I worked it out over the weekend.
I’ve not had TV since last century as some of my
readers will be aware (nor a smart phone or microwave or dishwasher EVER
– or any of the absolute essentials! of modern life. No car, which of course
means I don’t need gym membership or a fitbit. And so on and so on. But, I
begin to wonder if telly abstention has kept my critical faculties working
despite all the mind-mess of modern life..
Like many sentient Brits, I’ve wondered why enough of the UK (English ) public vote against their own best interests (see last post) and keep electing people who clearly hate them, don’t care about them at the
very least, and do their utmost to strip
away every socio-economic gain made since the end of WWII. And I have the
answer.
But in the single-room old fishing cottage we called
ours for 4 days there was a TV. Inevitably it got switched on.
Every occasion I’ve spent time with a TV over the
last couple decades I feel its somehow gone way lower than what we used to call
dumbing down. I do not know what is
lower than that but TV in 2022 is it.
I could literally feel my brain cells imploding.
Apart from the atrocious crap that passes for programming generally – in fact a bunch of boring freaks in highly staged natural settings talking uber shite about boring shite that would send you to sleep if you heard it at a bus stop on a wet Tuesday in November (the constant flotsam and jetsam of house-hunting, garden make-overs and competitive food prep) – there seemed to be nothing but advertisements with a higher gloss content than the programmes.
The shitter the
product the shinier the ad and the more time had clearly been spent with very dedicated
consumer psychologists. I could almost imagine NEEDING that new ‘individual’
sofa or that burger that – despite what the evidence around me in real life
suggests – actually sends humans into paroxysms of fumbling ecstasy.
Just how many faces in TV world are botoxed and filled and lifted and stretched and caked in so much make-up it’s amazing they don’t simply cave in, is another wonder. Is anyone allowed to look normal?
What is
normal?
There is a gizmo that allow morons to put a sandwich
together without having a nervous breakdown. I’d no idea putting more than one
item between two bits of bread was so unbelievably challenging – I’ve been
managing it all these years entirely on my own.
Apparently your daily life is massively enhanced if
some complete stranger turns up at your door with a plastic holdall with food-in-bags cooked by someone in a kitchen in a venue you’ve never seen, filled with
ingredients you cannot check – and probably shouldn’t. Everyone starts smiling inanely – that is literally all it takes. I had NO IDEA.
Other than that there are the game shows where
cardboard cut-out men and women grin and joke while asking cretins to work out
the answers to questions that wouldn’t tax a disabled hamster and everyone has
orgasms when they get it right.
So when I returned home to read that Boris Johnson
was not only still PM but was spouting about another Tory sleaze-ball being
misogynistic – instead of collapsing under the weight of the irony – I got it.
I just got it.
TV has wiped everyone’s minds clean out. Many h ave lost the ability to think independently or at all.
Of course my theory falls completely apart as I have
a number of friends who have not given up on THE BOX and whose abilities to
think coherently remain unimpaired…
If there is any other explanation as to why a
privileged wanker who wouldn’t care (and clearly didn’t) if ordinary people
live or die and treats his own families with the kind of disregard most of us
wouldn’t show to a diseased rodent – I’m all ears…
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As always, do check out My BOOKS by clicking that link or this one - goodreads or this one bandcamp Thanks so much
Oh - and - I will be doing a short comedy set as part of Icebreaker comedy at The Hunter S. Thompson pub Dundee next Tuesday 3rd May 8.30.