It's better than nothing

One of my early dreams was to live in the city and have the city seep into my life. The bookstores, the cafés, the rush of cultures and people – somehow they seemed marvelous and fascinating. I wanted to become part of the intelligentsia, the ones with ideas! I would meet other people with ideas and our ideas would meet and well, procreate other ideas and we would all nod and say, “Tut tut” as we sipped tiny espressos daintily.

After answering customer support all day at work, my brain is drained at the day’s end. The tube whispers sweet promises of entertainment without work. I flip on the switch (so easy!) and scan the stations. Sports entertainment. Cartoons on some sort of high, as garish colors and blips of sounds flood the screen. Neat funny sitcoms, with convenient pauses for laugh tracks every 15 seconds. Joey is kissing some girl. Homer is drinking Duff. Raymond is whining to his wife. Entertainment segments loop in the latest gossip. Starlets just bought a new pooper scooper! The new fall fashion are white dresses! An actor (gasp) just got divorced and now he’s moving from his mansion in the hills to a smaller mansion in the valley to cut back and he has just bought a new luxury car to get over his misfortune!

Oh yes. Here’s a news segment. Let’s wait. Wait. Wait some more. Wait for all the commercials that crows about new medicine to combat heart attacks, memory loss, blood loss, obesity, hair loss, back aches, arthritis and face wrinkles. I can see how youth would be interested in current events. I watch the news for a bit. Some dudes got blown to bits in Iraq. Some other dudes got sprayed with bullets in Afghanistan. Michael Jackson is losing money. A very tanned woman just ran away from her own wedding. I made sure that I was not watching the entertainment show.

I turned to a another station. Hip hop all week all the time. The beats hooked me. As did the writhing bodies and vibrating bottoms of some very attractive young ladies. I had to respect MTV. They sure knew how to market to a lazy business person in his mid-twenties like me. Who cares about ideas, when you have booty shaking eye candy right in front of you, at your pleasure?

 It’s not creative, nor is it mind-boggling. It’s not inspirational, but it sure is pretty.