Country Music

This week I am going to talk about music and the message in the songs. Specifically, I am going to talk about country music. Many people say that country music is depressing. They say that country music artists only sing about heart ache and their dogs passing away. They say that it is depressing to listen to and it makes them want to commit suicide. Now of course they are exaggerating, a lot, because they are more than likely just saying that because they do not like listening to country music for whatever reason it may be and they would never go commit suicide just because of the lyrics of a song. Anyways, people who do not like country music are of course going to talk bad about it because it is not their favorite and it is competition for the type of music they like to listen to. Now, they do make a slight point when saying country music lyrics talk a lot about heart ache and dogs passing away, I Hate Everything by George Strait is an example, but that is definitely not the only thing country music artists sing about. In my opinion, if that is all they sang about, they would not have a very big audience if they had an audience at all. Just like all other styles of music out there, the artists who write country songs often write about things that are happening in the world, things that are happening in their life, and things that they wish would happen or not happen. For example, Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue by Toby Keith is a song that talks about the 9/11 tourist attack. Toby Keith took an event that was on everyone’s hearts and turned it into a hit. Even though country music has a few depressing songs does not mean that it does not have some other great “happy” songs. What I ask is that you do not judge everyone in a specific group based off of one of the other people in the group. Each person is an individual just as every song is individually different from another song.

Search Engines

Well this week, since we are free to talk about any subject in media we desire, I will be talking about search engines. Today there are many choices to pick from when choosing the right search engine for you. Some are more reliable than others, and some are more reliable when searching for something in particular to that sight. The most reliable in my opinion and I would think most people’s opinions would be Google. You can find pretty much anything you want on Google. Often you hear teachers say, “Google it.” On the show, House, you notice that when they are trying to figure out what their patient has that is making them sick, Dr. House often goes on the Google website and searches the symptoms to determine what the possibilities could be. Google is not only a search engine sight for content, you also have the ability to search for specific images, videos, news, maps, shopping, finance, and books. Although the Google website has mainly good sources and uses, parents be aware. Violence and Adult Sexual Content are also very easily accessible through Google. For this reason, there is a parental control setting on this site. It has three settings, do not filter results, moderately filter results, or strictly filter results. The default setting is the moderate filter and I believe this does a decent job.
Other search engines include MSN, Yahoo, Ask, and Dogpile. These sites all have similar features as the Google site but do not always have the same quality results for you search. Often, each site comes up with different results than the next site so it often becomes useful to use more than one search engine when researching a topic. Sites that may be more helpful for the specific search you are doing would be the Internet Movie Database when searching for movies and WebMD when searching for medical issues. My point of all this is to know the sight you are using, know the source you have picked, and use multiple sources when doing research.

Social Networking

This I will be discussing the effects of social networking on today’s society. Social networking can have its good effects and its bad effects depending on how people use it and what their source of networking is. Most people use social networking in good ways, like to keep in touch with old friends or converse with new friends. Many times I use social networking to talk to my high school classmates or family members that I do not see very often. This usual occurs on a site called Facebook or on Windows Live Messenger. Facebook is a social networking website that you can post comments on people’s walls, write how you are feeling in your status bar, put up pictures and videos, and even chat to other friends who are online. Messenger is similar in the fact that you are able to chat easily with people who are online anywhere around the world. Some downfalls to being able to have all your friends see your pictures and you page is that some of your pictures may not be work friendly and now days employers search people applying for jobs and see what their social networking page looks like. This could be good or bad in a sense. Social networking can also be used to broadcast a large message to everyone. For example, here is President Barack Obama’s MySpace page. From this page he can put anything that he would like the people to be aware of, have people’s input on, or even have people vote on something. There are many many good things that can come from social networking. Some people even use it to find their soul mate. This more often happens in chatrooms like Chatablanca. In these places, you can find people your age, your type, and even people that have the characteristics you like. This can be good or bad. Some sick people use this as a way to find a person to possibly kidnap, or tell everything they want to hear to coax them into doing something they normally would not do. One of my favorite social networking options is Xbox LIVE. Xbox LIVE is a gaming area where you can play and talk to people anywhere in the world from you console at home. I often get together and play a game with friends from home, other colleges, or just people from the same building I live in. Some use it to find new friends. The other day I was playing a game and this guy was hitting on this lady hardcore, it was very funny. I am pretty sure they made each other friends so they could talk whenever they wanted.
So, as you can see there are many options to use for social networking and there are many ways to use in a good way and some ways to use it wrongly. I believe that the good ways greatly out weigh the bad ways. Social networking can be very addicting and cause you to get off track when doing homework so I ask that people try and set aside the Messenger, Facebook, and Myspace for enough time to get their homework done, then go right back to whatever you were doing.

Sequels and Spin-offs

This week I am going to discuss sequels in reality television shows and other reality television shows being developed from previous ones. This would be something like American Idol or the Real World, where a show appears on television and then a year or so down the road, there is a sequel where the same show appears with different characters or something to that effect. American Idol has aired on television for eight years now and Real World has aired for 22 seasons. Now shows that have been developed from previous shows would be where a new story line is created from the old one or a character from the previous show starts a show similar to that show. The Real World is similar to this having shows called Real World Road Rules.
For this topic I am going to use the show called Flavor of Love as my example to explain this. Flavor of Love is a show where Flavor Flav’, a famous bachelor, is looking for a love in this world through having contestants, all women of course, come onto his show to try to impress him enough to be called his girlfriend. Well, he finds a love but it does not work out for him or her so he has another show called Flavor of Love 2, sequel. This show is the same but with different contestants. Then, once again his relationship does not work so he does Flavor of Love 3. A contestant from this show then creates her own version called I Love New York. The contestant, New York, has guy contestants compete for her love. Like the previous show, her relationship did not last so she had a sequel, I Love New York 2. Now, two contestants, Chance and Real, from the show I Love New York create their own version of the show called Real Chance of Love. This show is similar to both the previous two except it involves two guys, each looking for love.
Like you can see, a famous person starts a show and makes one of his contestants famous by calling him/her boyfriend/girlfriend but someone else even more famous by giving them the opportunity to make their own name on their own show. What a great world we live in!