A few words on video games and reality TV

The other night I observed something on television that was disgusting. It wasn't the usual, primetime kind of disgusting-- news being delivered via a formula, or programs showcasing violence early on in the evening, so that the depraved, horrible sex could be shown later at night. I don't think I'm going to tell it like a diary entry, though. Here goes.

People say you shouldn't play a lot of video games. Some people even say that playing video games at all will pull you away from reality. Lately I've been playing Okami, a game where you play an oriental sun god in the body of a wolf, trying to save her realm from darkness. Everything in the game is vibrant and drawn with what looks like brush strokes, like a Japanese painting from a history textbook. Or a museum, if you don't like the sterile gloss on the pages of textbooks.
Later that night I came to see what everyone else was watching on TV. It was some show about models. Not quite models, actually-- people who wanted to become models competing with each other. One girl was admitting that she didn't really want to be there. She was so pretty.
Through pursed lips, they asked her why, like a teacher asking why a student didn't want to write a paper on the effects of Argentina's yearly amounts of rainfall on its crops.
She replied, "I'm just not interested in fashion and things like that."
They gasped and tore up her picture and told her to get out.
I went back to my wolf game and restored a lush valley. Grass and trees and water and flowers and blue sky filled the screen in an explosion of color. It was so pretty.

There we go. I hope you enjoyed it. ^_^