So, this probably doesn't belong here since it's not really about my living situation. Well, an argument could be made, but the connection is tenous at best. But it's my space and I do what I want, so Nyah. It's about television, and some things that I've been seeing thereon. As you, who are dutiful followers of the blog, know by now, I'm living on Strong Island (why couldn't we get a cooler nickname, like Shaolin?) for a short (we can but hope) period of time. Even in this far grander living situation, there are some things that I have to do without, which I had access to in the barrio that is Bushwick, Brooklyn.

A clog in the bathtub which disallows the tub to drain in under a half-hour

A drunk old man who poops on the side of my building (no kidding)

ANYTHING TO DO after I get home from work (that isn't the mall or a Starbucks)

And it's this last one that I'm most concerned with right now. Since LI isn't the hopping urban center that Brooklyn is, there isn't that much to do at the end of my daily commute, and so I find myself watching a fair amount of television. Which is a complete disaster, but has allowed me to see a few interesting things that I want to talk about. Interestingly enough, none of the things I want to mention happened during episodes of Law and Order or NYPD Blue, which are the shows that I generally enjoy the most (since the Sopranos hasn't started it's new season yet, and the new season of Sex and the City sux. But I digress).

I watched five minutes of Dog Eat Dog. From the little I saw, it was "Survivor, the Game Show." You know, people have to answer questions, do the physical challenge, and get voted off the island. I don't know if it was the special model episode of the show, but every contestant was a gorgeous female with a brilliant smile and vacant brain. How am I supposed to enjoy this? One of the (few) reasons game shows are good are that you can put yourself in the contestants shoes and say "I knew the answer to that." I certainly knew all the answers on this piece of dog crap (well, only half of the questions on one section, but that's because they were listening comprehension questions from a reading I missed. And can we talk about listening comprension questions on a game show? It's not the Iowa tests for crissakes), but even given that I could have answered every question correctly, I still couldn't enjoy the show. I knew that there was no way I could ever get on the damn thing since I don't fall that far on the left side of the normal curve for body fat percentage in humans. But maybe that's more about me than anything else.

So, another thing I saw was a commercial for "Real World: The Lost Season. Wait, let me get this straight: It's a reality TV show, every episode of which is completely scripted. Ooooo-K. Alright, you say, so it's heavily laced with irony? It's a spoof of itself. That's hip, isn't it? Well, I'd answer, taking something which was already a parody of anything worthwhile and then spoofing it is depressing, not enlightening. It's somewhat reminiscent of this piece of crap (can you tell I'm in a bad mood today) which was a parody of this other piece of crap. Making the former doesn't add anything worthwhile to the world, and it's existence doesn't even imply that the latter is worthy of parody.

And finally, the thing that I really thought was brilliantly evil. As you may or may not know, businesses are not permitted to advertise what a perscription medication does for you unless they also tell you what are the side effects. Well, the other day I saw a commercial (for what I believe was Celebrex, but I'm not positive. If anyone knows better, please write and tell me) which was oddly uninformative. It had an older man waking up in the morning and taking his dog for a walk, while he narrated that he wished he knew of something which could help him with his arthritis. You see him walking down the road, and the commercial ends with him and his friends at the dog park. But it didn't actually advertise anything that I noticed. It all became clear a few commercials later, when I saw the same old man walking down the road again, talking about some medication that he learned about. But in this second commercial, he never actually mentions what it is the medication does, only that it's great for whatever problems he had. But recall that we had already been primed by the earlier commercial to associate this old man with arthritis. This second commercial further associates the old man with the medication, and the medication / arthritis link is invariably formed, allowing the manufacturer to tell you to buy this drug for arthritis pain without having to tell you the side effects of the drug (which for all we know are brain damage and penis shrinkage).


I don't know. When I think about all of these things in a greater context, I get really depressed. My solution? Don't think about it and have an ice pop. Mmmmmmm... Ice pop.