Today I’m delighted to welcome my first Guest Writer. It feels odd, having a guest writer on the site bearing my moniker. It’s almost like he’s my split personality, or something.
Anyway, he’s a good friend of mine, and will probably soon be a very good friend of your sister, so please warm your hands and prepare to give a nice pat on the stomach to Bob Booby…
Television is rubbish. It’s just not for kicks any more. It doesn’t have a fraction of the fun attached to it that, say, jumping in the air or doing snow angels do.
Take my mate Dave, who runs this blog. He’s your average guy – very average, in fact. How his missus puts up with him is beyond my comprehension. She’s lovely – dashing, even – and the closest he comes to dashing is at 1am in the morning after forgetting to do toilet before bed.
Dave doesn’t like television. I think it’s because he doesn’t understand it very well. He comes from the north, where they urinate outside. All very French. All very insalubrious.
But he doesn’t like television, and I like him for that. It’s surprising, because he’s got the brain size of a pea. A pea’s brain! It’s a funny image, that is. A bit like Dawn French. You don’t want to catch her starkers on your 60″ Hitachi, let me tell you.
Dave’s doing this 10 of 10 thing at the moment. It’s the nearest he’s come to an achievement. You gotta hand it to him – a P45, that is. If he wasn’t a freelancer, which is a synonym for ‘jobless loser’.
So I thought I’d help him out with 10 reasons why you shouldn’t have a telly. You’ll have to excuse me, I’m not very opinionated. If you enjoy the crap that Dave spouts, fear not, because he’ll be back tomorrow. If he can keep it up. Talking to his missus, I wouldn’t count on it…
- It’s rubbish for advertising. Everyone knows you have to be on crack or have $3bn going spare in reserves to pump cash and confidence into TV marketing. I mean, what’s the point? If you’re stupid you go and make a cup of builder’s tea while the ad break’s on; if you’re smart and savvy (for a TV viewer) you’ve recorded that damn programme and can either fast-forward, or you have one of them devices that simply chops out the ads for you. Noone – noone – watches ads any more. So get a big bag, slot that $3bn in the side compartment and nudge yourself myways so we can talk about the smart way to get your factories operating at optimum output.
- It makes you sterile. Cramming your fat arse on the sofa for prolonged periods is bad enough, but have you ever thought of the effects of that concertina posture on your baby-manufacturing organs? Normally that Walmart belt creates a safe dividing line between protruding belly and flaccid flesh string, but now you’re hunched over the remote, it’s every man for himself down there. You’re nigh-on crushing your goddamn penis in TV-gawping pose! Which must be damaging your chances of making a mini you. Reading this I don’t want you to make comparisons between Gordon Ramsay’s outburst about chefs sacrificing sperm for saute by hovering dangerously close to ovens all day long. That’s bullshit – the guy has more swimmers in his glans than you and I have blood cells. I do, however, believe that watching telly immolates your cock creatures.
- It stymies creativity. I’ve got 17 tabs open on Firefox right now. 17! That’s more than your IQ! Thankfully I’ll be through with the content of all those pages in a minute. Or I’ll have a word with my VA (that’s a Virtual Assistant, imbecile, not the state of Virginia, which was named after Dave, who alongside the question ‘Marital Status’ on the application form for a job at McDonald’s, famously added: “Virgin – ya!”) and she can get cracking on it. What I’m trying to say here is you can’t be creative and static at the same time. You have to create the ripple effect – and I’m not talking about what happens when you try and shift your fat belly from the sofa to the kitchen to grab some more Doritos. The ripple effect means starting something, then focusing on it so hard that everything you need to achieve your goal just ripples from the kinesis of contemplation. Try it. You might have a moment to spare now Strictly Come Wrestling On Ice With Chas And Dave has finished.
- It gives folks like Jedward a platform. Don’t. Get. Me. Started. They were on Sky News this morning, with that chubster Eamon Holmes. He’s gone a bit old, quick, hasn’t he? Well apparently the twins – which should have been left conjoined at birth – have been having a bit of a hard time of late. Well, stop the ***ing press! Did anyone think about coaching them on the dangers of mediocrity? They make Katie Price’s bosomy twins look talented. If being twins is enough to become famous, why aren’t The Chuckle Brothers replacing Chris Moyles on Radio 1? And what happened to that Krankie who fell out of the beanstalk?
- It created ‘celebrity’. This sickens me to the core. There are people out there – honest to decent folk – who run shops, take kids across the road (I’m not talking to you, Glitter) and slash the necks of sheep to put Sunday lunch on your table. These are the celebrities of our generation. Not the likes of Pierce bloody Morgan. The world’s disappeared up its own back yard. When the fat controller of BBC1 wakes up and smells the mocha, we’ll all be in a better state. Because the first thing he’ll do is hike up the price of your TV license to about £1,000 a day, and retire to Lumbago or another of those Caribbean islands because you’ll all still pay it. And for what? It’s all rubbish. Except for that Attenborough chap – he’s alright, I suppose. Did you know he does the voiceovers for the chimpanzees?
- We have no control over it. Unless you have one of those fancy home theatre pcs or whatever, you’re being dictated. Imagine that – dictated! It’s like being a member of the United Kingdom community. You are? Right-o. Well you’re used to it, then. Gordon Brown = your telly = loss of control = you are a lost soul, MIA. Your modus operandi isn’t your concern. Because big Gord and Aunty Beeb are telling you what to do. Even when you’re asleep. George Orwell said it best: the pig wins every time. See in the America they have all sorts of fancy ways to give the telly authorities the bird. They watch fancy pants interactive channels like revision3, sate their pixellated fantasies through on-demand providers like boxee and hulu, and probably even watch the BBC over the interweb without paying with some IP-swerver.
- It’s a festering pile of horse vomit. Anyone with an ounce of wisdom – that excludes you, obviously – knows that TV makes your mind flabby. It reduces your cerebral cortex to a spindly spider’s web of a neural network. You can’t win. It’s like being an Evertonian. What can you possibly gain from a couple of hours in front of the tellybox, apart from aggravating your piles? It boggles my mind, is what it does. Why Don’t You Go And Do Something More Productive – like drinking down the pub? Help the local economy and laugh at the smokers shivering outside. What could be more fun than that?
- It makes kids angry and violent. The telly isn’t all about the Mitchell twins, you know. Who happen to be a lot more capable than Jedward – one of them’s just got back from war, apparently, where he was very good (but sponsors Brylcreem are pondering their options). But what the Mitchells have in common with what I’m about to say revolves around unlawful pugilism. Fomenting forays of fisticuffs. Because mark my words, your kids right now are plotting to overthrow your administration. Whether they got the idea from the CBeebies or a particularly prolonged session of Grand Theft Auto, you can be sure that revolution is on its way, and it will involve that silicone spatula. Parents, get comfy in your riot gear.
- It stops people going out and to art galleries, and that. Lethargy. Procrastination. High-scoring words in Scrabble they may be (the latter would be a tough call; possible, but you’d have to nick some letters from your gaming nemesis, probably using violence of the type you’ll be seeing soon from your obsequious offspring (see 8)) but they also resonate in the hearts and minds of the anti-telly brigade. We empathise, you know? We know how it feels to be addicted to a negative force in our lives. I have this obsession with spelling mistakes and grammatical nakuracies. The next fast-food joint to sell pizza’s will be getting a Molotov through the winder, all burning bottle and a copy of the English dictionary inside with ‘idiot’ highlighted in yellow.
- I haven’t got one. I really want one of those Pioneer Kuro screens but @leolaporte got the last one and it’s just not fair. So maybe I’m just bitter. *Newsflash* maybe there is a way – apparently when Pioneer kiboshed its Kuro range on cost grounds, it decided to do some kind of deal with Panasonic. The result is the Viera G2 line of TVs, featuring legacy Pioneer technology. Oh man, this bleedin’ internet is just too damn addictive. I hadn’t even considered this could ever happen, and now I’m hotfooting betwixt this post and amazon and allsorts trying to find a way I can see/get my hands on this telly.
Bob Booby would like to make clear that he has no association with @bobbooby and actually quite likes @TracyCyrus because (s)he (ambiguous profile pic) likes guitars too.
Tomorrow: Same shit, different Dave…
