確り。。。確り。。。

So, the assignment I'm working on, of course. You didn't think those questions were just for fun, did you?

Edward Vincent
Observation of
Other’s
Media Use.
12/5/2004

I have been observing my father, Thomas Vincent’s use of media since I was little. For as long as I can remember, my father’s behavior has been something to keep a watchful eye on—either for observation, entertainment or protection. My dad has always had a collection of approximately 1377 LPs (which are currently being stored in my room) and his collection of CDs has been growing since we bought our first one in 1992. Recently, either the radio is constantly on, he is playing a CD, or watching the television. His media use can often affect the rest of the family in positive and negative ways.

One example of this is our family travels. I can not recall a time when all three of us were in the car together without there being some kind of media control struggle and or shouting match. Often the hostilities are caused by which station the radio is on or how loud the volume is. Dad's often fractious behavior would cause him to slap me or grab my arm if I attempted to change the station or lower the volume; he would put his hand over the buttons to prevent anyone from touching them—while he was driving. He would then forget doing it when questioned about it later.

My father is very particular with his radio. He will usually keep the radio tuned to one station (usually KPFA but sometimes KALX) for weeks. He will often turn the radio on in the garage and then leave it on all day, even if he is nowhere near the radio. And strangely, his car does not have a radio in it. Often he will be at home doing nothing more than listening to the radio; he has won several free tickets to see various performers. He won so many times that they had to put him on a list so that he could not win for several months. And you had better not change the station when either the Johnny Otis show, Blues By The Bay with Tom Mazzolini or anything on KPFA on Sunday.

And then there is television. We live in a house where the television is constantly on. Even if no one is watching it, it is still on. Back in the mid 1980s my parents had cable, but they must not have paid the bill so the cable guy came out to cut the cable. But my dad slipped him a fifty dollar bill and they did not actually cut the cable. So for about 14 years, we had free cable. Dad has always watched the television. He would always wake up early on Sundays to watch Sunday Morning on CBS; he would stay up to watch Conan O’Brien on NBC. Unfortunately we had to move, and when we got to a new house it was too hard to go without Cable, so we got it legitimately. Recently, we had another problem with the bill, and this time we did not have a fifty to slip the cable guy, so we are now officially without cable television.

Not having cable has made the TV viewing in our house different, even if it has not reduced the amount of time the television is on. I seemed to have chosen the correct time to get a Netflix subscription, as my parents are now dependant on that to get entertainment. Every day my dad will either tell me or ask me “Did you get another Netflix? You got another Netflix.” Also, it seems that without cable, you can catch my father watching the Spanish channel, or the Shop At Home network. He says that it is “Funny watching movies with Anglos speaking Espanol.”

He still does stay up late to watch late night television, only now he does not always get to watch. I asked him why he stays up so late with the television and he said, “Too tired to get up, too tired to move. Television is hypnotizing me and putting me to sleep. It’s like I’m using it as a sedative, ‘cause I have a fast metabolism that keeps me up late.” It is not uncommon to see my father in the chair at night with the TV on and a beer in one hand and the remote in the other nodding his head as he fights the sleep taking over him. I often find him turning up the volume on the TV as it gets later and he gets sleepier, but he does not notice it.

Did I mention my father is currently unemployed? Working for various temp agencies, my father has often had trouble finding work during the winter. This is why he is able to listen to the radio all day and stay up late watching television in the evening. It is not like he is not looking for a job, he does. In fact, he uses the State of California’s CalJobs system on the Internet. Watching an older person using the internet is always amusing to me, especially when some get it and some have a lot of trouble with it. My grandfather is a whiz with the internet, but my father can barely get around without someone holding his hand. As he says, “I’m not a thumby button pusher. I’m old school. Been a working class zero for thirty years. And now they’re trying to keep track of your time when you’re on the job with a computer, trying to skimp you out of your hours. One more way to classify and discriminate against people, and I don’t like that.” But he still thinks that looking for work online is better than the old way, even if it is more competitive, simply because there are so many more jobs to look for.

It is no longer possible for someone to live outside of the media and still function. If you want to be a hermit in the middle of nowhere, you might be able to escape it, but chances are even then you will have something holding onto you. My father is not able to live without his media or his vices. He constantly feels like he wants to be and is in control of his media use, even though he is not in control. Much in the same way that you should not mix drugs with alcohol, you probably should not mix TV with alcohol or drugs. As he says, “Alcohol makes people obnoxious…Do you know what obnoxious means? Out of poison, the brain is responding out of poison.” Perhaps the media is a poison too, making us all a little more obnoxious.

Not much progress on the list in the last couple hours.
Things to do this week:

• Write the damn film analysis paper of which movie? No idea.
• Ask him these questions for the basis of the damn BECA paper.
  
• Write the damn BECA paper.
• Go to Blackboard and find the biology assignment due on the day of the final.
• Write the damn biology assignment due on the day of the final.
• Go to The Class Schedule and figure out schedule for next semester.