Double Flee A

There's a little problem I'd like to address. It's all about this phenomenon: one person is relating a story about something that happened to them, or something they thought of, or something that they saw in real life, and then somebody else jumps in with something they saw on television, or saw in a movie, or heard on the radio, as if that's even close to the same thing.

This happens all. the. time. All meaning is being sucked away. I don't know by whom, or where it's going, but tell me how many times in a day somebody responds to someone else in earshot with a conversation-ending non-sequitur about some TeeVee show or movie; I bet it's more than once.

Example: I can't even say the word "excellent", without some jackass saying "excellent, smithers" like "that one guy on the Simpsons". The shocking fact of the matter is that my ability to say a single word that can be comprehended as such by another person has been compromised by their exposure to television. They are complacent in this, because they don't seem to notice that my stories are different than theirs; in my stories there's a human being at one end having an experience through a corridor of time with we the storyteller and listener at the other end. My version demonstrates a continuum. Their version abrogates that continuum for the sake of their involvement. Because, you know, everyone is valuable and has something to add, even if what they have to add has already been added by the writer of a TeeVee show.

The other people actually feel the need to cite their sources when repeating somebody else's joke. Malcolm in the middle has been a culprit lately, several people I know have repeated jokes from that show. It's a shame that people enjoy having their brains massaged by that crap. I picture them comatose in front of the flickering box drooling like retards. On the bright side, television makes their brains feel happy, and without all that messy and tedious glue sniffing! If advertisers could sell space on the sides of glue containers, and if it was legal to sell glue as "Huffin' good permabond! Now with more fumes!" you'd see the same products on the tubes that you see on television.

posted by dale @ 9:49 AM