Having a television reminds me of how much absolute shit there is out on cable trying to irradiate my brain. As near as I can tell, I can now get 87,451 channels, over 50,000 of which are apparently “Women’s” television. You know, where angry lesbians get to make movies about how men are evil corrupt beasts that need to be castrated at birth. Now, I wouldn’t complain, as we men get our fair share of channels as well, but you have to pay for the Playboy channel. Just ain’t fair.

From what I can gather, out of the rest of those channels, there are maybe a half dozen worth actually watching. Comedy Central is almost always good, mainly since they went to a full 24 hour rotation of old SNL reruns. The History Channel is watchable, as long as you’re lucky enough to catch the 4 hours each day where the programming doesn’t revolve around the final hours of Adolf Hitler’s life. It’s amazing, they have hours of footage detailing this guy’s choice of toothpaste, yet not a damned thing about his cameo appearance in Bionic Commando. Super Joe can’t get no love. TLC is pretty good, because you stand a pretty good chance at seeing either kickass British science documentaries, or Junkyard Wars.

It just strikes me as how much potential is wasted in TV programming anymore. Take the Sci-Fi Channel, for instance. It should be dead simple, show reruns of old Star Trek, Battlestar Galatica and Outer Limits shows. Instead we get Dark Shadows, and movies that should have been on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. There’s just so many Rutger Hower movies you can take as “serious cinema” before you snap and start throwing in your own pithy commentary between lines. And A&E. I remember A&E before they became the “Law and Order Channel”. I really do. It was a great channel. You could get documentaries and British movies with full frontal nudity. I miss A&E.

Pastel colored, chunky shaped, geared for 8 year olds, molded-in carrying handle and no moving parts. Mattel Speak n’ Say, or Nintendo Gamecube?

Speaking of video game systems…

Okay. You have that game “system” from Nintendo. Now, my personal hatred for Nintendo put aside, exactly what upside does this thing have? I mean, sure, you’re guaranteed a good Mario game, a couple good Zelda games, and maybe Metroid. This is the exact same lineup they’ve had since 1984. Add in Mario Kart and Pokemon, you’re looking at their entire notable SNES/N64 output. In other words, it’s looking a lot like 1998 again, what with a very strong Sony system at the top, and everybody else trying to play catch-up. If the Gamecube bombs N64-style, does Nintendo leave the console market alone? Hell, they know they’re moneymaker is the GBA. Isn’t Myamoto’s “genius” more suitable for a portable SNES?

And as far as the X-box goes… eh. They’re pushing Halo and DoA3. Both of which are mistakes. The only way a fighting game will sell a system is if it has the word “Namco” on the front cover, and first person shooters are just not suitable for console boxes. They don’t sell systems. Especially jaded PC-types, as we’ll all be comparing Halo to Half-life, Quake Arena, Dues Ex, and Nobody Lives Forever. And there’s no RPGs in sight for the Xbox. And as long as Square is still in bed with Sony, you’ll never have any RPG market share in the first place. All the good RPG companies are gonna produce for the PS2, because they know that’s where the rpg market is in the first place.

Everybody reading this has to go out and buy and read Game of Thrones and Otherland: City of Golden Shadow. You’ll probably be stuck reading for the next two months or so, so you’ll have something to do until I can think up a new Rhant. Go on, shoo.

So, anyway, we (we meaning, everybody at the hotel I work at, not the “we” as in “us”) have to wear these little pins on our horribly expensive coats that say “Thank you For Travelling”, under a little American flag. That’s right, it’s your PATRIOTIC FUCKING DUTY to hop on airplanes and spend $75 a night on hard beds and continental breAPFasts. We don’t particularly care where you go, or why, as long as you go somewhere where you have to sleep in one of our hotels.

Now, see here’s what I don’t understand. We have people comparing this crisis we are going through to Pearl Harbor and World War Two. Which is a bit silly, as Bin Laden isn’t a Hitler, and the Taliban sure as hell hasn’t turned out to be an Axis power, but that’s beside the point. In wartime, people are expected to make sacrifices for the greater good. Recyle aluminum, save newspapers, scrounge up scrap rubber, round up people you think might be spies, you know, stuff like that. But in this “war”, we’re expected to make sacrifices by consuming? We’re supposed to show our patriotic duty by buying new SUVs and DVD players? That’s not a sacrifice, that’s consumerism. Sacrificing is having to drink Sanka instead of Starbucks, rolling your own ciggarettes, taking your lunch to work. Sacrificing is not buying a new DSS system.

Of course, the main problem with this “war” is that we have nobody to war against. There’s no sovereign nation to rally against, no one idea or concept to revulse us as a whole. We simply have a bunch of people who despise us because of a combination of corrupting American influence and our own constant meddling in the past. The reason we’re hated is incomprehensible to us… for one, most of us never learned in history class exactly what the US did in the middle east to attract the wrath of the Muslim world there. And for another, we can’t grasp the concept that people would hate America just for being America . We like Coca-cola, Madonna and McDonalds. We can’t understand how our own mass marketing culture has been systematically enveloping and destroying cultures other than ours… homogenizing the entire world. There does not exist a place on this planet where you cannot buy an ice cold Coke or order a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and people hate us for this. A personal, deep, abiding hatred. Perhaps the most frustrating part is that we’ll never be able to rectify this situation. You can’t ask Madison Avenue to stop brainwashing the world’s populace… that’s what they do for a living. Multi billion dollar companies rely on global advertising… But as long as you see Briteny Spears’ naked navel broadcast over the world while children are starving to death on meals of flatbread and tainted water, expect people to resent us for this.

In France, it's called a Royale with Cheese.

*snickers*