Television run amok

          This winter break I stayed in a skiing resort with my family in New York.  Due to global warming there was no snow whatsoever, leaving two options watch television or use the internet. It then hit me that the lady at the check-in desk told my father and I that we couldn’t use dial-up in our rooms and that the only place to access the internet was in a newly built lobby. She then went into a lengthy explanation of why they had to rebuild to lobby at which point I tuned her out. After all, I wasn’t so addicted to the internet that I was going to put this lady in a chokehold and start screaming profanities at her. (You see, all my porn was saved on my 30 GB iPod video.)So this left me one option, the television.

        It has been my expectation that television during the holidays is usually dull and corny. I had watched all those lovely Lifetime made for TV movies willingly, that Miracle of 34th Street movie, the Peanuts Christmas special, and all those other ‘holiday’ movies, so I just channel surfed. The 007 marathon on Spike TV didn’t seem too enticing, so I looked for the Real World or the Surreal Life. After about 6 hours, this became quite boring so I went to see what the rest of my family was up to.

      They too were watching the television, some Discovery Channel program. So I sit down to watch the program and see a simulation of a tsunami desecrating Seattle. I had no idea what was going on so I decided to wait until the commercials to ask my brother what the program was about. Turns out I didn’t need to ask because the subsequent commercial informed me that I was watching Apocalypse Week on the Discovery Channel. I thought to myself, hey that’s great timing, just like OJ Simpson telling the press that he did murder Nicole Brown and her lover today. Whoever was the programming director was should be given an Emmy because that was a whole hour of riveting scientific babble that made me defecate five times. I tried to sit down and ponder the possible motivations of a channel like Discovery to do such a thing. Then I realized that it’s the ploy of most channels, scare the shit out of you. Hell, it doesn’t even make sense but people still watch it. Sure, most people like these programs but for me, if they want to be scared shitless try jumping off a cliff.