Voodoo Time Dot Com

Well, here I am watching… (wait for it)… The Bachelor – America’s newest voyeurism fix. As I write this sentence, the show is not yet over, but I already know who he chose because of an article that I read online a few minutes ago from another timezone. Wow, chesty and 8 years his junior. Who’d have guessed?

Why am I watching this? Well, because I don’t have cable in the new apartment, and the only channel I get through the set-top antenna is ABC (and only just barely). So now that I’m stuck with this, I just have to see it all the way to the stupid end. So here I am, sucked into some dumb reality TV show. And even though this particular show was presented a lot better than most, I still feel like I got caught with the hook in my mouth.

What’s the deal with this? Are we just that concerned for each other? I doubt it. Are we looking for little bits of joy in others’ happiness? Or maybe we’re all just measuring ourselves against these people. Do we watch in order to feel better about the crappy things we do to each other? Do we watch to reassure ourselves that maybe our lives aren’t as miserable as we think?

Here’s what I think. I think people are so used to plugging into the TV every night that they can’t be bothered to live anymore. But the urge to live is still there, so they put a pretty darn cool life on TV for us. Ahhh… suddenly I’m feeling love, and excitement and emotion again! Bring in the guitars so I know when to be happy, and then the violins so I know when to be sad. Take me somewhere else so I can forget I’m working my life away at a job I hate, just so I can make payments on things I’ll never own.

Ugh… I don’t want to think about this anymore. I wonder if there’s anything on TV.

Bye for now.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 25th, 2002 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.