Letter to NBC

To the Producers of The Office:

In the past I have enjoyed watching the popular television show, The Office. However, as I have viewed it recently I’ve noticed a few things that are decreasing the quality of this show. This letter addresses those concerns, specifically about the increasing amount of sexual content and a recent occurrence of blasphemy.

The Office has been noticeably increasing the amount of sexual content over the 6 seasons it’s been aired. Let me share a few examples:

“I love Phyllis. I think Phyllis is beautiful, and I am not afraid to let anyone know that. In fact, the only thing I am afraid of is gettin’ a boner.”

“My Indian cultural seminar was going great until Toby decided that he was too immature to deal with culturally explicit images. It’s just sex, people. Everybody does it. I’m doing it with Carol. Probably tonight.”

“In my opinion the third date is traditionally the one where you have sex. Does Holly feel that way? I don't know. I will probably find out tonight. If she starts having sex with me I'll know for sure.”

“That’s what she said.”

Research has consistently shown that repeated exposure to sexual content does increase sexual behavior in individuals. The problem with this is that much of the viewership includes teenagers and young adults. The rates of teen pregnancies and STDs are increasing—and I’m not saying it’s The Office to blame. There are many factors to consider, including social, environmental, and individual factors. But one factor that is less often looked at is the influence of the media. When sexual behaviors become the norm in television, many individuals adapt this to be their norm as well, and encode those behaviors into their current schemas.

All of the sexual comments in The Office are completely unnecessary, and could easily be thrown out. The show would still be humorous without them—probably even more so.

Another aspect of this television show that disappointed me was the recent occurrence of blasphemy, by Dwight Schrute. Let me share the exact quote:

“Salesman is king. As the best salesman I am king of kings. Oh, you say Jesus is king of kings? Well, what does that say to you about how I think of myself?”

In the past I have been a fan of The Office. I’ve enjoyed watching the humor and the different personality traits of each character. However, as I’ve viewed the increasing amounts of sexual content, I’ve started to become less of a fan. And this new addition of blasphemy has finally been the last straw. I’ve now decided that I don’t need to view The Office, and that it does nothing for my life.

I hope you can consider these complaints and strive to make changes so you won’t lose many more viewers. Sexual content and blasphemy are totally unnecessary, and throwing them out of this show truly will increase the quality of The Office.

Thanks for your time,

Jessica Hilton

YouTube Recitals

I was able to watch my niece's and nephew's piano recital this past week thanks to YouTube. They live in Las Vegas, so I'm not able to see things like that. It was awesome!! Thank you YouTube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpvshAWCsIM

When the media goes awry...

I can hardly stand it!! Whether its my i-pod, phone, the DVD player, or the internet, I always get so frustrated! This time it's a broken website link. I'm trying to look at beatifullymodest.com and I can't get to it for the life of me. Why does this happen? Why am I so dependent on the media that it gets to my emotions? And I don't mean I'm like...crying or anything over it. But I do feel frustrated! It's crazy how dependent on the media we can become!

General Conference!

Can I just say I am SO excited for General Conference in a couple of weeks? I hadn't really thought about it much, but then there was a talk in church on how to prepare for General Conference. They stressed that we need to prepare in at least 3 different ways: Temporally, Mentally, and Spiritually.

For the temporal aspect, we need to make sure we have adequate sleep. We should prepare meals either before or after so we don't distract ourselves. And finally we need to dress appropriately to set the tone for the meetings. Examples that were given were mostly focused on the Savior. If the Savior were talking to us, would we fall asleep during his council? Would we leave the room to prepare meals? Would we be in our pj's? In reality, the Lord IS speaking to us, through the voice of His servants!

Mentally, we should get in the mindset that we will take action. Listening to the talks is great, but if we can't take anything from them and apply those principles to our life, why make the effort to sit and listen to talks for 8 hours? We should come to conference with questions we need answers for, and listen intently for those answers.

Finally, we should spiritually prepare ourselves for General Conference. By taking time for the Lord through daily habits (such as scripture study, prayer, etc.) we will be more receptive of the Spirit. This will help us to receive personal revelations.

I hope I can continue to prepare for conference, and I hope this post may help some of you better prepare as well. Happy conference viewing!

The Power of Advertisements

They got me again...I was walking home to my apartment and I saw the stand for Girl Scout cookies by J Dawgs. That was it! I told my roommates, and we went to Macey's and got cash. Conveniently enough, there is also a stand right outside of Macey's for Girl Scout cookies! So what kind did I buy? The one and only...Samoa's! Mmmmmmm so good. I just barely ate them with my Samoa ice-cream. Thank you advertisement.

Wonderland

I LOVED Alice in Wonderland!! I went and saw it in 3D with a couple of my friends. I loved how this felt like it had more of a plot line than the original. Maybe it was about the same..but I understood it much better. Johnny Depp played an excellent mad hatter. I would totally recommend this!

Sexual Content in the Media

In The Office, there were many references to sex. These included the following: sexual remarks about body parts, Dwight requesting Angela have sex with him, and other casual references to sex. In Bones, there weren’t any sexual comments made in this particular episode. Although Psych did not have as direct sexually comments, there were more innuendos than in the other television shows. Overall, I was pretty surprised that the television show I most often watch (The Office) is the one with the most sexual content. It's made me reconsider my viewing habits!!

The Hunger Games

A couple of days ago, my roommate started telling me about The Hunger Games. She bought the book, and suggested I give it a go....So last night, I did! I started reading at about 9:00, and finally finished this morning around 3:00! This book was amazing. And horrifying. And intense! And romantic (Why can't she just love Peeta??). It's about a young girl, Katniss, who lives in a world governed by The Capitol. In the book, the Hunger Games are an annual reality TV show where the Capitol randomly selects one boy and one girl from each of the twelve districts. The children (ages 12-18) are then set loose against each other in a game of survival and forced to kill until only one remains. Intruiging or what??

My roommate bought the 2nd book yesterday, so I plan to read that one next week. If you've ever thought about reading this book but haven't gotten around to it...I suggest now is the time! If you haven't thought about reading this book, again, I suggest now it the time! :)

Washington Mutual Commercial

My teacher for SFL 351 showed this to us in class. It is hilarious!! Our teacher was showing us what benign attributional bias would really look like. We had a discussion in class how to teach our children to have this sort of attitude, to always give people the benefit of the doubt. Because of this particular lecture, I'm working on having a more positive attitude now!

(I'm not sure how to put the actual video on my page, so click on the link to watch it)

Hunger Banquet at BYU

I saw this advertised, and looked more into it! I'm planning to go this Saturday and I'm WAY excited!! The Hunger Banquet is basically where you go, not knowing if you'll get Brick Oven, hot dogs, or rice (it's divided into the upper, middle, and lower classes). There will be entertainment and a motivational speaker about world hunger. If you'd like more information, click here.

Awkward Family Photos

If you're ever bored and want something to check out...click here! Awkward Family Photos is full of pictures that you can browse through for...maybe hours?? Not the most productive way to spend your time.

Mamma Crickets

I was listening to Classical 89, when suddenly they started talking about an example of nesting: when a mother plays her baby Mozart while still in the womb. I remembered discussing this in class! Well, they switched over to talking about crickets. Apparently, a study has shown that mother crickets can warn their fetuses to be wary of spiders. For the experiment, they exposed one group of pregnant crickets to spiders, while the control group was not exposed. The offspring of the 1st group were more wary of spiders than the offspring in the control group. This is an important bit of wisdom for the mother to pass on, because crickets abandon their unborn eggs before they hatch! You can read more about it here. Enjoy!

Media?

Sometimes I think I confuse media with technology, just because they are so interlinked. For example, is the Internet media? Or just certain websites? Or all websites? What about Skype? Facebook? I know the basics of media--for example, the ones that are in the PowerPoint slides (Yes, I just looked them up). Anyway...just a random confusion of mine.

Oh the joys of Vegas...

I went to Las Vegas this past weekend with my boyfriend. WOW. I would not recommend that. As cool as the strip is (as in...cool building structures), it is WAY to dirty for me to enjoy. I've been there many times in the past, but I think this time may have been my last. The whole time we were there, I was just so concerned about all the pictures of naked ladies everywhere (seriously everywhere--on the cars, billboards, sidewalks, buildings), as well as the scantily clad women walking the streets. The worst part of the strip are the workers that stand along the sidewalk, snapping porn advertisements on their hands or shoving them in your face. I felt bad for recommending to my boyfriend that we go there. I'm sorry he, as well as myself, had to see all that. Anyway...yay for Las Vegas...?

Books, books, books

Having the book assignment really got me thinking of books that I loved growing up!! I've decided to compile a list...mostly for my own sake. So here it goes!

• The Man Who Loved Clowns
• Rifka
• Number the Stars
• The Boggart
• The Giver series
  
• The Blue Sword
• The Witches
• Chasing Redbird
• A Wrinkle in Time
• The Phantom Tollbooth
• Peppermints in the Parlor
• Night
• The Chronicles of Narnia series
  
• Harry Potter series
  
• Eragon series
• Walk Two Moons
• Ender's Game
• Time for Andrew

The list definitely goes on, but for many of the books, I just have vague memories. It's actually frustrating! I have a lot of snip-its of books I loved, and I can't remember them for the life of me! If I remember more, I'll probably add another post.

Love to the Highest Bidder, an old favorite pastime of mine.

As an adolescent, one of my favorite books was Love to the Highest Bidder. This book, by Rachel A. Nunes, is an LDS romance novel. Over the years, I've probably read it at least 10 times. This is a story about a woman, Cassie, with a career as a museum art buyer. At an auction she meets another buyer, Jared, who is goign after one of the same items as herself--a statue of Buddha. Through the course of the novel, these two individuals fall in love, but find themselves in great danger (as another buyer wanted the item and tries to get it from them). At the end of the book, the reader discovers that the "bad guys" were hired by Jared's boss. The statue had smuggled diamonds in it. After almost getting killed, Jared and Cassie end up getting married. I think I liked this book so much because of the romance and suspense. I always imagined myself going on romantic adventures like Cassie and Jared. I always imagined having a romantic boyfriend , and maybe I lived Vicariously through Cassie. I spent hours reading this book! I haven't read the book for a few years now, and I think after 10+ times, it's finally losing its appeal to me.

Romania Video

In one of my SFL classes today, we watched a video about the orphanages in Romania. This movie was very eye-opening for me. When I'd previously heard about the bad conditions of the orphanages, I never realized just how bad they really are. For example, Dr. Nelson told our class that there are over 100,000 abandoned children in Romania (I'm not sure of the exact number...I just know it was HUGE). The children barely get any human interactions. Anyway, after watching the movie, I felt sick. I felt like there was nothing I could do to change this situation. I felt so helpless! Even if I personally went over, there are still thousands of other children who are still those conditions, without any form of attachments. It was amazing how much that piece of media affected me. For anyone who reads this blog, do you know if you're allowed to go to Romania if you're graduated?

YouTube

YouTube can sometimes suck me in. Isn't it amazing how easily one thing leads to another? For example, I was watching Early Winter, by Gwen Stefani, and noticed her awesome smoky-eye makeup! So I then watched another video about how to do "smoky eyes." For any of the girls who are interested in this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z49yr0zk_pk

And I know this is kind of ridiculous for me to post on my blog.

..but now you know ;)

Boys Like Girls. It's true!

I love this song by Boys Like Girls: Hero/Heroine. When I'm in the mood for this kind of music...I can listen to it over and over!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bReVwemN5iE

Check it out!

500 Days of Summer? I think not...

Ok. I was totally disappointed by this movie. I've heard so many great things about it, none of which really added up--in my opinion, at least. The plot in this movie was very dry. Boy falls in love with girl...they do dirty things together...girl is flaky and noncommittal...yet still does dirty things with boy...girl randomly gets married to another guy...boy wallows in his self pity for 75% of the movie....boy meets new girl. Overall, I felt that the character development was very superficial. I found maybe 3 things humorous. That's a total guess, but you get my point. There were sexual innuendos galore. I'm not even sure what this movie is supposed to classify as; chick flick? If it's supposed to be one, it totally fails at it; comedy? Same story; adventure? Some who read this post may think "well you've just never had a bad breakup yourself. You don't know what it's like." Have I been in a bad break up? Yes I have. Did I enjoy this movie? No I did not.

Ok, to be fair, I will point out the good things about this movie. It does match well with reality, unlike many other chick flicks seem to do. Well..I guess that's all I really have to say about that. Point of this rant: If you haven't yet seen 500 Days of Summer, don't waste your time.

Blog about Blogs

I've never had a blog before, so I don't really know how it works. How do you get fun backgrounds for the blog? Also, what does it mean to be a "follower?" Thanks!

Coraline

Creepy? Yes. Interesting? Definitely. I watched this movie for the 2nd time last night, and although it wasn't as creepy as the first time, it still had its moments. For those of you who dont know, Coraline is about a little girl who finds a door that takes her to another world. She has an "other" mother with buttons for eyes. In fact, everyone in that world has buttons for eyes. It may sound cheesy, but its really creepy when you first see it. Anyway, the "other" mother eventually tries persuading Coraline to sew buttons on her eyes, Coraline runs away, Coraline comes back to save her parents, and then almost gets trapped in her "other" mother's web. So if you're wanting to watch something with a very peculiar story, with a scoop of creepiness on the side, go for Coraline! I mean, it was my second time, after all...

100 Hour Board

Did you know this existed? The 100 Hour Board is a website hosted by a staff of BYU students. Questions are submitted and answered within 100 hours. They can range from class problems, to relationship problems, to powdered sugar. I found this site as I was bored at work, and read it for a few hours (I was REALLY bored). It can be rather amusing! If you ever need something to pass the time, I suggest this. Happy Reading!!

Bones

Ever seen Bones? I highly suggest it! My roommate got seasons 1 and 2, and we've been watching episode after episode. The things I like about Bones: 1. Rare sexual innuendos (and no sex scenes so far!) 2. Funny 3. Interesting (I mean, its a mystery!! And a romance....hopefully...) 4. No swearing! At least not that I've noticed 5. Etc. (I cant think of more right now, but you get my point)