Day 302: My big day in front of the telly

If you're the sort of person who can appreciate a "so bad it's good" movie, I highly recommend "The Room". Its reputation is well-earned.

There's nothing like immersing yourself in popular culture if you want to feel old and out of touch. These days, about the only time I watch live commercial telly (y'know, along with all the commercials and stuff) is during cricket season. And every year I come away feeling more and more confused and alienated. And then I come here to whinge. And you lucky people get to hear about it. Lucky you.

So, anyway, I spent most of the day watching the Poms beat the Aussies in the third game of the women's ashes … which I'm actually quite happy about. See, Australia have already won the first two matches, and at the end of the day, It's more entertaining for me to watch a close tournament than to see England get annihilated. Not that I thought they would get annihilated. Despite those two wins, and despite what the commentators seem to think, the Australian team has not been playing well. What they have been doing is relying on one or two players to play really well in any given match. No wonder they didn't make the finals in the world cup.

Actually, it might also have something to do with the Pommy wicket-keeper. Not only is she the best wicket-keeper in the world, she's also really fuckin' obnoxious. She has this piercing voice, and every single ball it's, "Atta-girl!", or, "Nice one, ladies!", or, "Beautiful, babe!". There were times when I had to mute the audio, just so I could get a break from it. It was worse than the bloody grunting in tennis. I honestly dunno how the other players manage to put up with it.

On top of that, they lost two overs from the game due to rain. Can I just say that in my opinion the Duckworth Lewis system for re-calibrating rain-shortened matches is a complete load of horseshit. Now that TV's gone digital, and every station has four or five channels that they can't fill up with anything better than forty year old American dramas and similar rubbish, there's no reason why they can't just extend the playing time. Honestly, who's going to complain if today's episode of "Murder She Wrote" gets pushed back to tomorrow?

Anyway, the breaks gave me a chance to flip over to one of Nein's other channels to watch some of the "Fast5" netball tournament. I don't generally care for netball—or basketball either, for that matter—but for some reason, I quite like this hybrid form of the game. Although, I've gotta say, I do find the uniforms a wee bit scandalous. In case you've never seen them, they're basically singlets that are just long enough to also count as skirts. I dunno if this is a marketing ploy to pull in straight men and lesbians, but seriously, if your undies need to be team colours, because they're so frequently visible, your skirt is probably too short. Of course, if I was young and super fit, I'd probably want to show off a bit too, so I dunno, it's probably just me being old and cranky. Also, I noticed that the players on some of the teams celebrated by flipping each other's skirts, which I think is classed as some sort of sex-crime now in Queensland. Just thought I'd point that out.

Which brings me to the low point of the day. The bloody ads. I swear to god, in at least 50% of cases, I either didn't understand what they were selling or didn't understand how it was being sold. "Chemist Warehouse" appear to have just edited together a bunch of vignettes of shit that have nothing to do with anything, and then slapped their logo on the bottom. Oh, and can I point out just how many ads there are for chemists in general. Chemists, insurance, and bloody banks. Oh, and fuckin' payday-loans; how many of those cunts are there now? Not one of the car ads I saw told you anything about the car; it was just a bunch of people driving through wanky surrealist dream sequences. And apparently there's something called "Married At First Sight" which is returning in 2018—and I don't have the foggiest fuckin' clue what that even means? Is it a TV show? Is it, like, arranged marriages or something? Is that what they've been reduced to? When I saw the ad for it—which involves people flying through the air in slow-mo while babbling about how much they believe in love—my reaction was to blurt out "What the fuckin' fuck is this fuckin' shit?". But the absolute topper was this ad that featured people drinking these comically tiny cups of coffee. I spent the whole time anticipating a punch line that never came. No, apparently it was an ad for some idiotic device which actually makes comically tiny cups of coffee. Either that, or I completely missed the fuckin' point. … Which just goes to illustrate my fuckin' point exactly.

Anyway, how often do you watch live commercial telly, and how do you cope with it? Or does it all make perfect sense to you? I'm curious to know if I'm doing something wrong.