Branding: the beginning of the end. When the shelves of big box stores overflow with underwear, cookware, T-shirts, and accessories with your face on them, watch out! It's happened to the best and worst of them.
I knew it was going to be controversial. Duh, it's a reality show. And if it quacks like a ducks—you know the rest.
Opinions—yada, yada, yada, we all have them. Hence this blog.
Aren't we all a tongue slip, blinking cursor, or mic away from inciting either anger or love? Most call them the train wreck shows. I liken reality TV to cooking a fluffy white marshmallow on a coat hanger over a campfire. I plunge this perfectly good marshmallow that was getting along swimmingly with other likeminded fluffy mallow's onto a coat hanger to cook precariously over a campfire flame. I admire it as it warms and turns golden brown and does what I want it to do. Then, I let it linger a second too long and Poof! Just like that the unstable marshmallow becomes a blazing inferno before my eyes!
If a neighbor dances drunk in their skivvies on their porch every weekend with Budweiser bottles lined up on the railings, that is their business. I may have my own opinion about it, but when they fall over the railing to land on the Holly bush, I'm not going to act shocked or appalled.
I appreciate everyone's constitutional right to express their views freely. However, that doesn't warrant lewd, abusive, or violent behavior, unless of course they are lewd, abusive, or violent. You see, it's a slippery slope. I love diversity. It screams, We are free! We aren't clones.
I detest racism, past, present, or reverse, prejudice, legalism, self-righteous indignation, rabid politics, or religion. Now, doesn't that sound like a lot of us? Common ground.
I realize that I have been inundated this year with political crap, religious crap, and commercial crap. I have spent way too much time thinking about what she said, what he said, what he did, what the fox said.
So for 2014, I have declared focus my resolution. Focus on the good of the bad. Focus on humanity and not hilarity. Focus on things of lasting importance. Denying myself a negative reaction to a ludicrous position taken, an insidious idea, a temptress, a barb, an insecurity.
Expunged negativity—that would have to add more focus for the good, and peace would be its side effect.
Don and I were watching ducks swimming happily in the pond during a downpour recently. I made the statement that they looked comfortable even in the rain.
Don replied "Like water off a duck's back." And that my friends is my mantra for 2014. Happy New Year everyone!!
