right after these important messages

Yesterday I received my bi-weekly dose of television at the laundromat. Laundry is a particularly odious task to me. But, I find myself strangely drawn there on hot days. It's my only chance to sit and read for a while in an air conditioned room. Inevitably, I absorb a few moments of afternoon cartoons and sitcoms as well.

I caught the tail end of a Scooby Doo episode that must be new. The voices weren't quite right and the sound effects (like Scooby running) were completely different. Why don't they just let go instead of kicking around the dead body of an old kid's show? Next up was Pokemon. Wow. Most of the episode was an infomercial for Pokemon cards. I think the animators were making an attempt at the award for slowest frame rate ever. They'll lose, however, because during the action scenes the background would flash about 8 million times per second. There seems to be a paint shortage at the studio because most of the scenes were drawn with only two or three colors. The cartoon seems to take advantage of the fact that you could get kids to watch a five second reel on repeat for hours as long as it had a talking animal with a wide-eyed expression. After Pokemon some generic sitcom whose name I missed was on. At this point the reception was getting bad and the sound would turn into static for long periods. I amused myself by imagining the cute, smiling faces saying things like, "let's go throw Molotovs at The Gap" or "boy, I can't wait for my colonoscopy."

One has to wonder, do television viewers ever realize that everything they are watching is exactly the same as what was on yesterday, last week, last year, but with a different name, new faces, brighter colors? The camera style never changes, the sets all look similar, the scripts are all cliches. Everything is described as "all new" and "never seen before". A look behind the scenes. You won't believe your eyes! All of the villains have the same expression, all of the jokes have the same format, all of the conflict is resolved in the same way, and everything returns to normal at the end of the episode. The dialog is just microwaved left-overs from previous dialogs. Once you've watched TV long enough you've heard every phrase and line. Even the new material is familiar in a way. I supposed this is part of what draws some people to it. A safe familiar escape posing as a new adventure. A dependable consistent world you can tune into every week. A never ending stream of recycled plots. Don't miss next week's shocking conclusion!

I love stores that are open 24/7 because I can go when no one else is around. I stopped by Kinko's at 1am to ask a couple questions and was surprised to find it still rather busy. When I returned at 3am the place was nearly empty. A couple people were at the self-serve copiers, and an old guy was mumbling end time prophecy to himself. I like not having to wait for anyone and not feeling rushed. I talked a bit with a very helpful employee who let me use the computer behind the counter to make corrections and charged me less than the official price. Life is pretty relaxed at 3am.