as i have (some semblence of) a life, i don't have a whole lot of time to watch television. some people think that's tragic. i think it's just as well. there isn't a single show (save the sopranos and mad tv, which i tape most of the time...now ye know my deepest, darkest secret) i watch regularly, and when i DO watch tv it's usually cos i'm too ill or too dead tired to do anything else. that doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen often enough that i've figured out how totally asinine most shows are, and how fucking lamebrained the average person must be that the ratings remain as high as they do.

take "friends" for example. one of the highest freakin' rated programmes in the history of television. won all manner of awards and honours. a whole helluva lot of people could not live without this show. and that, my friends, baffles the living heck out of me. i have seen "friends". true, it IS a comedy, but i'm guessing it's supposed to be based at least loosely on real life. i mean, it isn't a cartoon, nobody's got supernatural powers, and there's absolutely no vampire-slaying involved. but HOW, may i ask you, are we supposed to BELIEVE in these frickin' people? they're all supposed to have unbelievable great jobs, but they hardly ever go to work. the whole lot of 'em live between two apartments, but as they're always wandering about, i've yet to figure out who lives with whom. there is so muc hsexual tension between the lot of them that you could chip at it with an ice-pick, and every once in awhile, any given two of them will suddenly go at each other like dogs in heat. hmmm. maybe the viewers don't actually have any friends of their own (spend too much time at home watching tv, perhaps?) but i DO, and take it from one who knows, no group of people that size could sustain a relationship with that much sexual tension running through it for 8 years without finally cracking up completely and committing mass-murder. it just would not happen. couldn't.

on a lighter, but just as irritatingly phony note – and this subject comes up in the case of a lot of shows, not just "friends" – have you ever noticed how meticulously clean these people's flats are? ridiculously large (errmm...this is MANHATTAN we're talking about, folks...average $2000/month rental's the size of your standard linen press...who the fuck ARE these people, anyway, the bloody rockefellers?) and unbelievably spotless.now maybe i and the people i choose to associate myself with just live in unthinkable squallor and don't realise it yet...but really...who the hell do YOU know has a gaff that clean? ESPECIALLY when their most-likely-unemployed mates crash in it so often their ass-marks are permanently imprinted on the sofa? if you know anyone like that, gimme their address. i'd love to meet the freaks. ;)

now, here's something fairly interesting – reality tv. a lot of people (i.e. television stars and execs and those who support them) really don't like it. i, on the other hand, do. take "survivor". i admit, i didn't really follow that one as closely as many i know did (as i said previously, not much of a tv person, me...by nature), but a bit of it DID manage to hold my interest, namely the final episode of "survivor 1". now THAT, people, is what i call GOOD CONFLICT! i don't know if you watched it, but if you did, i think you might understand why after that last episode i decided that sue was my biological mother. that speech of hers was the only event, real-life or televised, that ever prompted me to jump up and IN ALL SERIOUSNESS roar, "you go girl!" at ANYONE. it wasn't scripted, it wasn't pretentious, it was totally spontaneous and that other ugly beeatch DESERVED it. sue DOES go...with her BAD SELF...:)

i'm not going to dig much deeper into "survivor", for the sake of ye who didn't see it, but i WILL keep to the topic of reality tv. i know i'm a voyeur by nature, but who (honestly) isn't? if you have half a brain and have a choice between watching a pack of overpaid, overrated, untalented gits reading off a teleprompter the same shit they've been reading off it every week for the past 5 years, being anorexic and wearing fake hair, or a pack of unknown, untalented gits trying to go about their daily routine in a bizarre and unnatural monitered enviornment, what the hell are you gonna pick? ahh...DUH! real people doing stupid shit and fighting ad-lib amongst themselves is funnier than lame scripted jokes any day. the people in the big brother house might well be wankers, folks, but they're YOU. they're funny-lookin', they have bad hair days, they can't hold their liquor, and they DON'T HAVE A SCRIPT! if i'd something better to do, i probably STILL wouldn't watch them, but god knows i'd watch them before i'd watch "friends". by now (and this is considering i've only seen about 3 episodes of the fuckin' thing) the writers on "friends" have run out of ideas so, and have become so freakin' predictable i can pretty much tell you what the characters are going to say before they say it. so think about THAT, people, think about it REAL hard. you don't hang out with predictable people, so why the hell are you going to settle for watching them on tv? do me a favour, nielsen families...go the fuck out and GET A GODDAMN LIFE...it'll do ye good.

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