VISION OFFSKI

Television never ceases to amaze me. While I do realize that I am unusual, if not weird, in the small amount of television I do watch, the appalling lack of quality in that is available on the small screen continually stupefies. Having been unable to work for so many years it would be fair to say that, if I did watch day-time television, it would be tantamount to giving up. During the day I listen to the radio and only watch the box three nights a week. Nonetheless, it is one of the few contacts with the outside world at my disposal.
When I moved into Lemming’s Rest the TV aerial socket did not work but there was an old NTL thing hanging from one wall. After considerable telephone conversations with indifferent operatives I had the world of cable television available to me. Eleventy-three channels of shyte and ten channels of shyte plus one; the same shyte an hour later. It still boggles my mind some eight months down the line. Of an evening when I decide to stay sober, never a joy, I trawl through the Radio Times, I can be a hint old-fashioned, to find things to spectate that are not inordinately dull. No soaps or reality thank you.
Often I find myself resorting to those terribly well-meant programmes that try to impart historical information. There was an offering about an ancient South American culture that disappeared around 700 AD, due to paranoia about Spanish Catholics, so they guessed. I think that they were called the Lamstelene; or something like that.
The narrator could not disguise his prejudice against all things non-Western. The gist of much of this televisual feast was how horrific was human sacrifice. How awful. The fact that these erstwhile people had engineering abilities that are still unmatched, an overwhelmingly egalitarian society and a richly artistic heritage did not count because they indulged in human sacrifice. From Western society, of course, we have such glowing contributions to the history of mankind such as; Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung and George W. We have offered such cultural gems as; genocide, land-mines, deadly gas, global warming and bombs of any description. How right we are in comparison.
Especial scorn was poured on the last few years of this former civilization, as they were imploding disastrously, when they resorted to child sacrifice to try and appease their gods. Quite frankly, the world is not short of little darlings; we could spare a few for the greater good.
Another major point made was the way in which the victims of sacrifice, all willing volunteers, were drugged to paralysis but still aware. They knew they were going to die. Completely different to all of those volunteers in First World War trenches as they went ‘over the top’. The few who did survive only inherited torrid lives of guilt and seeming indifference. We seem to think that we are so superior to these ‘savages’ in our world where obesity and malnutrition vie for attention as problems. We have given the world Democracy; hussar. All their gods wanted, apparently, was the occasional sacrifice; ours are so much more altruistic with the sacrifices that are expected in the name of morality.
Advertising remains a continual source of wonderment. Do people really believe that rubbish? It is a truism that if one does not understand an advert in the first fifteen seconds or so, then it must be for a car. There was a foolhardy effort recently that mentioned CCTV cameras. It made me wonder who it is that is stupid enough to commit an illegal offence by such a camera? They might be concealed but, if there are lots of shops around, there will be cameras. Late at night one would have centre-stage. When I do something slightly illegal, as is my wont, it is in places where there are no cameras. I have not even contemplated having a ‘web-cam’; one never knows and I am not trying for public notoriety.
We are affected by the things that we see and we live in a society where, when a senior politician’s bicycle is stolen, everyone thinks that it is very funny. The public gets what the public wants and vice versa, in the words of Mr. Weller. Sort of.
One thing that we can all be sure of, you can bet your bottom Euro on it, is that when all of the ads for massive sales suddenly vanish, the economy really is in trouble.