An ivory tower that touches the moon

I was in a place for the past few days where I had no internet access–and what I instead had access to was lots and lots of TV.

First off–I realized why I don’t watch anything on TV that exists outside of Cartoon Network, the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, or the National Geographic channel. Holy shit situational comedies are stupid. They’re totally lost on me because every time a conflict arises because the husband lies to his wife about something and the ensuing cover up is supposed to be oh-so-hilarious I’m sitting there like, “sweet baby jesus on a flaming roller coaster, do people actually do this? Is she going to turn into a giant spider and fill her husband with venom and suck out his juices if he tells her he really can’t afford <insert stupid shit here>?”

Oh oh oh–and every single one has an episode where a relative (be it male or female I’ve seen both) goes out with the kid of the main character while babysitting and finds someone who’s like “zomg I love ur kid let’s go on a date,” and then said relative has to pretend that kid is his or hers until the jig is up. Hilarity ensues? No. JUST FUCKING STOP IT oh fucking god come up with some new ideas for a chaaaaaaaaaange! Oh other plots every show has–kid has the I.Q. of a turnip and innocently destroys a priceless sports artifact of the father’s and the father has to learn I guess that his moron of a kid is more important than mere priceless stuff.

You know I read somewhere once that it’s hard for women to get into sitcom writing because apparently producers think they aren’t funny? I have a feeling they don’t hire men either–they just have Mad Lib machines that recycle the same 10 plots with the names of different characters inserted where applicable.

Wow that was totally not what I was going to make this blog about.

Anyway, inserted in the commercial breaks of these shows is an incessant barrage of advertisements for dieting shit. A rubber ball that will give you a rock hard six pack. Exercise videos that will make it so your husband can’t keep his hands off of you. Weight watchers which lets you ACTUALLY EAT FOOD YOU LIKE in tiny indiscernible quantities. Nutrisystem, where they mail you a bunch of food you will ACTUALLY LIKE in tiny indiscernible quantities and if you keep eating it you will somehow sprout rock hard six pack abs, and they throw in a free inter-dimensional space pocket to put your internal organs in so you can be truly two dimensionally thin.

Anyone who doesn’t think the “obesity epidemic” obsession is a product of how lucrative it is to make everyone in America hate his or her body is either brainwashed or living in a monestary with no TV. Not to mention these diet commercials were interspersed with commercials about weight loss TV shows and new and novel cooking methods which drain every ounce of flavor fat from your food.

I just got sick of SEEING these commercials. I don’t watch a lot of TV usually, is this really how all TV is or is it just that people who dieting companies target watch a lot of situational comedies?

Am I the only person on earth who thinks six pack abs look weird rather than attractive?

What made me really annoyed wasn’t the message of “hey lose weight gain muscle get fit,” it was little things that were said, like, “I look thinner in the midsection now–and that’s something EVERY woman wants!” I suppose since most women are conditioned to hate their bodies that might be pretty much true, but I just hate anything that feeds into this idea that women are the borg and have a hive mind and all think the same things and want the same things. I’d really prefer it if women were actually considered the borg and not a bunch of obnoxiously chatty shopping addicted bees. I’ll take a race of aliens that will make you shit your pants in fear before they assimilate your mind and turn you into a bad ass robot over the insipid stereotypes used to belittle women all of the time any day of the week.

The whole thing about the new rock hard abs leading to one woman’s husband not being able to keep his hands off of her squicked me out too. I don’t know if I’m reading too much into it, but that just seems to be saying “hey, if your husband doesn’t want to incessantly fuck your brains out right now, it probably means he thinks you’re FAT!” Ugh. I guess I can’t expect people trying to make money at all costs to be classy.

I’m pretty sure if there were commercials for any given object as often and numerous as these the title of this blog post would be changed accordingly. To be fair I’d rather shave my legs with a lawnmower than eat a taco bell taco with the bacon and cheese wrapped around it in a second tortilla not only because that sounds disgusting, but because if I see another Taco Bell commercial I’m going to spontaneously combust. I’d also die happy if I never had to watch a situational comedy ever again.

ACCORDING TO JIM IS A FUCKING AWFUL SHOW.

There. I said it.