From last Friday to Wednesday of this week, I was laid up sick with an unidentified stomach bug that had me rushing from the couch to the sink (closest receptacle available) to dry retch every 20 or 30 minutes. Over the course of 5 days, I've eaten 2 pieces of toast and an apple. The upside (upchuck?) is that I've lost a notch a half in belt size, so I've fought the good fight against the rampant obesity epidemic, going from a whopping 32" waist to about 30".
Fuck you, Jenny Craig.
And during this time, my brain being too rattled to concentrate on anything requiring coherent or sustained thought, I sat in front of the television whimpering like a whipped dog from the pain of a stomach in knots, and watched as the horrors of death, destruction and inconsolable grief flickered their way across the great glass teat of pop'lar ennertainment.
By Tuesday morning, enough was enough.
Thank God for SBS and the ABC, for they were the only two television channels that made any effort to report actual news about the events of that weekend rather than wallowing like fat happy pigs in the hollow pits of pain and loss that once were people with lives, with futures and with pasts, and who, now, wandered like shell-shocked soldiers through a battlefield the likes of which they could never have imagined in their most outrageous nightmares.
The shiny, happy parasites of commercial infotainment, self-anointed Masters-Of-The-Universe-As-Gods-Of-Pain outdid themselves in the rush to see which “host” of this once-in-a-lifetime entertainment opportunity could best make der unhappy, scrunchy face and convey to you, to us, just how horrible everything had been, how much worse it was going to get, and just how thoroughly and utterly fucked everybody involved were.
For we would not be able to grasp the deep import of these events without a familiar face to guide us through the proper meaning of loss, something only they could convey and can we please have some music for the underscore just in case anyone missed it? Thanks very much, Pachelbel’s Canon will do just fine, but after the break can we toss in some R.E.M. or Jeff Buckley? Cheers, thanks, ta, we have an annual licence so there’s no probs with der rights, eh?
And so, with their faces duly pasted and painted so as to take the shine off their shiny, shiny foreheads, they cast their eyes about for the wasted and the wounded, knowing full well they’ll be met with little resistance from the shocked and the stunned as they shove microphones and cameras in the faces of people who’ve lost husbands, wives, sons, daughters, parents, their homes, their pets, the entire record of their lives on earth to date and ask the really, really pertinent questions that really, really begged for an answer …
“You’ve lost your wife and your children and your home and your pets and the entire record of your life on earth to date … How do you feeeeeeeeeel nowwwwwww?”
The answer I wanted never came, or it was certainly never broadcast …
“How would you feel if I shoved this fucking microphone and this fucking camera between the flappy folds of your saggy, spotted buttocks until your fucking pinhead pops off your scrawny fucking shoulders, you ghoulish fucking lump of insensitive cuntspit?”
Better luck next time, perhaps.
And in their wake come the whores, hacks and harlots of the “popular” Australian press, ever eager to drive the standards (?!) of Australian journalism (??!) and reportage (???!) into the mediocrity it so enthusiastically and increasingly embraces ... (Hey! Psst! Wanna see a photo of Salma Hayek breastfeeding a kid? WE GOT IT! Tits, man! And boy, ain’t she got a set! Hubba hubba!).
Yet that shouldn’t be too surprising, given the “popular” press is mostly owned by some pussy-whipped old fart whose hair goes through more colour changes in a week than Joseph’s Technicolour Dreamcoat could do in a 6 month Broadway run.
Yep, round up the usual narcissistic deadshits and set ‘em to work to preach from the same old bully pulpit as always - Hell, you need talent, intelligence and imagination to think up something new and actually write about it in depth and no one wants to read that shit these days, do they? Is Australia, mate, the “lucky country”, don’t you be gittin’ above your raisin’ an’ puttin’ on airs an’ graces boy, an’ gettin’ deep on us all.
There’s a predictable lad.
Ah, fuck ‘em all. Throw some money in a bucket or a tin can or organise something at work or donate some blood or whatever, but next time these cunts of commercial “news” suggest splashing the face of someone writhing in the throes of uncontrollable grief for “your consideration” in some special extended agony remix edition, turn the fucking thing off or turn the page.
Enough is enough.
Fuck you, Jenny Craig.
And during this time, my brain being too rattled to concentrate on anything requiring coherent or sustained thought, I sat in front of the television whimpering like a whipped dog from the pain of a stomach in knots, and watched as the horrors of death, destruction and inconsolable grief flickered their way across the great glass teat of pop'lar ennertainment.
By Tuesday morning, enough was enough.
Thank God for SBS and the ABC, for they were the only two television channels that made any effort to report actual news about the events of that weekend rather than wallowing like fat happy pigs in the hollow pits of pain and loss that once were people with lives, with futures and with pasts, and who, now, wandered like shell-shocked soldiers through a battlefield the likes of which they could never have imagined in their most outrageous nightmares.
The shiny, happy parasites of commercial infotainment, self-anointed Masters-Of-The-Universe-As-Gods-Of-Pain outdid themselves in the rush to see which “host” of this once-in-a-lifetime entertainment opportunity could best make der unhappy, scrunchy face and convey to you, to us, just how horrible everything had been, how much worse it was going to get, and just how thoroughly and utterly fucked everybody involved were.
For we would not be able to grasp the deep import of these events without a familiar face to guide us through the proper meaning of loss, something only they could convey and can we please have some music for the underscore just in case anyone missed it? Thanks very much, Pachelbel’s Canon will do just fine, but after the break can we toss in some R.E.M. or Jeff Buckley? Cheers, thanks, ta, we have an annual licence so there’s no probs with der rights, eh?
And so, with their faces duly pasted and painted so as to take the shine off their shiny, shiny foreheads, they cast their eyes about for the wasted and the wounded, knowing full well they’ll be met with little resistance from the shocked and the stunned as they shove microphones and cameras in the faces of people who’ve lost husbands, wives, sons, daughters, parents, their homes, their pets, the entire record of their lives on earth to date and ask the really, really pertinent questions that really, really begged for an answer …
“You’ve lost your wife and your children and your home and your pets and the entire record of your life on earth to date … How do you feeeeeeeeeel nowwwwwww?”
The answer I wanted never came, or it was certainly never broadcast …
“How would you feel if I shoved this fucking microphone and this fucking camera between the flappy folds of your saggy, spotted buttocks until your fucking pinhead pops off your scrawny fucking shoulders, you ghoulish fucking lump of insensitive cuntspit?”
Better luck next time, perhaps.
And in their wake come the whores, hacks and harlots of the “popular” Australian press, ever eager to drive the standards (?!) of Australian journalism (??!) and reportage (???!) into the mediocrity it so enthusiastically and increasingly embraces ... (Hey! Psst! Wanna see a photo of Salma Hayek breastfeeding a kid? WE GOT IT! Tits, man! And boy, ain’t she got a set! Hubba hubba!).
Yet that shouldn’t be too surprising, given the “popular” press is mostly owned by some pussy-whipped old fart whose hair goes through more colour changes in a week than Joseph’s Technicolour Dreamcoat could do in a 6 month Broadway run.
Yep, round up the usual narcissistic deadshits and set ‘em to work to preach from the same old bully pulpit as always - Hell, you need talent, intelligence and imagination to think up something new and actually write about it in depth and no one wants to read that shit these days, do they? Is Australia, mate, the “lucky country”, don’t you be gittin’ above your raisin’ an’ puttin’ on airs an’ graces boy, an’ gettin’ deep on us all.
There’s a predictable lad.
Ah, fuck ‘em all. Throw some money in a bucket or a tin can or organise something at work or donate some blood or whatever, but next time these cunts of commercial “news” suggest splashing the face of someone writhing in the throes of uncontrollable grief for “your consideration” in some special extended agony remix edition, turn the fucking thing off or turn the page.
Enough is enough.
2 comments:
And amen to that. I've had my TV turned off for most of the week once I realised it was going to be non-stop commercial stations cashing in. Fuck them.
Hope you're feeling better now.
...turn the fucking thing off or turn the page.
A perfect prescription.
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