Reality Shows - Why Are They So Popular

For Postcard Friendship Friday on Cpaphil Vintage Postcards I found this postcard sent to me by my exchange student from France. This is a photo of a place close to her home. I love the swans swimming in the mirror-like lake.

My Article is Published!!!

I wanted everyone to know that my article, "Reality Shows - Why Are They So Popular" has been published on EzineArticles.com. I'll print a little bit of it for you here, but please go and read the whole article. I am very happy that they chose to publish it and also have conferred on me the title of Expert Author! Here is a part of it:

Reality Shows - Why Are They So Popular

by Barbara Ehrentreu
Shows like "The Soup" with Joel McHale make fun of reality shows while being on the same network as they are. There is an entire network devoted only to showing reality shows, The Reality Show Network. Activities from tattoo parlors to motorcycle places are on reality shows. Many times these shows actually interact with each other as in a recent episode of "Jon and Kate Plus 8" where Jon wanted to get a motorcycle and he went to the Motorcycle Guys where he put together his own custom made cycle. Then they delivered the cycle and made one for Kate. Being Kate she decided to ride it and then donate it to a charity, McDonald House. Meanwhile, the Motorcycle Guys, who have their own show were also featured on this one.

So many people watch this show that after the last episode when Jon and Kate decided to get these Crooked Houses for the kids, the manufacturers of the houses received a lot of business from viewers who had seen the houses and wanted them. On one of the older episodes Jon and Kate answered emails from viewers. They get endless emails and when they go out in public as Kate is now doing on her book signing tour, fans are always there. What makes these shows so popular? Should we examine this phenomenon to see if there is anything to be learned from it? Or is it just the armchair mentality of people who once sat on their front porches and viewed the activities of their neighbors? Are people becoming armchair voyeurs? Read more...

How do you feel about these shows? Hope to hear from you. Until the next time, Happy Postcard Friendship Friday.

Postcard Friendship Friday!

The Mirror by Frederick Carl Frieseke

I'm posting late for Postcard Friendship Friday and again this isn't really a postcard, but wouldn't it make a good one? I found this picture on my own story when it was posted on Moondance ezine. So I'm linking you to it. It's called "Out on a Ledge". You'll have to read it to see why they chose this illustration for that story.:)

Now for some great news!!! This blog has won an award. It's the "Makes My Heart Smile Award" given to me by my fellow blogger and new friend, Shirley from Luxury Haven. I'm very pleased and honored to have won this award given to her by Rosidah of Music of My Life also a member of the Women's Blogger Directory. It was very sweet of Shirley to give it to me and I thank her so much!!

There are rules to this award:

1. The winner may put the logo on their blog.
2. Put a link to the person who sent you the award.
3. Nominate 10 blogs.
4. Put links to their blogs.
5. Leave a message for your nominees.

I'd love to give it to Shirley, but she already has it.:) I have read so many excellent blogs and here are the ones that make me smile. This is very difficult, because I like so many blogs for different reasons. Since I can only pick 10 I hope you all understand how I'd love to give it to almost everyone. But here goes:

• Marilyn Campiz of The Lotus Sutra Chronicles. Most of the time she makes me smile when I read her posts and they are always so unusual. Plus she is such a good friend on Facebook.:) Enjoy this award!!

• Marie Isabelle Reed from Cpaphil Vintage Postcards whose blogs are always fresh and exciting and who is a wonderful friend.:) Also part of Women's Blogger Directory.

• Anne Marie Hodrick of Heart's Desire Jewelry whose pictures of her jewelry make me drool and I'd like to wear every single piece of jewelry she has there.:) Part of Women's Blogger Directory too.

• This next one has to go to Sherry Singson of Shey Strides also on Women's Blogger Directory for her bright and cheerful blog filled with flowers and unusual and funny photos.:)

• Another great blog where you can always find unusual and also handmade things is Yellow Goat. Though she sells everything she shows every time I go there the colors are bright and the merchandise is delightful. :)

• Pomposh Dhar who has 3 blogs, but I have only read the two of them: Pomposh Dhar named after her of course and Wandering Pam for her beautiful photos and interesting commentary about what is happening in places we never hear about in the US.

• To Alana Roberts who started Women's Blogger Directory and connected us all of us blogging women to each other around the world.:)

• So this award is not only for women's blogs. The next one goes to Danny Saunders of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road whose blog is his journey to become a musician again. Your posts are always interesting and inspiring and make me smile.

• Another one that makes me happy is No, You're A Towel with Andrew Katz. Though it is mainly sports he has a unique angle and throws in fun things like clips from South Park and comments about "24". You make me smile.:)

• This last one has to go to every author who has a blog. I couldn't choose and didn't want anyone to feel left out.:) So please, if you are an author who reads my blog take the award and enjoy it. :)

I wish I had more to choose, but if I did I'd have to give one to Jason Mayo of Outnumbered from Blog Catalog whose blog never fails to make me smile. You are an honorable mention because there are just too many to choose from here. Please take the award.:)

Until the next time. I wish I could give it to everyone whose blog makes me smile. But please, if you got an award spread it around to your own favorites according to the rules.:)

I will post my poem for today in a separate post immediately following this one.

Postcard Friendship Friday!

For Postcard Friendship Friday

Thank you to Tim Hooker for a very interesting and complete interview about his writing. Thank you also to the people who left comments and/or questions for Tim. I will leave this open for more people to ask questions or comments if you missed doing that. Otherwise it's only four people who are in the drawing and the winner will be announced in the next post. I am disappointed that there weren't more people who left comments or questions.

One of my daughters told me that I had too many ideas and too much to read in my blogs. I have nothing to say except these are my mind's meanderings. If you read the description of my blog it says these are the thoughts of a writer. Unfortunately or fortunately for my ideas, these are the things I think about during the day. I want to share them with you, since some of them are rarely discussed and some are only my thoughts. I would like your opinion on whether I should shorten my blog or not. I'd be interested to know if it's too much to read and I should put it into shorter blocks. It seems that today everything needs to be in short spurts like Twitter responses. You can see I can't do that. It's one of the reasons I have to spend so much time on revising my work. In any piece of writing I can always go back and cut some of my words. I can probably do it here too, but most of the time I don't. It's more a stream of consciousness thing and more like I'm talking to you. I feel blogging is like having a conversation with a lot of people at the same time. Even though most of the time you don't get too many responses right away.:)

I used to carry around a journal and write down my thoughts whenever they occurred. But it's too heavy to carry it around in my bag, so I leave it home and come back and write about everything in my blog now. :)

So this has nothing to do with anything that I've written before, but today for some reason I started thinking about a middle grade fantasy novel that I wrote as my first serious novel. It came from a story I used to tell my brother when he was younger and that I recycled and told to my daughters before they went to sleep. By the time it had come to my daughters it was elaborate and I couldn't start the story where it was. So for a project for a Writing Workshop for my masters degree I used it and started from the beginning. It didn't matter that when I started the story I didn't start it at the beginning and that I never knew how it began. I went back and introduced the characters and wrote a fantasy story that is very unique.:) No, seriously, I have never read anything like it. Neither had my professor, though she never really commented about the story, but rather about whether I had fulfilled the assignment, which I had. Then I left it alone and picked it up again a few years later when I had plenty of time and thought I had it ready to be published after a few critique groups had commented on it. Now that I think back on it this wasn't ready at all. It received three rejections and I put it away and have never looked at it since then.

Then Virginia S. Grenier and Donna McDine from Stories for Children

Magazine announced a contest to write a dream story for children, Wacky Dream Contest and I thought, why not make this a dream! Of course, this is a dream. It's a fantasy and it's about a scary thing that some kids think about. This contest is for both adult and children writers who are interested in writing a story to be included. More about the story in my next post. I have to go back and reread it first.:) Don't forget to check the link for all the contest details. There are too many to list here.:)

The picture on the top is for Postcard Friendship Friday and it's one of my favorite things. I love Betty Boop and can't seem to get enough of her. I love the small dolls and the large ones. I even have a clock of her.:) So Marie of Cpaphil Vintage Postcards, here is my offering for Friday. Sorry it's a tiny bit late.:)

That's it for today. If you want to comment on yesterday's interview you may leave your comment until the end of the weekend. I'll give all of you who didn't get here that much time!!! Until the next time thank you to all of my readers and I hope you will post a comment when you visit.:)

Facebook and Twitter: Could They Be Destroying Your Brain Slowly?

From Cpaphil Vintage Postcards

From Cpaphil Vintage Postcards

From Cpaphil Vintage Postcards

In the last couple of days my decision to post about Twitter and how Facebook affects us seems to have increased. I have still not signed up to Twitter and seriously I don't see myself doing it. I don't even update my Facebook that much. So why would I want to Twitter? Yet it seems that the country is going gaga over Twitter. Even politicians are Twittering and actually some of them were being rude on Tuesday night when President Obama was speaking. I mean here is the first speech the new president is giving to a joint house of Congress with the Supreme Court present and what are these Republicans doing? They're Twittering and one even had his staff member send out a tweet to apologize for the first one. What could possibly be so important you have to tell people during a "Not State of the Union Address" as Rachel Maddow and John Stewart referred to it? Shouldn't they be watching the address too?

There is an article in the March issue of The Sun magazine, which has awesome articles. I thought they would have it online, but they have the February one now. You should definitely check this out. The article in the March issue is about how the internet is changing the way we think. It's called "Computing the Cost" by Arnie Cooper. It's an interview with Nicolas Carr who discusses how the internet has actually rewired our brains and we are thinking differently. You can get this magazine at any bookstore and after looking at a typical issue you might want to even subscribe to it. Or you can wait until they post this issue online, probably when they send the April one. My husband does and there's always something worthwhile to read in it.:)

A couple of posts ago I talked about how we might have a discussion about this subject. If you remember the article: "Why Facebook is for Old Fogies". On the heels of that article comes several more about the effects of Facebook and Twitter. Here is one : "Are Twitter, Facebook Health Hazards? and another "Twittering brains withering, expert warns" and one more in The Daily News, "Are Facebook, MySpace and Twitter eroding attention spans?" If you are interested and want to see more go here.

So armed with all this information I would like to know how you feel about it. Please leave your comments and I will try to answer as many as I can. A lot of people have been waiting for this post, so I hope that you will chime in with your opinion.:) Personally, I like Facebook, but it can get tedious. I love my friends and I love hearing from them, but sometimes answering all the requests and making sure you've saved the rain forest and the oceans is also time-consuming.:) I am personally addicted to Scramble.:) Also, I do love meeting all the people there and being able to network with all of you cool guys!! Looking forward to your responses.:)

Now for the blog I am highlighting today it is going to be: Cpaphil Vintage Postcards. I love to visit this unusual blog, because Marie, the author always has something different and exciting for us to see. She will link a vintage postcard to an event or an experience and it becomes very personal or she'll give us the history of it. One of her entries is about the French flag. Did you know that the original French flag had green instead of blue? That is only one of the fascinating things you can learn on her blog. The one after that was about a Napoleon question and Marie posted the answer she received from the historian David Markham so we could all learn about the history too. Marie has a large assortment of postcards and I am looking forward to viewing as many as I can when I have time. She offers some of them for sale, and she also encourages people to send her any that they have. It makes me want to dig into my souvenirs to see if I have any that I can send to her.:) Once you have visited this blog you will want to go back there every day. Just seeing those beautiful postcards and learning more about their history brightens my day!

The last thing I want to talk about is American Idol. It was the second week and there were twelve more hopefuls tonight. It's sad that when it comes to actually performing some of these people pick the songs that make them sound the worst. Don't they listen to themselves? Or are they doing them well in rehearsal and then messing up when they're in front of the audience? I admit that four judges is a bit much. Three was daunting, but imagine facing four of them? Also, they don't always agree and that creates tension. All I can say is no matter what the pundits say I loved Adam Lambert. He brings an energy and a voice that I sorely missed in most of the contestants tonight. Plus he is really good looking and that doesn't hurt.:) For the girls I am mixed, but I did like Allison Iraheta. For a sixteen year old she has some voice!! And even though he is doing the same shtick I liked Norman Gentle or Nick Mitchell (his real name). He is funny and every time I see him he makes me laugh. I've seen that quality in only a few people on the stage and most of them went on to do great things. When he was just starting out Gabriel Gottfried had that quality. I saw him at Catch a Rising Star in New York City and I thought I'd burst my stomach I laughed so hard. He did crazy things I'd never seen anyone else do. He got on TV and now is pretty much ensconced in comedy lore.

You have to applaud someone who wants to do anything for a laugh. Nick Mitchell is that kind of person. It is a bit schlocky, but it's his personality and he has great timing. He might have changed the song though. Simon was really getting disturbed about him. I don't care, but it would be fun to see what a comedian on the show might do to it. Might spice things up a bit.:) It's all up to the voting. We never vote until the last couple of shows. So we won't have any say in this. :) Here's a page where you can find out everything about American Idol.

But for sheer comedy I can't end this without talking about Gov. Jindal who has proved to be the most entertaining politician since Sarah Palin.:) There is no question that he reminded me immediately of Kenneth on "30 Rock". It was his delivery and his open eyed wonder that did it. He didn't look like a governor. Instead he seemed more like some IT guy who stopped by to see if he could fix your computer. He spouted lies and nonsense and did little for the Republicans but bring them more embarrassment. It's odd how much they can take!!

Until the next time. I hope you have a great rest of the week. One more thing I wanted to tell you. A friend of mine sent me a link to this great movie site. You can watch movies for free, like hulu.com. These are first run movies still in movie theaters like "Revolutionary Road" and "Australia". The name of the site is ParadoxCentral. You register and then you can watch all of these movies for FREE!!!!! I can't wait to take advantage of this soon. Enjoy!!!!