La la la…its Friday, and time for an absolute mind freeze…several tv options come to mind, all sufficiently effective at unplugging those needless neurotransmittery functions that like, you, make you think. These are
a) Cashmere Mafia. So so stupid its enjoyable. So ridiculous and seriously laughable, I especially like the way these corporate yet sufficiently whimsical wannabe Carrie Bradshaw’s seem to have pretty much the same reactionsto just about every situation. Terrible week including marriage breakdown, various fashion and general lifestyle angst? Lost your high-powered investment banking job? Found out your husbands been cheating? Well golly me a steely eyed blaze down the street in slow motion flanked by my equally fierce girlfriends in like, seriously empowered fashion, always does it for me. Also these women have a serious problem when it comes to an even half assed attempt at being funny. Really really lame jokes are thrown in every now and again, punctuated with manic, overcompensatory laughter (perhaps convincing laughter is difficulty to achieve with a kilo worth of botox in your forehead). However, there is something vaguely curious about Lucy Liu’s trussied up publishing guru caricature, and an unfortunate -cant help but stare – quality to Miranda Otto’s powerfully robotic appearance as a tryhard Bree Van De Kamp
As ‘best friends’ these women are so deeply unconvincing as a real female ‘unit’ a glamorously acessorised ‘boys club’ using their feminine wiles to front their hard ass ‘what glass ceiling’ mentality, and yet this show is watchable. My only reasoning being a phantom limb like longing for something vaguely Sex and the City-ish, sigh.

b) The Hills..well need I say more? Disjointed conversations, deeply erratic characters, completely inappropriate response timings and terrible continuity…well this is most definitely the show of 2008.. There is rarely anything about each ep that makes sense, and overly long shots and disconnected shots of ‘fast-paced, cut-throat’ LA seem uneccessary. But, oh Lauren and Whitney’s conversations, the deeply unattractive Spencer, Heidi’s failed attempt at appearing somewhat intelligent- these are all classic Hills moments and are inexplicably addictive. Again, this show comes on and I swear I feel a little dumber for it.

said Ahh well now. Human connection- the real kind- obviously I should get out more.

SOoo, back to the importance of human connection, it is. Important. However there’s something slightly off about the way people are communicating nowadays (um…facebook??)
Most communication industries advertise their wares largely on the grounds that the ‘human desire to communicate with others’ is kinda fundamental. However, what has been made of the mode by which communication is conducted? How about the incremental difference in value for instance, of human connection via telephone, as opposed to face-to-face conversation? Online chatting versus text message conversations?
I sometimes wonder ‘has modern technology severed the quality of societal communication?

Makes you just wanna sit home and watch back to back eps of The Hills