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Sometimes random thoughts on life and entertainment swirl together in my little brain and try to collide into one cohesive idea.
My diagnostic tests included a CAT scan, an MRI and an echocardiogram. I kept wondering which would be the one that makes me 10 times worse. On House, there's always one test that backfires horribly. During my echocardiogram, I glanced at the minute hand of the wall clock, figuring matters could go awry only at half-past the hour, which is approximately when House's patients have their setbacks.Read more ... and wish Rob a speedy recovery free from abusive doctors.
Calling All Canadians!Intelligence returns on Monday.
We'd like to hear your opinions regarding the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. drama Intelligence, which appears likely to be the only TV series playing in North America in which the lead character owns a lumberyard. Of course, it's not your typical yard, even for British Columbia: It's a front for the owner, slickly coiffed Jimmy Reardon, to launder drug profits. Like many LBM dealers, he's a 3rd-generation member of the family business (at least the bad parts of the business), and Reardon's character bio on the Intelligence Web site describes him as having "a diligent work ethic, which has resulted in the family business flourishing." He's also said to be "gentle and ruthless at the same time." Canadian TV blogger Diane Kristine says the lumberyard set appears every few episodes, but usually not as often as another of Reardon's "legitimate" businesses: a strip club. Kristine runs a blog called TV, Eh? So to her fellow Canadians, the question is: How good is "Intelligence," eh?
And so with the 2007-2008 season on our doorstep, there's only one of the "10 Things You Need to Know About the New Season" you really need to remember - enjoy it. Don't worry about time slots or reviews or network strategies or all the other crap that comes with being a TV fan.Our tastes in television don't necessarily overlap -- he hated Ugly Betty, for example, though he did pick House's "Three Stories" as the best episode of television in 2005, but reading someone articulate who loves television, even if they don't love the show they're writing about, even if you do, is always pleasure.
It was in this moment I realized how necessary campaigns like this are. No matter how cynical we choose to be about the marriage of our market economy and social responsibility, the simplicity behind the hoo-ha is the more positive and balanced images we see in the media, the more our young girls have a fighting chance in the culture of over-sexualized youth, designer-label-driven peer groups, anorexic heroin chic, booby hooter-girl bar scenes and the cover-girl perfection that drips with the cruel message: "look like me and only then will your life will be perfect."
What's more is that by claiming that a whitening cream can increase your chances of being happily married and financially successful, Fair and Lovely appeals to the most vulnerable (and usually the darkest) segment of the India population: poor and often uneducated women for whom a leg up, by any means necessary, is a highly desirable proposition.
But Unilever can afford to be hypocritical. Skin lightening products are by far the most popular product in India's $318 million skin care market. Fair and Lovely, meanwhile, commands over half of that.Great. Equal opportunity neuroses.The skin whitening business is so lucrative that several skin care companies have launched new whitening products targeted at Indian men. The most popular? Fair and Handsome, produced by Emami and advertised like Fair and Lovely: by telling brown men that fair women will only love them if they are fair themselves.
Sure, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon sounded cool, but since — like all of the other original wonders (except for the Great Pyramid of Giza) — they no longer exist, we were glad to see that their replacements are equally spectacular. The new wonders — Machu Picchu, the Colosseum, the Taj Mahal, Petra (the ancient Jordanian city, not the Christian rock band!), the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, Chichen Itza, and the Great Wall — are open to tourists, but now you can visit them without using up frequent-flyer miles, thanks to the Website Panoramas.