Television is a really bad way to spend your time

I'm not sure who evening television schedules are designed for, but as a parent who must be home in the evenings, I'd have hoped that I'd be on that list, as I'm sure not on any other social list.

But of late, I've given up in complete frustration. On LOST (Survivor with Scripts) I missed the baby being born because that one new episode was put in amongst weeks of reruns. (And I was really ready for a good laugh at how they'd handle that little feat of nature, given the medical miracles they've previously screened.) I've not got much to amuse me here in apartment purgatory, but I do like to follow the odd TV series. Week after week I'd put the kid to bed and get my cup of tea ready just in time to sit down in front of a repeat screening. The day I give up, they show a new episode. The following week - more repeats.

And then it gets plain silly. The advertisement for the third or fourth episode of a new series called Blind Justice cracked me up. The premise is a cop blinded in the line of duty goes back to work, on the street, with his colleagues. This particular episode had a teaser out with a bunch of action shots, a cutaway to him pulling his gun out of it's holster, then a shot of his Captain giving him a hard time over drawing his weapon. Hold the phone: they give a blind policeman a gun?!?! Does he get a car too? As Rove would say, What the..?!

Water From the Well

It’s been a while since I posted to this blog and I have to wonder why. I think it’s because winter has forced us indoors and to introspection. Apart from endless hours of television, there’s not much to observe in my living room. And do you know something, the longer I’m here, the more it all starts to make sense. Well, except for this:

Water from the well…
So much for the advances of civilisation. A large part of my grocery store efforts go in to purchasing water. Clean, bottled drinking water. Now I thought one of the advantages of an advanced society was the provision of clean water into the home. There are indeed taps in our apartment and they do provide water. It looks clean (except for the time they were doing maintenance works on the underground system), it doesn’t smell terribly bad, but it tastes acrid and bitter and not at all like clean water ought to taste. So it’s a case of turn back the clock and provide your own water supply. Now we can hardly dig a well in mid-air on the balcony (that’s the equivalent of our backyard) and it may not be any cleaner than what’s already coming out of our tap, so we resort to the next most obvious thing in a consumer society – we buy it. We travel twenty minutes to the warehouse, push through the crowds to get a ‘cart’ (trolley, in Antipodean), lift and load boxes of plastic containers filled with fresh (!) clean water, pay the cashier, lift them into the car, travel twenty minutes home again, get another different style of ‘cart’ (provided by the apartment’s management), lift the boxes out of the car, transport them upstairs, and store them in the cupboard. (The water is also harsh on skin when bathing, but we put up with that and purchase a couple of gallons of skin lotion while we’re at the store). This is the modern world we live in. No longer must I ‘cart’ water from the well, these days I ‘cart’ it from the store. At least I’m still doing better than those less fortunate women who have to carry water vessels on their heads across rough, unpaved terrain - I've got wheels to help, but it doesn’t look to me like we’re so far ahead of the game.

Inauguration Day

So we’ve witnessed the election hoopla, now it’s the inauguration ceremony. And what a ceremony. A full day of parades, speeches, swearing-in, and (although not telecast) nine inaugural balls. Busy day, George.

It’s been on every channel since early this morning and will go on for some time yet. I actually think a bit of pomp and ceremony is a good thing when swearing in your country’s leader. Kinda marks the day, let’s us know when (s)he’s actually started the job. But I’m sure its no surprise to you to find out that, as with so many things here, it’s all a bit overdone.

I’ve just watched the presidential motorcade cruise along at snail’s pace for eons so that supporters and citizens can wave, catch a glimpse and maybe get a photograph of the venerable GW and Laura. All that royal waving – the most anyone saw was the hand in the window.

Earlier there was the lead-up to the Inaugural Speech, then the speech itself which has already been over-analysed by numerous political pundits and journo’s. The main gist of which was “the world needs freedom and we’re gonna bring it to ya” – mmm, a touch of the maniacal power baron disguised as the good guy? Too bad if you’re not interested in the American model, you’re gonna get it.

But I suppose it’s really all very nice and the locals are being very patriotic. Even the protestors, who are restricted to particular areas in Washington and can’t carry placards on sticks for security reasons, are behaving themselves. The Secret Service (who don’t incidentally walk alongside the presidential limo in disguise – not so secret huh?) are, unsurprisingly, very jittery about security. There’s a no-fly zone around Washington the size of Tasmania and numerous security barriers for excited attendees to pass through.

As inspiring to patriotic fervour as it is, and we really ought to let them have their day without criticism, that good old American ego can’t seem to get out of the way. I’ve lost count lately of the number of people, significant numbers of whom have never travelled outside of their home state, let alone to a foreign country, who continually invoke the phrase “this is the greatest country in the world” based on some mythical notion of what the individual can or cannot achieve elsewhere. Every time I hear it I start looking around wondering where the evidence is.

Today, we kept hearing not only that America was the greatest nation in the world, but that this peaceful transition of power (um, it transited from GW to GW, duh) was only possible here. I’m trying to stay calm, but the temptation to shriek from the highest tower that this arrogance about themselves and ignorance about the rest of the world is part of the reason they have issues with their “allies”. But who’d listen?

Quiz time

Here’s a quick quiz for you. Identify the following item (clue - it’s a food):

Water, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable oil (coconut and palm kernel oils), less than one percent of sodium caseinate (milk derivate), natural and artificial flavour, modified food starch, polysorbate 60, Xanthan and guar gums, sorbitan monostearate, sodium polyphosphates, beta carotene (color).

Unless you’re a chemist for Kraft, you’re probably no more clued up than I was. A visitor dropped something off using the container (a good citizen, reusing before recycling) and I was unfamiliar with the trade name. I’d heard it before, but didn’t know what it was. You might have heard of it too – Cool Whip. So I read the contents label to try and figure it out. There are no clues on the container as to what you do with the stuff. I had to ask a local when we were visiting, she just happened to have some on hand and served it with dessert. Yes, apparently it’s some manufactured version of whipped cream. The label scared me, I was wary of the look of it – kinda plastic-y and shiny – and the taste? Well, let’s just say real whipped cream has nothing to worry about. This is nothing like it. Even the colour is too bright white to resemble real cream. I suppose that’s why they call it an by an indistinct adjectival noun combination. So the cows don’t sue them over breach of copyright.

Coming to a TV near you: Lost - Survivor with Scripts

A plane crashes on a deserted island (or is it?). Forty-six people survive. Make a TV show about it.

With only one doctor who made it through the plane crash, a very young and spunky spinal surgeon – and that’s only the first point of departure from reality (television) – this show has more medical miracles than a Born-Again Healing-Hands-of-God revival meeting. I don’t want to give anything away to those who haven’t seen it yet…but the empty wheelchair belongs to a crash survivor who mysteriously regains the ability to walk. He then helps the junkie go through withdrawal with minimal discomfort and an overly simplistic psychological strategy. Then super Doc talks the asthmatic through an attack with the heartening words ‘just breathe’. I’m sure millions of other asthma sufferers would love his magical healing powers nearby when they have an attack. Now I don’t know a lot about asthma, but I’m pretty sure that if they could ‘just breathe’ THEY WOULD! And it doesn’t stop there. There’s loads more to come including an impending birth – that ought to be good.

As the weeks go by, each survivor’s story is revealed giving us perhaps one of the most interesting plane loads of people ever to travel together. So far I haven’t seen the types you actually see on aeroplanes – the excessive number of ‘suits’ who can’t live without mobile phones, laptops and the Financial Review, and have limited practical skills; a selection of scruffy backpacker types from all nations who fancy themselves as intrepid, fearless travellers but are really just tourists who travel on the cheap; frazzled families travelling with fractious children; and not forgetting the boring non-stop talker who knows a bit about everything and SFA about anything. And the stuff they managed to get on the plane! With worldwide increased airport security and extremely strict import/export regulations somehow there's more contraband on this flight than a drug-laden cargo ship. So far I've seen an axe, a set of hunting knives, an aloe vera plant, and cocaine. It seems survival is much easier if you have lots of handy stuff on the aircraft. But not too much or there won't be any need for scenes of clever improvisation a la MacGyver.

Considering this was a flight out of Sydney (I’m supposing from the clues they’ve left in subsequent episodes, since I missed the first one) Australians are few and far between, so far I’ve only seen one. Maybe ordinary travellers didn’t make it through the plane crash and therefore don’t make it to television – just like they wouldn’t make it through the selection process for Survivor. Or maybe, once you put a story on television (scripting the dull, boring and plain stupid bits out of what would otherwise be reality TV) everyone’s story becomes interesting. I wonder how many interesting stories there are out my window? Perhaps if I stopped watching so much television I might find out. But Lost joins the ranks of my 'traffic-accident' TV and I just can't seem to switch it off, I'm transfixed by one unlikely event after another rolling across the screen. Reality TV this ain't.

Coming to a TV near you: The Swan

This week's TV review: The Swan

Apparently, no woman is her ‘true’ self until she’s undergone 10 or so plastic surgeries all at the same time, spent three months isolated from her family (spouse, children – everyone), been put through a fitness training routine to rival the military, and learned all that she needs to know about make-up and grooming in order to reveal her inner ‘swan’. Like trying not to stare at a traffic accident, once I realise I’m watching it, I find it difficult to pull my eyes away. All the time my mind is reeling – WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE PEOPLE THINKING!!!

Potential swans are holed up in a fancy hotel for three months with no mirrors or reflective surfaces available. They are operated on to correct all their most pronounced ‘faults’, then they undergo recovery and begin an intensive exercise and grooming regime. There is psychological counselling provided as well, but I’ve not watched it long enough to discover if its purpose is to fix the broken inner person, to help them get through the stress and emotional discomfort of undergoing this barbaric process, or whether it’s to provide some gritty revelation for the television audience. I suspect its that latter, after all if they were to try and fix the broken inner person, that repaired being just might decide this gig is a sham and quit before filming is over. Once the swans make it to the dramatic ‘reveal’ at the end when we and they see themselves in their reconfigured form for the first time (a reveal which takes about three preliminary ad breaks to get to, by the way), one of them is chosen to go on to the (gag!) final pageant. Yes, it’s all topped off with that most 1950s-style display of womanhood, the beauty pageant.

The way the participants are introduced to the audience sets up the notion that they are doing this because they sorely need a boost to their self-esteem and they way they look is a severe hindrance to a successful life. Surely there are other ways to boost a person’s self-esteem…or perhaps that’s not really the aim here? Perhaps it’s a massive advertising campaign by the plastic surgery ‘industry’, perhaps it’s purely to make the rest of us feel truly inadequate, and thus we will rush out to book surgeries and order complete makeovers instead of boosting our intelligence quotient, getting rich and exercising our political power. Whatever the intention, it’s a vile piece of television with the underlying message that women must look good, no matter what the price (financial or emotional). And just to hammer the message home, when new participants who are struggling to mend after massive surgery while on a low calorie diet and participating in vigorous exercise finally have their breakdown moment, as they all inevitably do, they bring in a previous swan just to hammer home the message that success won’t follow this process unless you complete it. Previous swans have ‘had their lives changed’. No doubt simply being on telly was part of it, but many have changed their careers and surprise, surprise, become models of varying sorts. The world, it seems, is just crying out for more models. I know I could do with one around the house – they make great umbrella stands.

America, You're Fat!

Here’s a joke for you: How does a portly Aussie raise their self-esteem? Move to America.

I’ve never seen so many pot-bellies, wobbling asses and gigantic hip-jowls in all my life. They really do have an enormous obesity problem here. And everyone wants to blame fast-food. Yeah, that’s a huge part of the problem, but so is their regular food. It has been so hard to find plain, unadulterated, no-additive, no supplements, non-enhanced, fresh food. And when you do, it is of course, the most expensive item on the grocery shelf.

Australian’s who have lived here warned me about the bread. Said it was too sweet and it put them off their Vegemite sandwiches. When we were in LA we noticed the same taste coming at us no matter what we ate. We called it the Taste of America. After a couple of months of shopping and label reading, it has become obvious what the problem is. High fructose corn syrup. It’s in everything. Usually along with extra sugar in some other form. Even things that are supposed to be savoury. That’s why the bread is sweet and won’t stay crisp when you toast it.

No wonder there’s a huge diabetes epidemic here. As my Grandad used to say, as we liberally applied white, refined sugar to our Rice Bubbles and milk (it was the 1970s), “Don’t have too much sugar, or you’ll get diabetes.” I used to think diabetes was for old folk (his elder sister had it) and his warnings were irrelevant and a little overzealous for a four and a six year old. But looking around, I’m beginning to wonder whether a few more people ought to have been listening to Grandad.

The upside to all this is that fat bodies are accommodated at the clothing stores, and I can find almost anything in my size (and much, much bigger). Their health issue leads to my shopping nirvana.