After a long, exhausting day, I curl up in my bed and turn on the large screen sitting on my bedroom cabinet. And when I’ve stared into it for a while…suddenly…it’s all okay.
It’s okay that my spend my days at my overwhelming, soul-draining job because, hey, there’s always a chance that I might get on a reality show someday and win a million bucks. Maybe I’ll be the one who isn’t voted off the island. On Survivor, the Blue Collar team can beat the White Collar team, even though in real life they wouldn’t have a melting snowball’s chance of it.
It’s okay that a soldier gets his limbs blown off in one of our pointless wars, because he can still go on Dancing with the Stars.
It’s okay that there are parents out there who can’t afford medical care for their child, because the local news will tell me a heartwarming story about how their neighbors held a bake sale to try to raise the money.
It’s okay that Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush are both part of the same oligarchy running the nation, because the debate between those two is going to be so exciting!
It’s okay if I make less than a man, because Beyonce will sing me a song about how girls run the world.
It’s okay if tigers go extinct, as long as we have enough dogs left to do stupid pet tricks.
Bright colors flash into my eyes and happy tunes jingle into my brain, until I finally pass out, the tension leaving my shoulders and back, the white noise of our entertainment culture droning on…It’s gonna be okay…It’s gonna be okay….
eurobrat 
04/14/2015 at 9:41 am
Damn, I WISH the TV made me feel better about shit. If anything, it actually makes me feel worse…if that’s even possible.
04/15/2015 at 7:55 am
Well, I don’t know that it makes me feel better so much as it makes me feel numb for a while, which is helpful. I’m going to guess that the TV shows you watch actually reflect reality, and that’s a problem….
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04/15/2015 at 3:09 pm
Actually, I did a quick headcount of the new TV shows I’ve watched over the last few years. While shows “reflecting reality” have a strong presence, other trends were more noticeable than I thought.
1) Other than the local Nightly Missing Dog Report, I watch no TV news, especially what laughably calls themselves “news” channels. I get my news from The Daily Show Hour, Bill Maher’s show and Vice.
2) Only half of what I watch is American. (Note: 98% of the Canadian TV dial is made up of American TV shows.) However, if you exclude Canadian shows made for American TV (Helix, Hell On Wheels) and the American remakes of shows from other countries (The Slap, The Rake, The Killing), that 50+% drops to about 25%. Americans have NO idea how much of their TV line-up -especially the better stuff- is now polluted by “socialist for’ners”.
I watch about as many British shows as I do American. Very little of what I watch comes from the mainstream US networks. Most of it is from HBO, FX & the like. I likes me the swearing and the boobies!
3) A majority of what I watch is actually set in the past. Some from the late 20th Century (The Americans, The Goldbergs) but most are set closer to 1915 than 2015 (Murdoch Mysteries, Copper) … if not older. (Vikings)
4) The vast majority of what I do watch that’s set in post-2000 are shows about dystopian futures (Continuum) or dystopian presents (Homeland, or Continuum again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_%28TV_series%29 )
Mind you, I consider anything set in a post-2000 world a dystopian show. I guess the only distinction is whether it is “openly dystopic”, if it’s “in the closet”, or in deep denial.
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04/18/2015 at 9:57 am
You have good taste in TV. I watch some MSNBC shows and a couple of reality shows. One of these days I’d like to get into a good TV drama again, but I don’t have the time or energy to really pay attention to an entire season…maybe if I binge watched it on Netflix over a weekend? When I’m doing stuff on the computer, I usually have C-Span on for the ambient effect.
04/18/2015 at 1:47 pm
Actually, I did re-think of my original TV headcount and the trends are even stronger than I originally thought. I also watch way too much TV..although that’s a far better use of my time than anything on the Internet (Loserbook, Twit Zone)
3) if I had to estimate a year the average (first run) show I’ve watched over the last few seasons was set in, I’d say “1920”. Could it be because I despise modern day society and the further I get away from it the better? Your guess is as good as mine!
2) I don’t think I watch ONE single genre-staple of American network drama (cops, lawyers, doctors) that isn’t made outside of America, or isn’t an American remake of something from outside America. (gotta read the credits fast for that.) Cop shows are the most plentiful but the least interesting. Just like sports these days, NOTHING happens without sifting through 99 hours of video first Every fucking case is “solved” by attractive, heroic, ace-detectives watching surveillance videos. Zzzzzzzzz! Makes me pine for the days where every cop show ended in a car chase and/or shootout.
Which leads me to 19-2. This Montreal cop show (Made in both French & English versions) is probably the best cop show I’ve ever seen, probably even better than Southland. It’s TV for grownups. It shows the full range of cop-life in an ultra-realistic way. You got your wife beaters, alcoholics, crooks, pedophiles…and that’s just the cops themselves! No heroes. Just human beings doing a boring, funny, nasty, dangerous, job that will fuck you up permanently. For example, season2 opened with a gripping real-time school shooting episode and another episode showed the cops evicting The Poors so that The Riches can move in…
Oh yeah…and they got swearing & boobs on broadcast TV. It’s just like HBO, only on free TV. For a not entirely representative taste, here’s the first 5 mins of the very 1st episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OlvsiUf5Kc
Unless you’ve got GREAT bunny ears, I have no Idea how you could get it in Portlandia, aside from ordering the DVDs, if they even exist (Canadian TV -eh?.
04/18/2015 at 6:32 pm
Heh…those would have to be gigantic bunny ears, but that’s okay. Like I said, I doubt I would be able to invest much time into it, anyway. The little spare time I have I prefer to spend doing things like writing, so…
04/19/2015 at 2:40 pm
Hey, don’t diss the ariels! It’s free TV! Thanks to Digital, if you can still get the signals, they’re crystal clear.
Way back when, I actually got a Florida channel for about an hour during a freak weather event. That’s a hell of a lot further than Vancouver is to you.
And “writing?” What, between all the Loserbook and Reality TV? 😉
04/21/2015 at 7:23 am
Hey, I would never “diss the ariels”. In fact, I’m thinking about giving up everything but the ariels. Spending too much money on the TV when I only watch a couple channels.
And yes, I find time for writing in between all those worthy pursuits 😉
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04/15/2015 at 7:43 am
Time for some change? New job? 🙂
04/15/2015 at 7:58 am
Haha, maybe. I have to say, I have considered it. But are there still jobs out there that aren’t soul-draining? 😉
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04/16/2015 at 11:01 am
Of course!!!!! 😀
04/18/2015 at 9:54 am
Thank you for the optimism 🙂