7. A Woman On A Roof

Now this text illustrates a few simple facts about how easily men's behaviour is manipulated even only the presence of a woman. These are the ideas that I tried to communicate about the previous text. If this text was a recent publishing with a setting of "now", I don't think anyone would ever notice any difference. The image of masculinity may have changed, society's perception of males and females may have changed, but the fact that men are easily turned to puppets or primitive apes stands strong.

6. Marked Women

taken from : http://www.wetherobots.com/comics/2008-01-07-Misinformed.jpg

Marked Women is a work of a linguistics professor that advocates the thesis stating that our societies are patriarchal structures that categorizes women subconsciously all the time, in contrast to the way it perceives the male kind.

In my humble opinion, I believe that she fails to mention certain topics like how comically easy men can be manipulated by women to do almost about everything - to a degree of animalistic behaviour, or positive sexism and how women abuse that. While it is true that society categorizes and and marks women, the world is, through my eyes, only a playground for women where they are at least 10 years older than little men running about without a clue what they're doing. ^.^

5. Tough Guise

I loved the film Tough Guise. Even though it didn't analyse the reasons deeply, it manifested the changes in masculinity throughout the years, and how people are manipulated to act on more extreme perceptions of the characteristics of gender stereotypes. It also showed very important and inscrutable consequences of the phenomenon.

Indeed, it is a sore sight that people are once more reducing themselves to animals, as physical attributes are becoming more and more important in social success.

4. Television - The Plug In Drug

comic taken from: http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/rrs0282l.jpg

I think television (and even radio, or practically anything that enabled remote and constant communication, such as internet) has made huge impacts on family life and members' proximity to each other. What it changed it is, it gave people more options to spend their time, meaning that after television, people could do other stuff than interacting with each other. A family, which should actually be the strongest and the building piece of a society, was being torn apart (but being sewn up in a very strange way - digitally - now with internet), as people, in my opinion, slowly isolated themselves from others piece by piece (i.e. father in front of TV every day after work).

Considering myself, I guess my "plug-in drug" would probably be my computer, or any other electronic device that lets me access information every time I want.

3. Intellectual Property

It's very obviously deducible that the only reason why there is war or anything bad on earth is due to the concept of "property". Trying to "own" stuff being ugly as it is, people trying to brand "thoughts" and "ideas", claiming ownership and asking money for the experience! Through the course of mental evolution, I believe humanity should be slowly converging into one collective mind, and when every step forward in technology that makes communication easier, trying to remain be remembered as an individual with your thoughts and ideas are unnecessary and selfish.

(open source logo taken from: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Opensource.svg)

If you're somewhat interested in absolute legal freedom in (at least) digital life, check this out.

2. Regular People Watching Regular People

Why did shows like Big Brother, Survivor, American Idol and Fear Factor become so popular? How did people adopt the idea of watching other regular people, just doing stuff? Leaving aside the idea of watching people, wouldn't someone in their right mind, mind being watched 24 hours a day?

Research on the topic reveals intense information. It's actually an awful sight. According to surveys published on Psychology Today, people actually watch reality TV is because they watch real people doing real stuff right NOW, and the people involved are getting all the world's attention, even though they are not actors and actresses but suburbans just like themselves! It mainipulates them to think that they can be famous and loved, or most importantly shown very much attention, something we crave from deep inside. This feeling of socialness is very much effectively augmented with the chatter about what happened on TV the next day at work/school etc.

Another research I've stumbled across Fox News' website, explains that people begin to enjoy these shows after watching a while, as they get to know the competitors and start identifying themselves by comparing the characters' social relationships with their own relationships in real life.

These all suggest that we find prototypes of our own charactheristics in these people we watch.

For further reading and a much more deeper examination: Enjoying 'Reality TV' by Ian Buchanan

1. Classy

This one's from Austin, TX. The old man whom I bought this, told me Santa dropped this beauty down his in-laws' chimney two nights before the christmas eve in 1975, while cursing a woman called Sarah. He told me Santa was obviously very, very drunk.

Handmade - Vintage.
Manufactured: North Pole - 1975
$33000.