Flo TV

For those so impossibly, hopelessly, helplessly addicted to the pandering, ignorance, falsehood, egotism, and slow-death of television: Now you can take your killer with you!


Durrr... I like TV!

Another 'something' for you to stare vacantly at in the public space while breathing through your mouth and failing to interact with reality. That is when you aren't breaking conversations to stare slack-jawed into your palms, while thumbing a few 'lols,' you fucking twat.

Congratulations.

Summer of the Shark

You people are really fucking stupid, ya' know that? Are you aware? just how ridiculously goddamn retarded you are? Yeah, you nibble-nuts. See me pointing? You!

Just want to take a quick sec to put things in perspective for all you dipshits at home. Every year, I'm told, six-thousand people in the US die falling off of a ladder. There are 1500 accidental deaths by firearms. And around 1600 people win no less than a million dollars playing the lottery. This all per annum.

Now put those factiods in your pocket for a minute (you dumb motherfucker, you) and follow me back to the oh-so distant year of 2001. In 2001, prior to a couple of planes flying into a couple skyscrapers, the news - not the tabloids, now, but the Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters, "You're watching CNN," tick-tock 60-fuckin-Minutes, news - was out there for months, screaming at the top of their shameless dollar-whore lungs, about shark attacks. Did you hear me right? Yes, I said "shark attacks."

Early in the swimming season they latched onto an attack survivor's story and for the entire rest of the summer could not shut the fuck up about sharks, attacks, and shark attacks. They were so adamant in espousing the danger to the world's swimmers, that they dubbed summer 2001, "The Summer of the Shark." Yes, I'm serious. I was there. It happened. Look it up.

The results? Coastal beaches everywhere received less swimmers. In other words: You ignant' fucking people actually believed this shit about shark attacks. You actually believed that sharks had suddenly decided to go to war with human beings. Oh, you can try to say you didn't believe it - that you didn't fall for Walter Cronkite's horseshit lies - but the numbers tell a different story. You and yours weren't at the beach in '01. You were at home, on the couch, tuned in to the sensationalist, ratings driven, propaganda that passes for American journalism. You were buying, reading and consuming the very media that was unabashedly lying to you, and in the most blatantly obvious manner. You were enabling it! You were tuning in and paying their sponsors. You were feeding the beast that was eating you alive you stupid human-fucking-waste.

And in retrospect? What really happened in the "Summer of the Shark?" Shark attacks were down 15% from the year before. You were more likely to win the lottery; You were more likely to fall off a ladder and die; In fact, you had a better chance of being struck by fucking lightning than being attacked by a shark in the summer of 2001. They were lying to your face the whole time - all summer long! And you, because you're such a rubbernecking, trailer trash, 'Faces of Death' renting, professional wrestling fan, idiot - lapped it up like a kitten at a leaky cow udder. You ignorant asshole, you.

Now this year, with just two months left out of 2009, that same media that advised you so well about the imminent threat of sharks growing legs, coming up on land, and eating your babies while they're still in the womb, is pulling out all the stops to make sure that you don't forget for a minute about the massive viral outbreak what presently threatens to sweep the nation snuffing out your childrens' lives in a tidal epidemic that's sure to leave more bodies than survivors! Look out America! Run for you fucking lives! It's H1N1! It's 2009, "The Fall of the Flu!" Boogedy woogedy woo, dipshit!!!

As of this very day, H1N1 - aka "the swine flu" - is reported to have claimed all of 1000 American lives this year. Now since you're so fucking stupid, I'll go ahead and do the math for you, and project a total of around 1200 deaths by year's end.

In other words: You are more likely to be accidentally shot to death by a neighbor cleaning a gun; you are more likely to win a million dollars in your state's lottery; you are way, way more likely to kill yourself while changing a light bulb than you are to die of this H1N1 that the media is skull-fucking for ratings' sake.

And so long as it's stuck in there, let's give it a twist and see if we can't break it off by pointing out that 30 times more people will die this year thanks to the good old fashioned, every day, over-the-counter strains of influenza that don't nobody give a shit about right now, because they're all too fucking retarded for this month's "7 Action News: Special Report - Death by Swine" hysteria bullshit.

If you got an H1N1 vaccine, you are dumb. I'm using simple words now; I think I've run out of other ways to express your intellectual lackings. You are dumb. You probably voted for Bush and against socialized medicine. You're dumb. You probably own a Swiffer Sweeper and drive an SUV. You're fucking dumb! You probably think eating at 'Subway' is a fucking diet, because you're really, really fucking dumb, mang.

They have got you! They own your ignorant, cowish ass. You buy whatever they're selling. You lap up whatever they pour in the bowl. You are one ridonculous fucking numbnut motherfucker, you are. And you're the problem, by the way. It's you. Oh, it's all you! You're why democracy don't work anymore. You're why capitalism has eaten the soul out of this nation. Put it this way: You're the shit-for-brains that talks up how evil Walmart is, then turns around and goes shopping there. Cause you "just can't beat the deals. Sure I know it's run by Satan, but it's 2 for 1 on Swiffer pads this week! Who needs self respect when you've got coupons!"

It's the Summer of the Shark, you dipshit. Tune out! No. Not in... Out! Yeah! That's an option. Yeah, if you press the red button again, it actually turns the TV off. No shittin' ya. You know what? "H1N1" is just "leet" text for hiney - as in butt. As in, "We be fucking you good tonight, America. Tune in at 11 for more major-market consolidated-media dick up yo' ass."

God! You're just so fucking dumb!

(That 1600 lotto millionaires figure seems high, don't you think? I'll bet the internet is lying to me... again!)

Television is Like This

Television is like this:

Imagine you're fourteen years old again. Imagine you are a fourteen year old male. You've hit puberty. You've thought you were in love once or twice. You've experienced a lot in fourteen years, really. And lately you've become painfully conscious of other people. Nolonger do you run and play with mindless, uncaring joy as a child does. But now you are all too aware of the outer world's assumptions, expectations, and opinions of you.

Your tastes are changing. You've become interested in music and art on a new, perhaps more spiritually profound level. Sure, you're still just a dumb fourteen year old, and you probably think whatever they play on the popular radio station is great, but you are learning to experience music and other forms of art in a new way; a way that seems to impact you personally; that speaks to you directly.

And you've just begun to entertain a sort of rebelliousness and angst. You now find yourself unconsciously probing the boundaries of your world; bringing challenge to the so-called conventional wisdom, and to those authority figures who, until now, guided and predisposed all your understandings.

You are a fourteen year old male. You're evolving. You're growing. You're becoming spiritually aware. You've been on this planet fourteen years and there's a million miles ahead of you, sure, but your personal journey of self-discovery has undeniably begun.

And let's suppose that as you are undergoing all these changes and awakenings, the outside world, all your friends, all the people you've been told are cool, whose footfalls are to be noted and imitated, are all at once telling you, in the friendliest, most sincerely compassionate manner, about all these things they think you would really, really like... as a fourteen year old male.

They give you names of bands and television shows. They give you authors and movies. They give you artists, games, women, foods, and flavors... So helpful are they to point you at those things which they believe you, in your present state of mind and at your level of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual development, would find illuminating, intoxicating, diverting, and entertaining; that would make your world - your very life - a richer, more prosperous, more meaningful and enlightening journey.

And with all these kind suggestions overflowing the basket of your open arms you take yourself to a video shop to pick up the number one film, that very gem of celluloid theatrics that all your friends and peers joined together to laud above all other works, as that which would most pierce the fourteen-year-old male soul.

You bring it home, put it in the player, and press play. And it's fucking Barney. 'Barney the Purple Dinosaur - the Movie.' Or it's an hour and a half installment of 'Elmo's World.' You're a teenager, the bud of a man, and they've got you watching 'Hannah Montana on Ice.'

Then you turn on the radio to the sound of the DJ pitching you into one of those "great songs" by one of those "awesome bands" your peers mentioned. And it's an 'Alvin and the Chipmunks' cover.

You look again at the list of foods to try, and they're all Gerber brand. The women meant to satisfy your raging hormones are boyish and dull, the games are peg-in-hole, and the artists all color-by-number.

Television is like this: Imagine you're a twenty-eight year old male and the whole world is trying to give you just what it thinks a being of your emotional, intellectual, and spiritual maturity will want; will desire to see, consider, and discuss. And every single one of them is so sure they've got it right that they all, a thousand different media outlets, each employing hundreds of thinking, reasoning human beings to choose and produce the content they find worthy, all of them independently but simultaneously conclude that what will benefit you most, what will most endear you to them, what you really truly want to see and hear is "Dave Letterman had sex with staffers."

...

Lord send me boyish women and Elmo's World.

An Irreverent Hypocrisy

Continuing comments at You Are Your Television - Kill Everything.

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It sounds like you are trying to excuse the people [...] for playing along; for voting against their own interests; for tuning in to a consolidated media that lowers their standards and keeps them stupid; for allowing atrocities to be committed in their names and under their flags.

But whether they made the problems themselves, whether they built the world in their image or someone else rammed it down their throats, they still live there. It's still their world and nothing can exempt them from the responsibility they bear for failing to respond to the real problems of their age; much less for playing along and paying homage to them. Example: Governor G.W. Bush didn't magically conjure a hurricane or personally poke holes in the levies, but when Louisiana flooded he damn well should've sent help. That's civic responsibility.

"We didn't want great big SUVs poisoning the atmosphere, unnecessarily depleting unreplenishable natural resources, increasing the demand for oil and thereby encouraging principalities of war and unrest to fits of murder in the middle east... But hey, now that they're here, fuck it. Look, honey, there's a TV in the headrest!"

If you're saying the people are too stupid to be responsible for their own actions... Okay. I can feel you. But if that's your point you should probably hang onto the stones of cynicism and defeatism, as panes of glass are rather expensive a material to build a house out of.

And if the people are too stupid, or ill-informed, or uneducated (oh the many diplomatic ways of calling people 'stupid') due the machinations of wealthy industrialists and capitalist oppressors... Good, great. We agree. So where's the beef?

Better yet, let's try something constructive here (since "troll" seems to be everyone's new favorite word to bandy about with irreverent hypocrisy) what do you think could be done to remedy the unaddressed evils in a world full of people too indoctrinated to recognize them? Let's talk solutions here. Let's pretend to hold ourselves to the same standards we claim to hold the rest and pause to look inward and ask of ourselves, "What are you going to do about it?"

Personally, I've got a 12 step plan which I'd love to outline for you now. Oh, but "Lost" is coming on, and it's sweeps month! Fuck it, I'm sure someone else will straighten it all out eventually.
"

The TV Majority

Part of my comments, excerpted from the article You Are Your Television at Nik Maack's blog.

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[...B]ecause I never seem to tire of saying it, I don't watch television. I don't listen to the radio or read the papers for that matter. And the reason I made the choice to turn it all off and leave it off, after a life much spent - I shamefully admit - mentally cataloging episodes of Roseanne, Tool Time, and Animaniacs, (all great shows!) was because of how damned stupid and vitriolic I came to see the beast, television to be.

I now find myself fortunate enough to be television intolerant. I just can't take it. Everything is a push; Everything is for sale; Every word has been focus group tested for maximum affect and majority agreement; and I, for one, am insulted and infuriated it by the whole fucking show. So I don't tune in. I can't. It just makes me angry and hopeless. It disgusts me: what passes for communication; what stands in midst the majority of my neighbors homes claiming itself to be reality.

And the argument you make that this hell-spawn thing, TV, is what the people want... I have to agree. It's hard to believe it's come to this, but this is as the majority desires. Hell, a good percentage point's worth of the population are part of the fucking revenue stream! They're content contributors. They're coming up with this horrible, mediocre, self-censoring tripe, writing it down like it's all worth repeating, and then filming it for Christ's sake... going so far as to put that extra bit of effort in, to spruce it up with special effects and shit! It's them! It's absolutely them. They want this TV. They crave it!

Doubtless, this -is- the product of addiction, lifelong conditioning, the lack of meaningful education, corporate-aristocratic influence, and so on as you suggest...

But what I'm starting to understand now is just how useless democracy really is in this situation. That these people cannot be brought together to see their shared interests; they cannot be motivated to accomplish those things they talk about; they are utterly dominated and, when considered en masse, will continue to be so in perpetuity.

They are a TV people. And I guess I'm coming to realize that you just can't leave it up to them. The same way you can't ask a child what they want for dinner every day, or whether they'd like to go to school. They are incapable of making these choices for themselves. I'll say it again: They are incapable. They won't change anything. They won't fix anything. They won't demand justice. They won't demand their due.

And if change is a goal - which at this point is probably futile - then it must be pursued without employing the majority. The will of the majority must be ignored, for it is the majority's will to destroy themselves and everyone around them. The majority's will is to miss the house payment but pay the Comcast bill. The majority's will is to kill 2,000,000,000 people in the middle east without an explanation why.

If change is a goal it cannot confer upon the majority. A minority must simply seize what it is able, as it unilaterally sees fit, and as I suppose has always been the way. And when all is done, that minority must write the history books as though the transpiring events were all due the will, strength, and fortitude of the people united.

I guess what I'm getting at is: This is a pretty fucked up world we got right here. [...]
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