Good Advice from the Rev

Haven't posted much lately, other than news articles. Though I have to get myself up to write in this thing to begin with, the main reason for my inactivity is that not much is really up with me right now. Just dividing my time evenly between forced labor and doing absolutely nothing. For helping me with the latter, I'd like to thank the good people at Cox Communications. After getting an Amazon gift certificate for Christmas, I figured I'd get a TiVo, since I had free money and my VCR has never been able to record a single show. They're all overpriced, and they cost almost $15 a month to get the service that makes the thing really useful. So I refused, then along comes the wonderful digital cable provider for Middle Georgia and offers me a new cable box with DVR and more features and storage space than any of the TivOs I saw on Amazon. Noba now has to pay only $9.50 a month, and not a cent for the equipment. This makes Noba purr.

Anyway, as you can tell, I still have nothing substantive to say, but here's a funny story, I suppose.

Since I've moved to Macon, one thing has struck me more than anything else. The general lack of anything to do? No. The perfect cocktail of really bad and really aggressive drivers? Not that. So what is it? The local television programming! I'm talking the local evening news, commercials for local businesses, public access TV - there is simply nothing traveling over the spectrum that is as unintentionally funny as some of the things I have seen. Macon is a town built for radio, to say the least.

Here's an example of a local news broadcast. Picture a happy for no reason blond woman with an hairy upper lip reading the news with her "Barak Obama without the money, charisma, college degree, or self-respect" co-anchor. Let's have a look:

Obama Boy: "US fwarces..for...forces entered the city of fahulahaj today...(screen cuts to video for local interest story about 90 pound pig with no legs)....I'm sorry, ladies and gentleman, we're experiencing problems....that was supposed to be a video of coalition troops....(new video comes up with footage of women getting mammograms).."

(Camera suddenly jerks to upper right corner of room)

Fur-lip: (in foreground, talking into cell phone) "Ya'll, I'm on the news, turn on the Teeveee..."

The really sad thing is that I'm reading from a transcript.

Then there are the commercials. If an 30-second spot of a middle aged, probably ex-high school quarterback used car salesman with his daughter's softball team makes you want to purchase a 1997 Toyota Tacoma, then you are in the prime demographic of many local auto retailers. The strange stars of these ads are a given in a shithole town like this, but the actual businesses themselves poor salt on this wound of broadcasting. If an experiment was conducted where outsiders were kept in a room and forced to watch 24 hours of our commercials, they would come away convinced that Macon, GA consisted only of chiropractic clinics, rent-to-own appliance stores, Krystal restaurants, and truck dealerships/feed stores. Not until I entered Bibb county had I ever seen an ad for a swap meet. *Sigh*

So anyway, back to my new DVR. Since I record whatever I want, and can play it whenever I want, skipping through the commercials and so forth, I've been watching less local news and less commercials. But once in a while after the recorded show is over, it will switch into live mode and I'll catch a few gems that make me think the career of television political commentator is attainable, since apparently furry lipped women can anchor a news broadcast.

This evening, I caught some late night sermonizing from a local black preacher. "Trust in the Word" is an uplifting hour of worship, with life long lessons hidden in each word. Here are some excerpts. No, I'm not joking, these are actual quotes from the good reverend. They shall guide me for the rest of my life.

"We got people all over the place that want to go hunt grizzly bears with a knife. First of all, if you gon' hunt a grizzly bear, you crazy. But just with a knife?"

"When we pray, God and Jesus know what we fittin' to ask 'em. So why we gotta ask'em?"

"God made animals. A bunch of them. And he gave man do-min-ion.Can I get a hallelujah? (few seconds go by) Ronnie, you late on the hallelujah that time. Better pull it out faster. Your spirit need a jumpstart, huh?"

"Moses came down the Nile in a basket. Now, I can't tell you how the current of the Nile didn't tip the basket over. Maybe it was especially designed to float. Maybe God calmed the waters for this basket. But Moses came to be a prince from this basket boat."

"Jesus didn't have a CD player. Jesus didn't need a CD player."

Gotta love it. Have a good weekend everyone....