Friday, February 06, 2009

The wail of the TV newsreader

Surfing the TV channels these days can be a miserable experience. “Four jobs being lost every minute” says one. “ABC Company has suffered huge losses, while XYZ Ltd has already declared bankruptcy” says the next. “Dow hits new low, Sensex touches rock bottom” screams the third. “The worst is yet to come” announces yet another. Doom. Depression. Disaster. Destruction. Death. Aaagh.

So, why not switch off the TV, or why not settle for less gloomy channels such as Pogo or Cartoon Network? That’s impossible. Once I have the ‘remote’ in my hands, my fingers can’t resist the urge to keep pressing the ‘program button” once in 30 seconds. Unfortunately, this narrow window of time is enough for each of the channels to bombard me with bad news and more bad news.

The Greek hero Odysseus was supposed to have had himself tied firmly to the mast, and, for good measure, also had the ears of his men filled with wax, to drown out the seductive song of the Sirens, and to avoid the fate that had befallen sailors on ships that had navigated that route.

Now, filling my ears with wax to avoid the wail of the TV news readers will not help. I need to be blindfolded too to avoid reading the ‘breaking news” and “flash news” not to mention the other stomach-churning details that keep popping up. That's cutting out two of my vital sense organs. Not practical.

So, a way must be found to keep me and the ‘remote’ separated. As it is difficult to exercise self-restraint, with the device looking at me seductively and begging me to caress it, the only sensible option is to get myself handcuffed, a la Odysseus. I may kick and rant and suffer severe withdrawal symptoms, but I will be spared the agony of listening to the news.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I find the news channels really annoying. Not only do they talk about depressing rubbish all the time, they talk about the SAME depressing rubbish over and over and over again. The day of Bhutto's assassination, one channel repeated the same information about how she had died five or six times consecutively - they're depressing and they want you to know it by reinforcing the same sordid point repeatedly.

I think you're lucky for your 30-second attention span or you'd see the Sensex and Dow Jones crashing repeatedly.

Mambalam Mani said...

Disconnect cable tv. Watch DD.

dipali said...

We rarely switch on the TV! Saves us the agony of the endless news channels:)
Sometimes watch movie DVDs- less poisonous.