No, this wasn’t posted weekly, which at one time was my goal. But! It’s only been a couple of months instead of a couple years since the last post, so progress!!! Speaking of progress, the third Carla novel will be out shortly and the fourth is at the publisher. Yay!
All in all, life is good, although I do have a missing crown which I’m having to baby for a month until they pull the tooth and eventually put in a permanent bridge. Which brings up an interesting question. If you have a complete set of false teeth, can you just mail them in for your dental appointment? In a lot of ways, that might make it worthwhile, since I hate going to the dentist. Although I only slightly hate mine as everyone at the office is exceptionally nice. You know, the kind of people you want to hang out with. Well, hang out any place other than the dentist’s office.
Speaking of things I hate, I seem to have picked up a new aversion. No, not okra or Brussels Sprouts…nothing new about those. And for those of you who are going to yell at me for not liking them, I’ll probably yell at you for not liking fried frog legs or a BLT without the B, so don’t bother, please. It’s a reality TV aversion.
Truth time! I don’t watch most reality shows, but you certainly can’t escape the commercials. Hmmm Maybe I don’t have a reality TV aversion, I have a reality TV commercial aversion. At any rate, the title of this post is “Fake Reality” which is an oxymoron if I ever heard one. And I hope it’s true, because it seems like everything on cable nowadays is some reality show. There can’t be that many people who are willing to make fools of themselves are there?
Are you a farmer who needs a wife? We got a show for that. Are you willing to marry someone within ninety days? Yep, another show. Or…how about marrying someone sight unseen? Got that one, too. About the only dating/marriage show not on today is about someone looking to marry a washing machine. Based on what I’m seeing, though, that may not be far behind, especially with the rise of AI intelligence, which is a tad bit scary. If said washing machine could also do minor repairs around the house, bring me my coffee in the morning, and take my car to be serviced or washed, I’d consider it. If not…well, I have enough problems without going down that road.
What happened to meeting a mate the old-fashioned way? In a bar? Or, preferably, a church. Or…say…you break a window while mowing the lawn at your mom’s house and the dispatcher who took the service call keeps your name and makes annoying phone calls until you relent and agree to a date. Could happen. Did happen. But perhaps that’s just my scenario. And, yes, I do get coffee every morning, so no complaints here, over thirty years later.
That certainly doesn’t seem to be the norm nowadays. Today, if you’re not on TV baring your soul for the world to see, the relationship can’t happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do know people get together every day off of TV, but seriously, have you ever seen so many relationship shows? I miss the whole concept.
What would it take for you (my wonderful reader) to go on TV to find a mate? Personally, there’s not enough money in the world for me to do that. Literally. Okay, maybe not literally, but I seriously doubt someone would be willing to pay me a trillion dollars to do it. And, unless I was assured my mate would clean litter boxes, it’s a non-starter, even for a billion. Not to mention that I have no intention of looking for a new husband since I think I’ve finally got this one trained. No easy task, let me assure you.
The best reality shows, in my humble opinion, are cooking ones and people looking for their next house. The only problem with the cooking ones is they cook strange foods like, I don’t know, okra. One of my closest friends, Marty, used to say, “Don’t these people know corn is a vegetable?” No, it wasn’t in reaction to a cooking show, it would be because we were at a formal function where the vegetable would be something like asparagus. Marty and I had a lot in common. We both hated abnormal vegetables.
Ed and I like to laugh at House Hunters. I’m not sure how they manage to do it, but they always seem to have a pair on there who want diametrically opposite things they’re looking for. City vs country, condo vs house, ready to move in vs fixer-upper, cheap vs expensive, etc. Ed and I would never be asked to appear in an episode. Mainly because we’re not looking for a house, but also because we’re boring.
We’d both want a house in the country with an extra-large kitchen, swimming pool, multiple home offices, and an en suite with a deep soaker bathtub and standalone shower. I’d love beach or lake front property, but Ed’s got a flood phobia, so I’d cave. About the only thing we’d disagree on would be whether the island was eight feet long or big enough to have its own zip code. He’d cave since his idea of cooking is to drive to a fast-food place and my idea of cooking is to have every kitchen toy known to man, plus an island the size of a small city. If it’s kitchen related, he readily humors me. In other words, we’re too much in sync to make good viewing.
My least favorite commercial right now is one where a guy asks something like, “Did Jesus get horny?” Let me assure you I am NOT a prude. I also like to think I have a decent sense of humor. But, in whose world is that funny, or even normal to ask a question like that? And the show is supposedly about people raised in gospel. I say supposedly, because I haven’t watched it, nor will I. One can take only so much garbage.
Even not counting all the relationship shows, there are reality shows about a hundred different things. It almost seems like reality TV is a microcosm of everything that appears to be wrong with America. And probably the whole world. We are glorifying things we shouldn’t and denigrating things we should be revering. No wonder crime is up, depression is up, drug use is up, etc. It honestly seems like everything is haywire and I do believe it could partially be attributed to the fake reality we see on TV. A lot of people don’t seem to realize the shows are scripted or tweaked to present what (supposedly) makes good viewing, is full of people who seem to just want attention/notoriety or based on something other than true reality.
Not much different than what our young girls face when they see unrealistic body images on social media. They don’t realize that’s not the norm, and “ruin” themselves trying to conform. Enough is enough, isn’t it? Let’s bring back wholesome TV, other than what you can find on some of the oldie channels. There’s something to be said for life in Mayberry. It might have been unrealistic if you lived in New York City, but it was always good for a laugh. Bring back the Mayberry concept and morality. We deserve more than what we’re getting right now.