A Small Victory

I missed out on a writing a few good rants in the week or so since I've been (mostly) bed couch-ridden. I really had a lot to say about Janet's boob and I swear my post would have been fresh and original and an incredible commentary of society, freedom and pasties. Really, it would have been great. As would the other essays I wrote in my head that are no longer viable because they've been done to death. Things about Kerry and Dean and Martha Stewart. Pontifications on world at large - war, peace, nuclear weapons, economics, culture..you name it, I would have written it. And it would have been good and I would be the first blogger to win a Pulitzer. I mean, who knows why fate leads us where it does? Perhaps good old Mr. Fate has it in for me for some reason and if I had not gotten sick, this would have been the week that I singlehandedly saved a dozen children from a burning school bus, discovered a cure for the common cold and was named Lyndon LaRouche's running mate. Without my consent, of course. But alas, fate - and some viral madness - had other things in mind for me. It may have appeared to you that the last seven or eight days were filled with all kinds of exciting, breathtaking news but let me tell you something: When you spend days at a time watching television, you begin to realize the way everything flows together. All those delicious celebrity rumors and all the ominous weather forecasts and all the news items scrolling along the bottom of your cable news channel - they all eventually gel together, forming one huge blob of sound bites, headlines and weather maps and that blob covers your television screen and seeps into your remote and kills your brain cells one at a time until the resulting delirium causes you to believe that Janet Jackson is on trial for stock fraud, is being represented by Howard Dean and the judge is none other than Al Roker. You learn a lot about the state of cable tv when you have about 6,000 channels and nowhere to go. I think there must be a standards committee somewhere that dictates certain rules cable companies must abide by. Rule #1: There must be a Michael Madsen movie playing on at least one channel at all times. Rules 2, 3 and 4 are the same, except substitute Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts and Steven Segal for Madsen. And then there's Rule #5: There must be no fewer than ten home decorating shows in your cable lineup. They can be of any variety; home swapping, room swapping, ambush decor, how to control your wife's packrat sensibilities, how to decorate a spoiled kid's room for just one third of your annual salary! Rule #6 is something about bottom-feeder talk shows, but I still had enough brain cells left to know that I should stay away from them, lest I have fever dreams about Jerry Springer giving Ricki Lake a sponge bath. However, I thought it was ok to watch some of the upper echelon talk shows; the ones that purport to be of a higher class and less hillbilly like. So I tried The View and fell asleep two minutes into it. I was told by a friend that I should wait for the afternoon shows instead. That's when they cater to working women who just walked in the door from a hard day at the office and want nothing more than to sit down and watch some billion dollar empire bitch tell her how to live her life. Wife swapping? I swear, Oprah had a thing on the other day about a woman who left her husband for her best friend's husband. When did Oprah start catering to the lowest common denominator? What happened to her book club and her shows about world peace? Ah, there's Dr. Phil. I bet he knows how to put on a show without all the fuss and histrionics of his counterparts. Errr, no. Dr. Phil is a condescending, pandering jerk who makes a living by humiliating people on national tv. Granted, those people are willing victims of his humiliation, but it's not nice to take advantage of the mentally vulnerable and Dr. Phil should be ashamed of himself for doing so. So much for the talk shows. Let's watch the local news. Oh, look at the teaser headlines! Killer bees headed our way! Tidal wave coming! Nuclear holocaust imminent! But first, let's run that clip of the cute seven year old who called 911 when her doggie fell in the pool. Awwwww! Timmy, Lassie, come look at this! Oh wait. Timmy doesn't live here. Yet another fever dream. Timmy fell in the well and Lassie didn't get there in time to save him from Hannibal Lechter. Where's those cute, 911-dialing kids when you need them? As for everyone's assertion that the major news media is too liberal/too conservative, let me tell you a thing or two. You lay in bed for a week and switch between MSNBC, CNN and FOX and I bet you too will think they are all the same channel at the end of that week. Maybe it was the fever, but I could swear I saw Lou Dobbs on FOX talking about Scott Peterson and Bill O'Reilly on CNN extolling the virtues of Snoop Dogg. It's all the same, folks. Just mouths moving and heads nodding and the shuffling of papers and the switch to the live feed from Baghdad. Eventually everyone sounds like the adults in a Charlie Brown movie and all the stories bleed together and you give up, pop in your Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVD and realize that Meatwad makes more sense than Tom Brokaw. At least Meatwad speaks his mind and doesn't need cue cards to slyly insult someone. And he's a shape shifter. Let's see Brokaw turn himself into a bridge. On second thought, let's not. I remember the last time that happened. Something about NyQuil and a high temp that makes me dream about stepping on Brokaw's nuts. Hey, it's time for that part in the news when the weatherman stands outside in the freezing sleet and rain to tell us that it's raining and sleeting! Wah-wah-wah, wah wah!