and my kids
  • Making Snow Angels
  • Snowball chase (my dog loves to chase after a thrown snowball, or catch it in the air… very funny)
  • Walking at night on a lightly lit sidewalk (this is great, and in my neighborhood, always reminds me of something out of a Norman Rockwell painting).
  • Snow ramps (yes, this is used with sled riding)
  • Tubing (this is dangerous, when being pulled being a car, or quad-runner!)
  • Sliding in the car in a empty parking lot (we did this as kids, I’m not sure if it’s legal or not so beware)
  • Drive around surrounding neighborhood, it makes them look great, especially when you run across the occasional house that still has there Christmas light on.  The way the lights shine underneath the snow looks like a snow spotlight of color.  Our kids love this effect.

Other more pricey things you can do in snow are: 

  • Downhill skiing
  • Cross country skiing
  • Snowboarding
  • Snowmobiling

I like perfectly cold, windless night (maybe 25 degrees Fahrenheit), when the dry snow (dry snow means the snow is in a more pure crystalline form with no melting, so snowballs are hard to make) is falling lightly and the flakes are big and fluffy!  During these night I like to go on walks around my neighborhood.  It’s beautiful, it reminds me of a scene that would be perfect for a Norman Rockwell painting.  The nights are quiet on these perfect snow days.  The air is pure and crisp, no smells of any type.  It’s a great time to think during these special walks.  I’m always amazed I don’t see more people from the neighborhood out during this perfect nights, I wonder if they aren’t aware of how perfect this precious time is?  Maybe the ones that do that this is perfect snow are skiing?  I know that thoughts of skiing pop in my head when I go on walks during these times.  The fond memories that float in and out of my head during these walks are of skiing, tobogganing, ice skating, backyard hockey, snowmobiling and snow wars… 

Perhaps I find snow magical because it is part of my past that I identify with.  The best part of snow is that it’s free entertainment, if you take advantage of it.

Saving Money on Eating Breakfast Out

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Every other Sunday, we like to go out to eat breakfast.  After trying a few places, we now go to a old fashion family restaurant almost exclusively.  Here’s why:

Restaurant like ours

 

  1. For the amount of food we get, it’s even cheaper than McDonalds (we still go to McDs every now and then too though, the kids love that place).
  2. The waitresses are kind and really hustle.
  3. The owner is a very friendly and greets us well.
  4. The food is best tasting in town.  Their pancakes are big and fluffy (perfect really)!
  5. Oftentime we’ll see people we know.
  6. I get that nostalgic feeling that I slipped back into time to a place when my grandparents would have gone if they were alive.
  7. It’s fairly close to where we live.
  8. There is so much food with the meals that my wife and I order, that we ask for additional plates, and give our food to the kids (except for a order of hot chocolate).  Just lately, we’ll order my son an addtional pancake, but we still share our food with him (mainly eggs and bacon)
  9. We are helping a small business in our city by patronizing it.
  10. The restaurant is downtown in our small city.  it gives it a charming appeal.

Yes, we still go to McDonalds every now and then, but the kids are starting to realize that the food is better at this local place we go to.  Now they are starting to ask to go to the local family-owned restaurant instead of McDonalds more often.

Hopefully, this will be a place of memories for my kids when they are adults.

We do a few things to make it memorable for my kids.

  1. We have them take up the bill and pay the cashier.  Then whatever coin change it left, they get to keep.
  2. We let them stack the creamers and sugar packets to make interesting structures (my daughter is great at this).
  3. We get the kids a hot chocolate (they love the whip cream), every time we go.
  4. As we leave, my son and daughter always grabs a mint candy on the way out.

Not every place in town is a good as our restaurant, but if you can find one it’s wonderful!

Try to look beyond the decor, and see the family trying to make a living selling food well prepared.

Disney Magic, Watching Classic Disney Cartoons

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Since our Disneyland vacation (this past November), my daughter (and to a lesser extent my son) have been wanting to watch some of the old Disney cartoons.

classic Donald Duck

 

 

So, first, I googled “Donald Duck”, then click on the video tab.  It was pretty cool, we instantly got to watch a classic Disney cartoon called ‘Apple Core” (Chip and Dale was in it too).  Next I googled “Steamboat Willie”, believing this was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon.  The kids loved it!  Then I found an even earlier Mickey Mouse cartoon call “Plane Crazy”.  Notice how pencil thin Mickey’s legs are in the “Plane Crazy” video!  Did you also notice how mischievous Mickey is in this particular cartoon.  This is definitely not the Mickey Mouse I grew up knowing!  When he was forcing Minnie to kiss him…, well no wonder Walt Disney didn’t want this representation of Mickey Mouse to be Disney’s first rendition of Mickey Mouse…

 

You might ask what started this sudden interesting in the classic Disney (by their timeframe) cartoons?

Well first, this past November, we stayed at the “New Orleans Riverside” resort.  While we were waiting in the lobby, there was a television with a bunch of little chairs around it for the kids.  Both of my kids went over and watch it for at least 15 minutes while my wife and I stood in line.  Next, the Disney merchandise has a lot of picture of the cartoons in their earlier classic version.  I actually prefer the older version of Donald Duck (just by a little bit though) vs. the newer ones.  And finally, we stopped at a Disney restaurant (a sport themed one), where they played old black and white cartoons (with no sound) on a huge TV.

As an alertnative to watching the videos on YouTube, try borrowing Disney videos from your local library (Looney Tunes too for that matter, but that a different topic all together).