Temptation

When I'm moving away from here we probably won't have a telephone in our house. It's impractical and expensive, seeing how we both have our own cell phone. The thing is, Pauline pays a monthly fee, and mine is pre-paid. Basically this means I have fewer minutes to spend calling, but I don't use my phone all that much as I'm using the one at home fairly often.

Still, a monthly fee for a mobile phone might be the way to go once I've moved out. While thumbing through the free newspapers we get at stations when I was in the train today I came across several offers. The local providers and stores are doing virtually anything to get you to subscribe for 2 years. You get a phone for free, but that is not all. You get flooded with all kinds of other expensive stuff for free.

I'm looking into these things a little bit more. Right now the PSP is totally hot over here. Every newspaper mentions it in their 'Technology' sections, it's in every TV program and the commercials are everywhere on national TV. Of course they are also giving away PSP's when you subscribe for two years at one provider. Free phone, free PSP, 25 Euros a month. You can call about 200 minutes a month with that bundle. Tempting indeed.

Well, probably I won't be needing a subscription in the coming few months as it doesn't look like we will be having a house very soon. Still, in the future they'll probably have more of these offers. I've seen then give away LCD TV's worth 1000 Euros. It's indeed total madness as the TV alone is more expensive than 2 years worth of monthly fees. I don't see why they are doing this, but it makes shopping for a phone a lot more interesting this way.

So, how about the US? Are you guys getting the most ridiculously priced equipment for free too when buying a new phone?

TV is like the zoo

TV is a funny medium. You choose what you want to watch. Normally I watch a lot of stuff on the public and state-sponsored channels as they have quite a few programs about art, or backgrounds of hot news stories. Still, I'm pretending to be human so I'm needing some cheap entertainment too. The problem is that today's entertainment is too cheap. And it's all the same too.

Reality TV is hot. In fact, most of our commercial TV channels are filling entirte evenings with spin-offs on the concept. Watch fat people lose weight, watch people with deformed breasts get a pair of new ones, watch Big Brother, watch Survivor, watch anti-social families in their natural habitat, watch people deliver a baby and to finish the evening in style you can watch people who are not raising their kids properly. Later at night you can also watch people improve their sex life. Over here we call it 'monkey watching'.

Because that's what it is. It's like watching monkeys in the zoo, only every half hour or so the type of monkey changes. My parents really like these programs. Well, they've never been really interested in more serious programs, so I'm not blaming them for liking this stuff. The thing is that for people who want to watch entertainment on TV that's not too shallow...Well, for them there is nothing. Even quizzes are rapidly disappearing off the screen in favor of yet another reality show.

I used to like watching TV for mindless yet fun entertainment. But nowadays they have replaced the fun for more mindlessness. Bah, I've seen enough monkeys already. Give me back my Wheel of Fortune!