Neal’s Belch no. 194 for 6th Mar, 2005

The thing that strikes me most about modern television is it’s tendency to scratch easily if you attempt to clean the screen with an abrasive material.

That said, I’ve always held great admiration for those who work in the broadcast industry, particularly camera operators and the guy who created the muppets. I also like the news and The Fall Guy, although that’s not on anymore. It was axed after the guy who plays the fall guy realised that he was getting paid only ordinary acting rates, despite the fact that he was playing the roll of a stunt man.

Although he performed dangerous feats in almost every episode, the production company argued that because he was only pretending to be a stunt man, he was not entitled to the going rate for stunt performers.

Not to make a big deal of it, but I’ve never understood why he was called the “fall” guy, when his job was, by definition, specifically not to fall. Unless it was something to do with the American word for Autumn, which of course would make a little more sense as the ground is much more slippy and hazardous when it is covered in wet leaves.

Autumn is pretty much prime season for Fall guys. That’s how you differentiate between a stuntman and a ten year old child. Unlike fall guys, ten year old children tend to fall a lot and get scrapes and bruises in the height of Summer, when they are not at school and therefore out and about more. I spent much of the summer of the tenth year of my life getting treated for ninety degree burns and missing limbs.

Of course, we all grow out of that eventually, and grow up to be bank managers and road sweepers and prime ministers and church ministers and schoolteachers and assistant state pathologists and bookbinders and writers and philosophers and television camera operators and vets and veterinary veterans and army vets who look after army dogs and ships’ cats, and army vets who used to be soldiers but are not retired, which can be very confusing, especially if you add to the confusion by mentioning an army veterinary officer who specialises in treating animals who used to be in the army, in other words he is a vet’s vet.

When he retires from that he’ll be a vet vet’s vet, which if you abbreviate it to VVV, looks like one and a half “w”s, unless you have good eyesight or use a clear font, and are therefore able to see that it is in fact three “v”s.

But I digress.

I’ve never been a huge fan of scratching televisions. For one thing, that sort of thing has pretty much been conquered by the domestic cat, and they’ve got the whole market covered. Wherever there is a television screen waiting to be scratched, you can be damn sure there is a cat, or one of their agents, on their way to the scene to see what can be done. This of course leaves us in a monopolistic situation, where one species has virtually one hundred percent of the industry. But what are you going to do?

I’ll tell you what you’re going to do.

You’re going to sit down in front of the television for an hour to watch The Simpsons, but just as you’re getting into it your telephone will ring, and although it’s only a five minute conversation you’ll forget what you were doing before they called, and you’ll go lie on the bed and read a pseudo-intellectual book about the fast food industry or globalisation or some such issue. Then before you know it, it’ll be bedtime. But you won’t go to bed. Instead you’ll stay up late watching some crappy DVD, and you’ll be exhausted in the morning.

The reason for this is that you are an idiot. But you probably disagree, and you are perfectly entitled to, but that doesn’t change anything, other than the length of this paragraph which I am typing as mere filler. One more sentence, and that will be enough.