27 April - diabolical channels
Morning at home sick, well not really sick but sometimes you know, facing an office is more than you can do and if you choose a day when not much is going to happen your colleagues won’t resent you and besides it’s understood that they can and will do the same any week soon.
The boss has a different system, his are days out golfing, allegedly to mingle with peers and clients or other company decision makers. Fun anyway if you are decent at the game and not going to be humiliated. Do you still have to lose to your clients or is that a Japanese myth? This in itself requires extra games and tuition for which time off is taken with the blessing of the board. Anyway, I turned on the TV because there was nothing on MTV - ok I confess I was searching for some background music but I raised my arms and let them drop to my sides disconsolately when I spotted more urban youths moving like Muppets. All that squatting, why can’t they dance upright and without doing monkey grooming gestures?
I never thought it would come to this, me thinking current styles of dancing were pathetic. As if the 60’s ‘yeah yeah’ stuff had been any less idiotic or all that arms waiving in the air we did in the (hehm!) 80’s: acieeeeeeed. Jeez how embarrassing.
Anyway, my channel-hopping alighted on Living TV and over an hour or two I watched programs on women giving birth or just coping with new babies. Some of them had twins, triplets etc. on top of other pre-existing brood. Blimey, it all seemed like such hard work. Some women had a present and supporting partner and a nice environment and some had not. In any case, if there was any doubt in my mind that life was better without (ok all the people on TV seemed happy with their status and happy that once bottle feeding was over, potty training was over, tantrums were over, school was over, crazy zombie teens were over... well i don’t know, they seemed to believe there would one day be light at the end of the tunnel and their kids would be nice 'friends-like' people. Except that kids don’t as a rule listen to you and you can’t burden them with what a shitty day you had at work otherwise that would undermine your regular exhortations for them to study hard and become ...like you are now? Are you crazy? or whatever you thought they should become.
I resolved to tape these programmes from now on and watch them when, as it happens regularly to any woman, I felt a bit down and unsure of my choices. Of course it would also appear, judging by the ads interspersed with the programs that these viewers also had financial problems and needed to consolidate their debts, or that they would be happy to get a mega unhealthy meal from Goodfellas for only £4.99, pizza with chips, for god’s sake, why not add garlic bread too. Oh, yes, that came with the deal. Italians would turn in their graves at the tragedy of this carbo surplus. I couldn’t work out why people went on this programs, though some were American and doesn’t anyone there want to be on TV no matter what level of personal degradation?
But hang on? I thought the West was suffering from downward birth rates, were this programmes really going to enlist more women to become mothers? I had an idea, to record those programmes, make funky little covers for them and give them to girlfriends when they are down. The Super Nanny one on CH4 was also perfect content to cheer you up. And I’d seen a trailer or something about bozo cheating husbands. You know, you work hard and then double the dose at home and he, oh, he's got enough free time to go screw someone else.
Another question arose watching this diabolical channel. Why were these stupid people in debt, (the wiewers addressed by the ads) if they had jobs? I counted 8 financial ads in an hour. If they didn't have jobs then who would lend them money in the first place? Also ads for funeral expenses, medical insurance, accident insurance etc and what’s this got to do with birthing/mothers I wondered? Was there some oblique link to make between having children and how much they would cost to keep, hence you now need to borrow money? And feed your children pizza because it's cheap?
If anyone out there writes these ads/works for these companies, please explain.
The boss has a different system, his are days out golfing, allegedly to mingle with peers and clients or other company decision makers. Fun anyway if you are decent at the game and not going to be humiliated. Do you still have to lose to your clients or is that a Japanese myth? This in itself requires extra games and tuition for which time off is taken with the blessing of the board. Anyway, I turned on the TV because there was nothing on MTV - ok I confess I was searching for some background music but I raised my arms and let them drop to my sides disconsolately when I spotted more urban youths moving like Muppets. All that squatting, why can’t they dance upright and without doing monkey grooming gestures?
I never thought it would come to this, me thinking current styles of dancing were pathetic. As if the 60’s ‘yeah yeah’ stuff had been any less idiotic or all that arms waiving in the air we did in the (hehm!) 80’s: acieeeeeeed. Jeez how embarrassing.
Anyway, my channel-hopping alighted on Living TV and over an hour or two I watched programs on women giving birth or just coping with new babies. Some of them had twins, triplets etc. on top of other pre-existing brood. Blimey, it all seemed like such hard work. Some women had a present and supporting partner and a nice environment and some had not. In any case, if there was any doubt in my mind that life was better without (ok all the people on TV seemed happy with their status and happy that once bottle feeding was over, potty training was over, tantrums were over, school was over, crazy zombie teens were over... well i don’t know, they seemed to believe there would one day be light at the end of the tunnel and their kids would be nice 'friends-like' people. Except that kids don’t as a rule listen to you and you can’t burden them with what a shitty day you had at work otherwise that would undermine your regular exhortations for them to study hard and become ...like you are now? Are you crazy? or whatever you thought they should become.
I resolved to tape these programmes from now on and watch them when, as it happens regularly to any woman, I felt a bit down and unsure of my choices. Of course it would also appear, judging by the ads interspersed with the programs that these viewers also had financial problems and needed to consolidate their debts, or that they would be happy to get a mega unhealthy meal from Goodfellas for only £4.99, pizza with chips, for god’s sake, why not add garlic bread too. Oh, yes, that came with the deal. Italians would turn in their graves at the tragedy of this carbo surplus. I couldn’t work out why people went on this programs, though some were American and doesn’t anyone there want to be on TV no matter what level of personal degradation?
But hang on? I thought the West was suffering from downward birth rates, were this programmes really going to enlist more women to become mothers? I had an idea, to record those programmes, make funky little covers for them and give them to girlfriends when they are down. The Super Nanny one on CH4 was also perfect content to cheer you up. And I’d seen a trailer or something about bozo cheating husbands. You know, you work hard and then double the dose at home and he, oh, he's got enough free time to go screw someone else.
Another question arose watching this diabolical channel. Why were these stupid people in debt, (the wiewers addressed by the ads) if they had jobs? I counted 8 financial ads in an hour. If they didn't have jobs then who would lend them money in the first place? Also ads for funeral expenses, medical insurance, accident insurance etc and what’s this got to do with birthing/mothers I wondered? Was there some oblique link to make between having children and how much they would cost to keep, hence you now need to borrow money? And feed your children pizza because it's cheap?
If anyone out there writes these ads/works for these companies, please explain.
posted by Lisa Taylor @ 6:46 AM
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