We all have our grinding gears. A few odd bits and bobs around here and there, a few things one isn’t accustomed to properly to form an opinion on, or even just plain nastiness on our part based on our unwillingness to accept certain things as granted and general inability to blur things that shouldn’t be focused.
We all been through those, haven’t we? In the clockwork that is our meandering existence, most wise men would say that it ‘nay doth matter’. But you know what grinds my gears?
TV: Our Lord and Saviour
Yes. TV. Our lord and saviour in moments of thought and the general coordinates towards which we angle our furnitures in our humble abodes.
If you are lucky enough, you would have a fair few channels to surf through. Assuming you have access to around 15 or so channels, I challenge you to find something that doesn’t involve:
- Needless drama from Bollywood and the Latinos (in my country, it fills the day and the early evening),
- Or other such wank like Chinese news shows, that actually makes you interested,
- But also, needless topics (holy shit I am so enlightened by knowing termites are eusocialites!),
True, you can buy the channels you actually want, but given the price of buying media – don’t we all know about it! – it’s not really ideal for most people.
Sure I cannot expect TV to be a fatagasm of delight on my brain, nor do I expect to be endlessly entertained by it, but it grinds me: if they ain’t got half a shit to show, why not show free videos, or documentaries, or courses? It’s free, is usually in or around an hour, and it sure beats the hell out of a half-a$$ show where they pay some guy fat stacks of cash to be on tv.
However, there are some good things on TV, but none fewer nor further apart than…
RADIO And The Dudes There!
Fu©king radio. Shitty fu©king radio. I mean, really.
OK. I can swallow the thick spit I had ready, and agree that they are doing their best. Despite it sounding like they had a coffee enema at 4 a.m. and their happiness sounds forced because no one can be that cheery at Christ-go-back-to-bed O’Clock, they do their job, right?
I appreciate that. That’s alright. I mean, it’s fairly possible they even think their job is as shite as nutella on a dog turd, but you gotta do what you gotta do, as long as you get enough money for nutella.
On the other hand, I want to push my finger into their noses to their brains when they talk at the start of a song or cut the end of a song.
November Rain (by Guns ‘N’ Roses) is a nicely structured song (yes GNR fans, it’s not quite the sound of the Guns but it’s still a nice song) gets this treatment very often, as does anything greater than 5 minutes. The ending guitar solo that ties November Rain together is often truncated and faded out by some bollocking speech about how great the day is, or how cool the song is, or adverts.
Even worse, during the few “music only, no talk” shows, songs get truncated by the station’s or show’s motto (“ONLY MUSIC NO TALK NO REALLY WE DON’T TALK WE ONLY PLAY MUSIC *random sound effects* BOOM SHZZZ WABBAM”) and then they queue Justin Bieber right after Three Little Birds By Bob Marley, while some sound effect plays saying that this show plays the best music EVER.
Yeah it grinds my gears.
And Politics.
You know what? Screw politics. Screw the whole thing about politics. Sure, a democratic country votes fairly for its leaders, and that is all good, but the grinding gear here isn’t the leader-choosing ceremoney [sic], it is the amount of rage they scream at each other about how shit one politician is compared to how great they are, and how the entire world will change once they are elected, and how things will be so damn good if they led the country.
After berating their competitors and the whole screaming matches and political speeches that also sometimes involve free food for attendees (which is a good enough reason to listen to a f#cktard speaking about how they are so strong and powerful they would make a better leader than the guy who was doing the same job in the same way with the same results, which is a kind of bonus given you will either puke or shit yourself thin after their speeches), political banners and other such trash have a tendency to stick around till the next few months or till they disintegrate from the floating craptalk vapour that hangs in the air.
Newspapers dilly-dally pages upon pages of repetitive political topics, TV news alternatingly show how happy the newly elected officials are and how busy they are (usually hard at work sitting at a desk in a conference room while all the different media reports all that they do), the radio news is filled with crappy soundbites concerning the election and the elected which are mostly incomprehensible because they sound like they have been recorded via a telephone pointed at someone talking a good 50m away in a room full of falling chains.
What also usually follow the politicians playing is the people who voted for them yelling how unhappy they are with the way the government is doing things. Our current president I think has a B.A. in his name somewhere, where I’m sure it stands for Bullshit Artist.
Seriously.