Sunday, November 15, 2009

Television and the Worthless Loser

According to the statistics, there's double the amount of jobless men in Ireland than women. This obviously doesn’t include stay-at-home mothers and high class prostitutes, but still is an interesting marker. What all of this means is that roughly the same amount of penises as breasts spend their day lurking about the house in pitiful states of self-loathing.

As of today, daytime television is 87% geared towards women. This means that the dominant of the jobless species – the man, is subjected to daily reminders of just how worthless his life is. For a woman to be out of work, it’s like a holiday. There’s more TV shows about shoes and curtains than they can ever absorb, and I’m pretty sure they wake every morning with the giddy anticipation that only the early morning repeat of yesterdays ‘Afternoon Show’ can provide. Men meanwhile are best advised not to surface until 6.1 starts. Should they rise earlier they will have to either endure Dr Phil, Jeremy Kyle, multiple ‘How Clean is your house?’ and hours of programming subtly informing them how much of a loser they are. The rest of the listings, especially RTE2, is aimed towards children. Unless you live in Thailand, children are exempt from unemployment. Daytime, they should be in school, or down a mine, but not flicking through the channels.

All of this suggests that TV programming is all over the shop. Their target audience isn’t watching, Most home bound females will already be through their second bottle of Rosé by the time ‘Doctors’ has started it marathon afternoon run and the sort of children that don’t go to school will be up to their little necks in superglue down the park. That leaves men. Well, a casual flick of the remote will reveal nothing in the line of macho TV. No meaningful sport is aired on weekdays, no explosion filled blockbusters come on at breakfast and there’s little in the way of tits before Nationwide.

It’s no wonder that we all go to the Pub at 12.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

This is the News

They say no news is good news, not perhaps if you’re waiting for an urgent liver donation or the details of the whereabouts of a much loved family pet that had a penchant for biting moving tyres, but otherwise that old cliche is particularly true. Good news however is super. Good news is quite simply good news and way better than no news. Bad News though, is mostly flirting with the negative. Except for TV3 news, which is so bad it’s actually good news, bad news is generally just bad news, but bad news is good news occasionally, especially if you’re Sky News.

“Any News?”

“No”

“you’re fired”, says the director to Anne Doyle.

Today I had good news. I was expecting bad news, because in Disgraceland the cup is always half on fire, and was pleasantly surprised by it. I cracked a smile, stuck out my belly and blew a cheeky raspberry at my reflection.

That’s why I’ve gone mad.