Friday, June 13, 2014

Watch what you watch

We used to watch TMZ for the entertainment value.
We don't have cable and we hardly watch network broadcast television so we miss out on the reality shows and latest anything, so TMZ was a way to hear about people we don't know nor care about. But we stopped, mainly because the show was too raunchy and I don't need anything from the show stuck in my head.
That is a problem I'm noticing. Maybe it is a sign of getting older because I don't remember scenes or outlooks from television getting playback in my head, when I didn't want it, when I was younger. Other stuff, like things I read would occasionally pop up in my younger days, but not often since I was in grad school and hardly read anything for fun. Now, and maybe at least since I became over 35, I noticed these things that I consume resurface, like a dead body in the river, when I least expect or desire them.
I can't watch Law & Order:SVU anymore. One reason, compared to all the other L&Os, this one was the worse. The others were more about the crime, not about the cops. Another reason, I prefer dead body police procedurals, not raped/abused person of any age procedural. A friend told me that since becoming a mom she couldn't watch L&O:SVU at all, it plants fear into your mind. I was bored and did watch one SVU episode and regretted it several days after when a script, a line of thought, kept replaying itself in my head. The problem was this script was distracting and countered all the other scripts that loop in my head that keep me happy and sane and focused on what matters. I don't need Hollywood's or NYC's writers to tell me of crime. When I first moved into my neighborhood I would hear gunshots often and I had 24 hour drug dealers on the corner. I figured out my own way of being safe in the city and TV warps it.
Though not television I had to take a certain song out of my workout playlist because it too was messing with my head. It must be an age thing. Things I used to listen to gleefully when I was a teen, semi-shocks me when I can't help but to get the double meaning. Back in the 80s it went over my head. But back to my pulled workout song, it was the clean version but I can fill in the blanks. The problem was I was constantly filling in the blanks in my head and I didn't like where my thought patterns were going.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Short: How Taxes differ from Charitable Giving

Of the many many ways taxes differ from charitable giving is that people don't spend time how they can give less charity, compared to how much effort is given for tax breaks, loopholes, shelters, and the like.