almostwitty

I’ve now been in the USA for two weeks. People may go on about the greatness of American television, but based on my limited sampling experiences so far, it’s not exactly a fabulous thing to watch. For instance:

- they think nothing of putting heavy-taxing dramas like House or CSI: SVU on at 9am. And really, my brain does not want to be processing the implications of a 16-year-old pregnant girl trapped with a ranting religious nutcase at 9am on a Tuesday morning.
- they showed Casino Royale (the testicle-crushing version) at 10am
- Fox News’s morning show is called Fox And Friends. And features two staidly white men in suits and a blonde woman sitting in the middle, wearing a short skirt and a top that looks like she stumbled out of a New York nightclub three hours ago. And it makes no pretensions about its’ core viewership – it endlessly goes on about the potential Republican frontrunners for a Presidential election that’s 18 months away
- the Disney Channel has an endlessly perky computer-animated Mickey Mouse Clubhouse that has all the subtlety of a brick hitting a television
- Reality TV has truly gone mad here, with a speciality in watching privileged women act like they’re still in school, and accuse each other of ‘dissing’ each other, before burying the hatchet and being best buddies again. Usually in 45 minutes.
- MTV and VH1 seem to have just become entertainment channels – VH1 has reality shows instead of music
- Comedy Central dearly needs to break out of stand-up comedy specials from 5 years ago, and repeats of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report
- the one time I was in a house that had BBC America, it was showing …. Blade Runner. Very British.

And the commercials. Oy vey, the commercials. It’s an endless cycle of relentless plugging of fast food and buffets, which will probably deteriorate your body to the point when it needs a wonder drug. Luckily, the next ad is for said wonder drug that may cause side effects “including heart attacks which may lead to death”. Then up next is an ad for a hospital that promises the very best in health care. (And a part of me wonders how can a hospital that has to spend money in advertising be really promising the very best in health care?)

Of course, I could just be missing Dave and their endless re-runs of comedy panel shows and Top Gear… but darn it, it suited me down to the ground!

Mirrored from almost witty.

Jacqui Smith, the British Home Secretary, has today stated that "I regularly have people coming up to me and saying they don't want to wait that long" (for ID cards to be issued to every British citizen).

I'd love to get a list of these people. After all, if they're perfectly happy for the British government - run by civil servants with a nasty habit of mailing CDs with details of 25 million people in the post that disappear, losing over 100 memory sticks and portable hard drives - to have their personal details on file at any time, I'm sure they won't mind the rest of us having at least their name.

Seriously, what kind of deranged fool would say "Hello Home Secretary. I want a way to prove my identity. It's not enough for me to use my bank card, driving licence or passport to prove my identity, and I keep opening so many bank accounts all the time it's tiresome for me to keep dragging these documents around with me at all times. Instead, I'd love all my details to be stored on a small credit card which I could easily lose - and which I'd pay £30 for myself".

And never mind stealth - ID cards are already mandatory for foreigners who want to live in the UK - which isn't exactly good news.

Fortunately, Labour seem to be the only advocated of an ID card - the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats say they'd scrap the scheme. and I really hope they don't change their minds. But just to make sure, I'd suggest joining No2ID...