Channel dancing down the demented digital dial with my dumb thumb. Slashing
slices and pieces of programs broadcast, brashly spewing for our viewing.
Stupid stuff, rough and tough and full of fluff. Pieces and bits and none
of it fits. Sadly, shamelessly, celebrities specially selected to be subjected
to tantalizing, titillating tattle-tale trials-by-tape are dragged daily
to the slander stand. A veritable verdict-by-video. Court of the Cathode
Ray Tube. The airwaves writhe with winged, wafting words working their way
past your will. Channel-Surf the relative degrees of sanity. See the incredible,
forgettable talking television heads and their expensive dental work and
cosmetic surgery, joyfully reading reams of unusable news. The triumph of
trivia over information. Language in bondage, bent and bogus and sent against
us. Video Vermin vie for our eyes, plying us with preposterous pictures.
Boiling toilets belch briny broth, flooding the fourth floor with filthy
fluid. Who in their hair cares? Fact and fiction on the verge of a merge,
we're sound-bitten, and smitten but nobody's quittin'. They wank, and we
watch, they babble, we buy, by and by, buy and buy. Dialog distilled and
desiccated, disseminated, decimated, straight-faced stated. Docu-Info-mercials
disguised as entertainment attempt to take hostages. Television comedy,
a euphemism for dueling insults, raises itself to an eighth grade level,
a new high. The Wonder Window, the technological marvel bound in servitude
to the Marketers of Doom. Witness the staged nature dramas. Don't miss the
latest dirty laundry on your favorite fictitious TV character. Be sure to
catch your favorite Tabloid TV magazine. TV wouldn't be complete without
it's Arty channels. If they have English accents, then your on Public TV.
Little-known TV fact: There is an OFF switch.
Way Out West © 1993 Martin Scherer. E-mail: mscherer@tesserak.net