#67: Forget Me Not

So basically I'm the worst blogger in the world.

A fair bit has happened in the last few weeks, however I'm not going to post about them because I wouldn't be doing the events complete justice. Instead, I'm going to post the article I wrote for the Uni magazine yesterday. I promise from now on I will post every day, even if it's just a sentence...

What’s on the Box?

“Quitting is hard. Not quitting is harder”

Well, der. If you’re stupid enough to smoke a pack-a-day, of course your rotten lungs are going to find it hard to quit. And that’s exactly what I don’t want to see while I’m eating.

The increasing amount of gory ads during “dinner time”, including gangrene-ridden feet, weeping mouth cancer and the afore mentioned blackened lungs, is really impacting on my quality time in front of the idiot box. The notion of “shock” ads is certainly an interesting one, generally showing the actors lying in a surgery, looking forlorn with a greenish overlay utilised to provoke emotions of helplessness. Their eyes, glistening with Vaseline, look deep into the camera and plead with you to quit the cigs. If the people of the world stopped smoking, these ads would be banished. But now it’s not just lung cancer that draws attention. The sponge dripping with black dye that was on high rotation a couple of years back has been overtaken by Sally and her malignant mole. Like a huge, white blob residing under the skin, the skin cancer has taken over the rest of her body. Cancerous cells have spread to the ends of every limb. Her back is split open, blood and guts spewing out all over the operating theatre. Mmm. Appetising.

Flick to Channel 7 and 9. Today Tonight and A Current Affair cop a lot of flak for their lack of quality journalism, however you have to acknowledge the hard work of the Corren and Grimshaw teams to come up with such gripping gore stories every week. You change the channel over and suddenly- MISHAPEN BOOB JOB or CHEMICAL FACE PEEL GONE WRONG or BABY WITHOUT A FACE… Que the reappearance of the food I only just swallowed. Just when you think there is no where else for these tabloids to go, they find someone else with a gruesome story: a tale of twisted limbs, brutal attacks or birth defects. My patience grows thinner and thinner.

Flick to Channel 10. Surely there’s something stomachable on there. Seriously. Trusty old soapies won’t bring up any subject matter dangerous to my gag-reflex. After being an avid watcher of Neighbours during my junior high school years, I decided to sit down the other evening and see if I could pick up on the story lines following a lengthy hiatus. Not long into the show, I realised that this would be impossible. The influx of new characters has transformed Ramsay Street into Slutville. Imogen Bailey? Really? Why the heck is a person with a reputation like hers even allowed to be shown during prime time? It is also not humanly possible to gather that many blonde women in one place, and there is nothing worse than 20-year-olds pretending to be hormonal, sexually-charged teenagers, decked out in Cotton On prints and last year’s hairstyles. Gag me with a spoon.

Overall, television programming during the time you sit down to eat dinner is ridiculous. Sure, ABC news is probably the most sensible option, but after watching commercial news at 6, I just need some soft, light-hearted, bloodless viewing. And I definitely can’t turn to SBS for that, where every story contains a factor of death or destruction. Here is my predicament… But it gets worse…

So, will Big Brother be the saviour of dinner time TV?

I don’t think so!



Lovemeg