While You Watch TV

quotes

2008-07-29T08:25:00.000-07:00

"You watch television to turn your brain off and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on." -- Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer and Pixar, in Macworld Magazine, February 2004

"Protestant clergy named divorce, negative influences from the media, and materialism as the three greatest threats to families in their communities." -- from an Ellison Research study of 695 Protestant church ministers nationwide, October 2004

"The media can wreak great harm on the family when it offers an inadequate or even distorted vision of life, of the family itself and of religion and morality." -- Pope John Paul II, May 2004

10 things to do instead of watching TV

2008-07-29T08:22:00.000-07:00

Read a Book

Talk to Someone (go get coffee?)

Play a Game

Write

Help Someone

Work on a Hobby (piano? paint? create.)

Exercise (walk an animal?)

Go on a Date

Paint a Room

Learn Something New

Mental Detox

2008-07-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

ADBUSTERS

The idea is simple: take your TV, your DVD player, your video iPod, your XBOX 360, your laptop, your PSP, and say goodbye to them all for seven days. Simple, but not at all easy. Like millions of others before you, you'll be shocked at just how difficult - yet also how life-changing - a week spent unplugged can really be.

Adbusters letter

2008-07-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

"I recently moved to Vancouver and find myself in one of the most beautiful residential neighborhoods. I often go for walks in the evening through the short streets thick with oaks that bow over the road, hemming in the pedestrians and drivers.

The other night the most unusual thing happened. I saw no televisions through windows and heard no car radios. It was silent, and, like the silence before a storm, it was thick and full of heart. A moment later, a man walking about a block behind me, hidden by leafy branches and under the cover of night, began to sing opera.

Suddenly everything changed: one could no longer dwell on things frivolous but could only be swept up by this strangers robust, melodic tenor. The leaves were listening. The night was listening. I was listening. is voice filling the street offered wholeness and oneness.

We might find this strange or inappropriate. How easily we tend to hide behind and define ourselves by socially acceptable behavior. How quick we are to judge. I once visited a European city where people sang at the top of their voices while riding their bicycles. The air was always full of singing. Perhaps these moments of strangeness sustain our spirit and remind us that we are radiant and diverse. Nearly everyday we listen when we are addressed as customers and consumers. Maybe we can start listening to the poet on the street, the child who has a secret, the mysterious stranger who sings La Traviata.

How can we forget that these moments that are not market-driven are the most important moments of all?"

Shari-Anne Gibson

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

- taken from Adbusters 79 Sept 2008