sheer potentiality

Is it just me? Seriously?

I mean, who was the person who said, “Let’s do a ‘Law & Order’ spinoff where all the cases are bizarre sex offenses!”? It’s kind of perverse. Of course, perverse things aren’t all that unusual. What is unusual is that the normal conservative, not-that-edgy audiences that watch “Law & Order” want to watch a show about violent and often disturbing made-up sex offenses every single week.

What’s this about? Does sex sell? Maybe someone realized that a good percentage of the population are victims of sex offenses, and want some way of working through that. And maybe lots of people watch SVU just so they can try and work out things that happened to them in the past. (Does that make NBC good, for providing this to those people, or evil, for exploiting those people to get ratings?)

Even more strangely, how many “Law & Order” fans (who weren’t raped or anything) watch SVU without it ever occurring to them how perverse the show’s premise is, kind of like kids who grow up eating Spam without ever realizing how weird and gross it is?

Last night I made the mistake of flipping through a couple of these music video channels while watching TV. After seeing only seconds, maybe as much as 5 minutes, of these channels, I noticed a pattern that’s been ongoing for, like, months now, if not years. So for the benefit of the viewing community, I have the following statements to make to the media:

1. September ended three weeks ago. You can wake up and stop playing that shitty Green Day video.
2. Hip-hop is overplayed.
3. Thank you, MTV, for giving jobs to people who are so moronic that they cannot contribute to regular society. You are great humanitarians for giving these people food and shelter. That said, if you would kindly stop putting them on the air, restrain them from making programming decisions, and otherwise prevent their idiocy from affecting anyone else, we would appreciate that. Really, I’m sure they’ll be just as happy picking up your dry cleaning, or sweeping the floors at night, or whoring themselves out on street corners. Especially the men.

So I’m listening to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” and wondering what should get “the axe”. Here’s a few ideas:

WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE should get the axe. That game show is so pointless without Regis.
MOST BLOGS should get the axe. Except for this one, what blogs really have much of anything? Come on, we don’t wanna know about your love life, we want pointless lists of things that should get the axe!
MANY CIVIL SERVANTS should get the axe. I mean, does this country really need an “Office of Non-Public Education” under the Department of Education? Isn’t the purpose of private schools to avoid the government?
THE FEDERAL INCOME TAX should get the axe. I do not want to work as a serf to the government, satisfying my needs only after paying my taxes to the Master in DC.
BOTTLED WATER should get the axe. Water’s free, man.
GUN CONTROL should get the axe. The empirical evidence suggests that when guns are controlled or banned, like in Jamaica or the UK, crime rates increase. When guns are allowed, crime rates decrease. That is why there’s more crime in the inner cities (where there’s gun control) than in the hills (where the only gun control is good aim). Of course, there’s another reason, which is why
THE WAR ON DRUGS should get the axe. Come ON! The government make these drugs profitable by jailing suppliers, they crowd the prisons by convicting people for possession, and they have the fucking gall to tell us that we’re the ones that cause terrorism and drug cartels? Haven’t these people learned from Prohibition?

And finally…

YASSER ARAFAT should get the axe for being a thug and a terrorist. It was a mistake to ever legitimize him.