Parental Control: 5 Shows You Shouldn't Watch With Your Parents

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This article was written by teen reporters from The Mash, a weekly publication distributed to Chicagoland high schools.

By Nikki Pietrus, Whitney Young

Let’s be honest, some of the best shows on TV might not be as squeaky clean as your parents would like to think. But is that going to stop you from watching these gems? Heck no!

OK, now imagine this: You’re sitting down to watch Netflix with your parents and your mom starts talking about that new show everyone’s been raving about, “Orange Is the New Black.” Before you can say anything, she turns it on and you’re stuck in the most awkward situation of your life.

Don’t put yourself in this situation ever again. Here are five fantastic shows that are awesome for watching on your own --- but not so much with your parents. We ranked them on a scale of one to five -- one being slightly awkward, and five being painfully weird.

1. “Breaking Bad”
If you weren’t on the “Breaking Bad” bandwagon before, you’re probably curious about it now. The series follows the story of Walter White, an overqualified high school chemistry teacher who turns to cooking meth after learning he has terminal cancer. Despite the obvious theme of drugs, the show is also filled with lots of violence, gore and downright scary scenes.

“At first, my parents saw me watching ‘Breaking Bad’ and thought it was kind of inappropriate, but the show is so good that they got hooked too. Now we watch it as a family,” said Marist senior Kendall Maddix.

Awkward factor: 2/5

2. “Weeds”
The name of this show should be an immediate indicator of what to expect. “Weeds” stars Mary-Louise Parker as a suburban mother who turns to selling pot after her husband dies. This may sound similar to “Breaking Bad,” but “Weeds” takes a more comical approach to the drug-dealing plot line.

“‘Weeds’ is hilarious, but I always make sure I watch it late at night or when my parents aren’t home,” said Whitney Young senior Joey Albarran. “You never know what you might see.”

You can expect heavy profanity, drug use, sex scenes and nudity -- all things that might be a tad awkward if you’re watching with mom and dad.

Awkward factor: 3.5/5

3. “South Park”
Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s hilarious creation is still producing new episodes on Comedy Central. But if you find the show on Netflix, you can watch the unrated versions, which are packed full of profanity and crude humor.

“My brother was watching an episode of ‘South Park’ on our family room TV and I didn’t think much of it,” said Whitney Young senior Cortny Trueba. “That is, until some colorful language shocked my mom, dad and even my grandma.”

Awkward factor: 4/5

4. “Shameless”
“Shameless” focuses on the dysfunctional Gallagher family. Led by an alcoholic father and an absent mother, the six Gallagher children are left to navigate the world on their own. Unfortunately, their moral compasses aren’t leading them in the right direction.

“This show should really be called ‘Shameful’ because that’s how I feel after watching,” said Nazareth Academy junior Courtney Urzen. “There is always a lot of profanity, sex, drugs and alcohol in each episode.”

Awkward factor: 4/5

5. “Orange is the New Black”
Netflix hit a home run with its new series. Socialite Piper Chapman is in for a shock after being sentenced to 15 months in prison, convicted of transporting dirty money for her drug dealer girlfriend. “Orange Is the New Black” is sprinkled with intense sex scenes, nudity and profanity.

“I was even shocked by how bad some of the scenes are,” said Whitney Young sophomore Jessica Lathan. “But the show is so good, I don’t mind it anymore, I’m addicted.”

Awkward factor: 5/5

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Veteran Jeremiah Espinoza Overcomes Blindness To Create Successful Whip Making Business (WATCH)

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With a strong enough entrepreneurial spirit, not even the failure of sight can slow down some small business owners.

Take Utah man Jeremiah Espinoza, for example. A United States Army veteran, Espinoza is running a successful business making whips despite losing 99 percent of his eyesight from an injury sustained shortly after his return from the first Gulf War, KSL reports. Espinoza says his disability actually helps him make the whips that are still used by cattle drivers today. In 2012, Espinoza and his company Blind Man's Whips was recognized by the Utah State University Small Business Development Center.

"This is really the spirit of entrepreneurism,” Mark Holmes, director of the Utah State University Small Business Development Center, told UBMedia. “Getting knocked down, and getting back up, doing something new and trying it and if that doesn’t work you try something else, you just keep trying and going.”

Indeed, Espinoza isn't the only entrepreneur to overcome blindness to start a successful business. Nashville woman Diane Ross overcame blindness to become known as "The Amazing Quilter" due to the success of her business, according to Tomorrow's Trends. Computer programmer Michael Arbitman also didn't let his lack of vision deter him from working to create an insulin pump that can be used by blind people, the Global Genes Project reports.

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One Direction Twerking Video: Boy Band Shows Off Hilarious Dance Moves At Recent Concert (WATCH)

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Your dream celebrity twerking video has finally happened, folks. One Direction took on the viral dance at a recent show in Florida, and we've got the evidence.

The challenge came from a fan on Twitter during the live-question portion of the concert, but was one major problem: Liam, Harry, Louis, Niall and Zayn weren't quite sure how to do it. So, they all gathered around Niall onstage, who whipped his phone out to do some research.

"We're on YouTube right now looking up how to twerk!" he told the crowd.

After talking it over and doing a few practice moves, the guys spread around the stage and gave the audience an epic, twerktastic show. Watch the hilarious fan-recorded video, above.

Bravo, boys. We bet Miley would have been proud.

(h/t teen.com)

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Dogs eating lemons: Watch these puppies crinkling on citrus fruit (VIDEO)

You know how awful knows when something is just a little too sour for your taste? Well, it seems that these dogs know how you feel.

It is an amazing mashup of dogs whereas, licking and FREAKING out on some fruits bitter seriously.

Although it may be nice to see your dog deflate up, too much lemon can cause vomiting and diarrhea if ingested. See the list of the ASPCA of what not to feed your dog, including coffee, chocolate and milk.

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Can A Christian Watch 'Game Of Thrones?'

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By David Gibson
Religion News Service

(RNS) Is there anything morally redeeming about “Game of Thrones”? Does the hit HBO series even have a moral vision?

The show is certainly entertaining, almost addictively so, and as “Games of Thrones” wraps up its third season on Sunday (June 9), the ratings reflect that popularity: a record of more than 5.5 million viewers have followed the ruthless struggles for power among the teeming clans of Westeros, the medieval-looking world created by fantasy novelist George R.R. Martin.

That success has also guaranteed that the show will be back for a fourth year of mayhem and passion, swords and sorcery, despite this season’s many violent endings. Or, as one tweet put it after the bloody penultimate episode: “Why doesn’t George R.R. Martin use twitter? Because he killed all 140 characters.”

But therein lies the moral problem for some: The appeal of the series seems bound up in the senseless violence and amoral machinations – not to mention the free-wheeling sex – that the writers use to dramatize this brutish world of shifting alliances and dalliances.

That, in turn, has prompted intense debates about whether Christians should watch “Games of Thrones” at all, or whether the show’s only possible virtue is depicting how the world would look if Christ had never been born – or what it could look like if Christianity disappeared tomorrow.

“Why should Christians watch ‘Game of Thrones’? There’s no necessity, and some will find the gratuitous sex and violence dangerous and damaging,” wrote Daniel Muth of the Living Church Foundation.

But, Muth concluded, “Seeing the hopelessness and savagery of what this age threatens to become may serve to shake us from our torpor.”

To be sure, “Game of Thrones” can be as “relentlessly grim” as Jonathan Ryan described it in a Christianity Today critique. As one character puts it: “When you play a game of thrones, you win or you die.”

Dark magic plays a role in the plots, yes, and there are hints of something supernatural, if not altogether benign. But for the most part, the land of the Seven Kingdoms is a dog-eat-dog world dominated by soulless connivers like Lord Baelish, who concludes one chilling monologue by declaring: “Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.”

Which is not to say that the world of “Games of Thrones” doesn’t have religion. In fact, it has several of them. But belief is slippery and divine justice improbable. Even those who hope there is something at the other end of the ladder – a realm above – fear that it is populated by cynical gods who view mortals the way cats regard a mouse, as something to be toyed with until it dies.

“The gods have no mercy. That’s why they’re gods,” as Queen Regent, Cersei Lannister, coldly tells terrified young women praying for help during a siege.

For some, the most damning aspect of “Game of Thrones” may be the way that it subverts the work that it most closely tracks: J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” saga that’s beloved by so many contemporary Christians.

In those novels, and the hit films they inspired, Tolkien also presents an epic struggle – but one in which good battles evil, and triumphs in the end. George R.R. Martin is having none of that.

“The sort of fantasy where all the people get together to fight the dark lord doesn’t interest me,” Martin told The New Republic when asked about comparisons to Tolkien.

“We don’t tend to have wars or political controversies where one side is really ugly and wears dark clothing, where the other side wears white and has glowing magical swords,” he said.

(Martin, who is helping to adapt the television series from his series of novels, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” is busy shooting the fourth season and was not available for further comment.)

But ambiguity is not necessarily amorality. It can also reflect the complexity of real life.

“What constitutes good and what constitutes evil? What happens if our good intentions produce evil? Does the end justify the means?” Those are the questions Martin says he is asking, and they are questions that have spawned a cottage industry of blogs and even a book about the philosophy behind the show.

Still, some have also detected a genuine theological framework behind the show that does not reject Christian teachings but instead reflects them in important ways.

“Indeed, the series can be read as an argument for Reinhold Niebuhr’s Augustinian realism,” George Schmidt wrote at Religion Dispatches, citing the Cold War theologian who has often been invoked during America’s current battle against terrorism. As Schmidt notes, idealists who would triumph in Tolkien’s world are blithely cut down in Martin’s.

The Rev. Jim McDermott, a Jesuit priest who is studying screenwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles, also pointed out that in “Game of Thrones,” raw power and high birth provide no guarantee of protection. And, like the Bible, the series finds unlikely heroes among “the shattered, the shunned and the disregarded.”

The realism that McDermott finds in the show is the gospel truth that life is often hard and unfair – but everyone shares in that fate.

“And salvation is not the purview of some elect, nor does grace inherently reside in a crown,” he wrote in America magazine. “As with horror, so hope springs from the most unexpected of quarters.”

Or maybe not. The story lines continue to unfold, and Martin hasn’t yet finished the final book that will serve as the template for the rest of the series. Strong characters and unpredictable narratives are sure to keep coming, and to keep viewers glued to the screen. But at the end will they find a “transcendent moral vision”?

That’s the question that troubles Scott R. Paeth, who teaches Christian social ethics at DePaul University in Chicago.

“Thus far (Martin has) been fairly scornful of the idea that the end result of the political struggle is the establishment of social justice, and seems to be suggesting that, in the end, all succumbs to dust and entropy, or that on the whole those willing to give themselves wholly over to their will to power will ultimately prevail,” Paeth wrote on his blog.

“How he ends his story will tell us much about the moral world in which he dwells.”

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