Thank you, Lovie, to the NTH degree! I, too, no longer watch TV save for the news. As a wife, mother & citizen of this confounded species, I feel an urge, nay, responsibility to do so. I keep it on with the volume at the minimum, tuned to a news station all day.
I felt passionately about the potentially lethal medication ads I wrote of in "Context". (BTW, I used the word 'context' as a subtext which I'm sure only I understand. You see, right up there with phrases like, "to tell you the truth" (What? Usually you're lying?) and "It was, like, exciting, you know?" (A, was it exciting or rather simply something akin to that emotion and B, in the dark regarding your first proclamation, how could I POSSIBLY 'know' ANY thing about said 'it' or what in Hell you're talking about!) lives the ever popular, exhausted-from-overuse "his/her remarks were taken 'out of context'." (A, if you know, my wise/kind friend, would you please tell me where this nebulous place - "Context" - is. I do want to GO there so that I, too, will recognize when a statement either was/is there or has been trundled away by some fiends-in-the-night who find it amusing to remove key elements of a composition such that the hapless one experiencing same is, in truth, in the grips of something entirely alien to what the unmolested 'original' product had been/is.
And B, absent familiarity with "context" - and thereby cut off from my friends, potential acquaintances, family and ALL other fortunate frequenters of this, apparently, "IT" place - I am forever handicapped as to comprehension of, judgment upon or interest in the - as common parlance would have it - the "SPOKEN WORD", save my obviously 'Turret-like' compulsion to end phrases/sentences with prepositions at. To be sure, drenched as I am in this "leper" mindset, I can only experience total exclusion from - again, what the species has termed - REALITY. Fine then, I say. And finally, C, fully aware that I've just defined "psychosis", so be it. Surely, it beats "neurosis", - usually defined by definers of mental states - as an exquisitely painful state of awareness-cum-suffering-at-the-hands-of this REALITY.)
The obvious stimulus of my passion is the synergistic effect of delivering demonically-masked 'helpful hints that can/most likely will kill you' messages to a population that craves immortality and is on a feeding frenzy. (I hear melodic strains in the background - don't you? - of "Take good care of yourself, you belong to me". And as you so rightly intimate, 'TV', not religion, is the "opiate of the people". Therefore, the odds of impacting the mesmerized masses are a bookie's dream. In fact, whether or not he's paying attention - and Lord knows I truly hope he is not, my husband cannot be without it. Also, but for the news, he's a first class 'surfer', spawned by his ADD affliction. (This is presumptive, on my part. I refuse to accept that I've been married to a man whose hereditary prowess is the perfection of the 'dumbass gene'!)
Rendering this passion even more rabid is the variety of potentially harmful 'seeds' that are planted in this 'I-never-promised-you-a-rose garden'. Health and its diminishment/loss is but one pathology-inducing avenue down which the Tommy Gun-armed 'hit' parade drives. This because the formula demands a segue into appearance-enhancement. After all, if we're going to live forever, it's imperative that we 'roll' pretty in the process. Enter singer/probably-octogenarian Miss Boone, daughter of the legendary daddy-in-white-bucks. Her performance - possibly technologically enhanced - focuses on the uber-plastic-surgery procedure guaranteed to whisk away decades, dropping them in the surgeon's sterile stainless steel bucket like wind-driven hail pellets, such is the mass/volume combo of this acquired detritus.
One hears, "Can you believe I'm seventy years old?" (To which my husband and I reflexively chorus, "YES"!) Next up we have the mousy brunette-morphed-into-smooth, plumped 'mousiness' admonishing the 'wanna be' viewer, "The first thing people see when they meet you is your face", delivered with an engaging, albeit, affect-less grin. Then, our buddy, Mr.Voice Over oils his way around the series of pictures - before/after genre - delivering complimentary platitudes and forced frugality-accommodating facts which - in no time - lobbed away the sagging turtles from several necks and the under eye exaggerated sand bags from erstwhile great-granny faces now transformed into the nubile, fetching models of modernity after which we all lust. Thankfully, we are spared any re-molding of physique below the 'raveled sleeve of care'. Tucked tummies 'play' like plucked dummies, I guess. And, to be sure, 'the play's the thing'.
Morbid curiosity craves at least a peek at one of these sterile-soiree-drive-throughs but, dash it all, we are deprived of an "Abra- Kadabra" magic minute. That, dear friend, is of no moment because the real trick here is the successful seepage of yet another ingenuous and 'sacred cow' pearl for the populace: BEAUTY IS SKIN DEEP. This, in fact , is the very maxim which keeps the charade marching right into 'skinni-ness' and the desirability thereof. White, bikini-clad rockettes, with the precision and dexterity of the best of our military's drones, stage a beach production number - ice cream cone and salt shaker in-hands - singing the blessings of "shake-it" slimming with Fosse-esque speed and angularity.
Again, we must shake ourselves back to "fat frame-up-land" and figure out that this, too, will pass for "good-for-you" propaganda which permeates the ethos of the species. Said 'ethos' has now been reduced to the deification of materialism, superficiality and a 'fear-no-risk' mentality. The timing is perfect for the panoramic, prosaic picture of old 'what's-his-name' perched on his trusty Trojan steed, tumbling into view as do the weeds to tell us about the prudence of buying GOLD. "Don't you love the way gold feels?' goes his query. Then the clincher: "And you can't print gold." The 'midas touch'. Trite is as trite does, friend. Now that you have your priorities straight, think I'll share. "Context: Part II", came atcha!
Later, Lorane. . . .
