"Wait? What?...Make-Up Blog? When did this happen?"

....several minutes ago, I answer. Now, I know this may come as a shock to some of you. And I'm reserving myself to the possibility of losing all of my 2 male followers (which I actually think make up ALL of my followers), based on the sudden and aggressive shift in my blog heading.

Make-up. Some people might scoff at this, but it really is a form of art. I like the element of creation and color-play, I like that it allows you to look different from day to day and I like that it can make you feel like you can take on the world. Confidence comes from within, of course, but make-up can help the world see it a little bit easier. Contrary to the name, make-up can and should do the opposite. Make-up should bring-out, highlight, and illuminate you.

Here is some of my work.

Tivo-Tequila: Is She Killing Your Favorite TV show?

These are the useless things my major taught me (communications/advertising), so I'm going to take this one guys.

With the, almost overnight success, of the digital video recording devices some people have been agonizing over the possibility of their favorite television shows getting cancelled if they don't watch their shows live because they are not contributing to the ratings for the show. I'm going to tell you if you're ultimately responsible for euthanizing your own favorite show by watching it previously recorded.

There are a few ways the media gathers ratings. In all the ways the families are selected at random and fully aware that they are participating. (They used to give them a little monetary compensation for their trouble. I'm not sure if they still do.) The first way they did it when they started was they had the members of the household keep a diary of what they watched and for how long. The diary was due on say Tuesday of every week. What they found was that at the beginning they were real thorough and towards the end it got vague and sloppy. Like any homework assignment I've ever done. lol I'm sure they filled their whole week (or what they remembered) out on the last day and mailed it just to be DONE. The other thing they found was that people tended to censor their reports of what they watched. Or maybe they simply just didn't remember watching that 3 hours of late-night Jerry Springer.

Like it tends to do, technology evolved, and they figured out a way to put a device on the TV that would record what was being watched and ask the household members to punch in their ID # when they were in the room watching and punch out when they left. This was good because it accounted for multiple family member and was able to provide more demographic-specific information. Little Susie watched Sesame Street and The Muphets (Oh, god, I'm showing my age...), not Jerry Springer and Elimidate. They found though that, as with the diary log, family members are good at it at the beginning and then they get real tired of punching all these numbers all the time, so they simply would not be as diligent.

It is my understanding that ratings are gathered today using a combination of diary log and TV device. Ratings are gathered from participating households according to what the Neilsen Ratings Staff considers to be the "typical" household demographic. Which is, undoubtedly pretty skewed. "Typical household" is relative, in my opinion.

When I was in school we watched a video about a device they were working on that would "scan" the room to see who was watching. That way "human" error was almost all-together eliminated. But do not be fooled, the sample size is microscopic compared to the number of people in the population. Ratings are a joke - even though EVERYTHING in the TV business depends on it.

Also, the Neilsen Ratings Staff-members have not caught up with society's shifting media practices. They have not figured out a way to measure previously recorded programs, and they have not factored in television shows viewed on the internet. Which is a whole different beast. Including, but not limited to, shows watched on cellular phones, iPods, computers, etc.

The good news is, no, your own personal previously recorded viewing habits are not killing your favorite show. (Disclaimer: granted that you are not currently participating in a ratings research program). The bad news is that since you are not participating, no, there is nothing you can do about it. Well almost nothing...here's some suggestions for the die-hards...

1. Go undercover at the Neilsen Ratings Company and find out who has these devices. Start lobbying to those households. It would help if you had voice scrambler and/or a real snazzy lawn-sign.

2. If that doesn't provide the instant gratification our generation has become so accustomed to, stay undercover at Neilsen Ratings Company and upload a "glitch" in the computer program. You American Idol Fans remember, Sanjaya? Uh-huh, human computer program glitch.

3. If they catch you and are fired, frame them with your plan to glitch the system and blackmail the infrastructure. Remember Everwood? it's worth it people.

4. If everything still falls apart for you, switch to bribes. Bribe everyone. Bribe your way out.

5. And if that still fails. Deny, deny, deny. You don't know nothing about nothing. John Mayer and Trick Daddy taught me that. Now I'm teaching you...

God did a whole lot of cool things...

...but imagine my surprise when the most incredible fruit I've ever had turned out to be something we made. It's called a Dinosaur Egg Pluot. Now, granted, I would have NEVER looked twice at something called a "pluot" that I had never seen or heard of before. And if it hadn't been for the markered sign above it with the elusive "Dinosaur Egg" heading I would still be living there. Dinosaur Egg. That's all I saw. I don't remember anything after that except being back in the CVS breakroom eating one. 

I did a real small amount of computer research to bring to you a little Pluot history. Don't worry, though, because I just did a little research because I didn't want to get bored.

Pluots were commercially sold for the first time in 1989. Pluots are 30% plum and 70% apricot. (Warning: Opinion Ahead) I like neither plums nor apricots. Floyd Zaiger was a California fruit-breeder who developed the pluot because he thought the "plumcot" (50% plum, 50% apricot) tasted like ass. Well, not really, I think he just thought he could do it better than Luther Burbank, the father of the plumcot. Which I can understand because I'm already thinking about making a 50% pluot and 50% plumcot.....I call it the PLUOTCOT. :::cue the Frankenstein music::: Social science majors can do all KINDS of stuff now.