DVD Prices, ANTM Strike, and Israel

Thursday, August 03, 2006  -  reddit

What a rut, eh? The only thing in the past week that I've been able to come up with have been DVD prices and the coming war over reality TV. Neither of these things are terribly interesting, but I can't for the life of me come up with anything better. I have more than enough writing to do, and should be doing it instead of this, yet my ego compels, so I shall respond.

DVD Prices
It occurred to me the other day that DVD prices make no sense. A new title may go anywhere between $20-$15, which isn't bad I suppose, but how can you justify that price when you can buy it on PPV for $4? Or rent it for slightly more? And why is it only worth $4 on TV but $7-9 to see it in a theater?

Then there are boxed sets of TV shows that can go for between $35-$70 for a single season. That's 22 hours worth of entertainment versus just two, yet not 11 times the price. How does that make any sense?

Reality TV
UPN/The CW's America's Next Top Model's writing/producing staff is on strike, demanding union representation which would allow them a pension and health care fund, as well as minimum structured pay and fair negotiated hours. I wrote just a few days ago about how one of ANTM's first contestants has talked about how rigged the shows are in her blog, and now I've just noticed that the Scriptapalooza contest is now accepting reality tv spec scripts. That says a lot.

Israel
Israel may be under constant rocket bombardment year-round, killing dozens of civilians, but that doesn't justify attacking another country, and killing hundreds of their civilians -- almost half of them children -- in retaliation. Israel is as bad as the terrorists right now, and it's disgusting that the world is doing nothing about it. Anybody who knows anything about terrorism knows that you can't stop terrorism by killing terrorists. You have to go to the root cause, find out why these people are becoming terrorists in the first place, and stop it *right there*.

Frankly, if there were any justice in this world, both Olmert and Bush would be hauled before The Hague for what they've done.