Misnamed Channel

I was flipping through the channels, as I tend to do, and all of the entertainment channels had cop programs; I could be wrong, but it seems to me there is no time of day that you can’t watch Hawaii 5-0.  History, of course, just had one of their stupid auction shows, I can’t remember the last time I actually saw something about history there.  Animal planet had fishing.  O.K., he was in South America, fishing for piranhas, but it’s still just fishing – a guy throws a hook into the water, and then pulls out a fish.  It’s no more compelling than watching two guys play darts.  So, I went to the Discovery Channels, because there are four of them, but one of them was talking about big military weapons, two had programs about cars, and one program showing how chewing gum was made.  I don’t really care how chewing gum is made.

So, I came to the learning channel, which I almost never watch because it’s absolute crap, and they had a program on called “Long Island Psychic” and I figured I could  give that a few minutes, might pick up some clues for my Tarot reading, but it was almost over and then they had the ads (which all stations seem to have so many of these days) advertising their own programs.

I think TLC originally meant The Learning Channel, but you’d never know it.  Toddlers and Tiaras, which is undoubtedly popular with pedophiles, two programs about weddings, one of which “Curvy Brides,” sounds from the title that it specialized in fat chicks getting married.  Then there is “Little People, Big World” which is all about dwarves, and appeared to be something less than a sensitive, serious documentary.  (Dwarves drive tractors, hoo boy!)  Then there was the capper, The Undatables, all about retarded people looking for love.

Why not just drop the ‘learning channel’ pretense.  Just call it TFS (the freak show) and be done with it?

(It was a lazy day for me, but got a call from a former student who wants to start up again, and an e-mail with an offer to proofread a translation of a novel from Farsi to English, so plenty of work coming in)