TV, Get Off The Air!

Last night on Facefuck, I told Jamey I was going to write another Archaeological adventure chapter, but after today's shitty work I'm going to have a rant instead. We've been further reduced of ground to work on; since Tuesday we've been working on an area about ten meters square and I've had Sir Stanner's arse in my face all day (something most women in Wakefield would probably enjoy, but not me, no sir). Lauren has also been off sick, it could have had something to do with the Amazing Racist telling her that her hat was 'spiffing' or the fact that we are now surrounded on all sides by monkeys driving heavy machinery. And they're not even those clever trained monkeys that can use tools and shit. We are breathing in heavy diesel fumes and having to shout over the noise. I asked Kevin, the groundworker's Foreman, if the machines had a volume button and if they could turn them down a couple of notches, but my requests went unheeded. Added to all this was the incessant rain that G-Funk's weather circuits failed to register. Stanners though that some rain had got into his circuitry and damaged his electrics. Whatever, he didn't bring us in to shelter in the cabin.

'Yeah, it's that kind of rain that takes seven hours and fifty five minutes to get you wet, we can work through it...'

As Stanners and I were not in the best of moods all day we had our own rant about TV celebrities, which reminded me of how much I hate TV. In particular Top Gear. My Brother was home for a couple of days before heading out to Cuba for a month again. He was watching Top Gear as we were getting ready to go out for a drink. This particular episode had that little shit Richard Hammond driving a 4X4 Yuppie Cadillac in a race with a motorised kayak across Jökulsárlón, the beautiful glacier lake in South East Iceland. Obviously, that withered little cunt was driving across the land at the side of the lake, although the TV spectacle of watching him drown trapped in the locked vehicle in the middle of the lake would be something to set the video for. I watched this particular piece in absolute dismay. I've been to Jökulsárlón and it is an area of breathtaking outstanding natural beauty, it is one of the nicest places I have ever visited, the combination of sea, land and ice is unbelievable. I have watched seal colonies laid out on ice flows basking in the sun. When the weather was hotter I have watched ice broken off from the glacier float majestically by like an ocean liner in utter silence. It is one of Iceland's many beautiful high-points. So to have that little shitbag drive a gas-guzzling tank across the snow, churning up the gravel in order to win a race where the prize money comes out of license fee payer's pockets made me cry on the inside. Added to this was the fucking bellend that was thrashing through the water in the kayak. I was wondering how many of those seals appreciated the end result of the race after their colonies are broken up amidst panic. This is what Top Gear is all about, as long as the three presenters (that strutting cock Clarkson, that simpering cunt May and the hobbit motherfucker Hammond) get their fucking kicks they don't give a shit about anything else. The fucking idiot presenters ecological destruction doesn't stop there, they raced across the incredibly delicately balanced Makgadikgadi salt pans in Botswana, they have also churned up heather on Ben Tongue mountain in Scotland. When will the madness end?

LET'S OFF ROAD!!!

The problem is this, they are getting paid from BBC license payer's pockets to go and do all this stuff mainly just for kicks and in the name of entertainment. I don't know about you but I don't want to sit and watch someone else having fun at my expense. It's like giving all my records to someone else to listen to as I have to watch them through the window of a soundproof booth. Top Gear has become unfeasibly popular over the past few years. It used to be about cars and it never had a studio audience. Now it's just about the three tossers rolling about in their own shit while the crowd of baying imbeciles and invited sycophantic celebrities egg them on. It's totally dumbed down, it treats you and I as though we fall over our own feet anytime we attempt to stand up. It's obviously hitting the lowest common denominator button like a senile American President about to push the red button to launch atomic apocalypse on the Soviets.

'I'm the biggest cunt!'
'No, I'm the biggest cunt!'
'Seriously Jeremy, I'm the biggest cunt here!'
'OK, but I'm the biggest asshole!'
'No, I'm the biggest asshole!'
Ad Nauseum until end credits...

Further to this, Top Gear is not the only offender when it comes to insulting us. I have watched about forty five minutes of TV in the past week, two minutes was devoted to Top Gear as detailed above, twenty five minutes was devoted to Flight of the Conchords (brilliant, as ever) and the final eighteen minutes was all I could stomach of the hour long Andrew Marr's the Making of Modern Britain. It was a new series about about the Edwardian period and the lead up to the Great War. It covered the first powered flight, the Suffragette movement, the general strikes and welfare reform. It could have been brilliant. It could have been a real in depth look at an interesting historical period that changed the world forever. What we got was dodgy reconstructions, shaky camera work and Andrew Marr's impressions of Prime Ministers of the time. Andrew Marr is a political commentator not Rory Fucking Bremner. This is why I could only stomach fifteen minutes of this. and why I rarely watch TV anymore. Gone are the days of the brilliant documentary The Great War, a program made in the sixties and one that didn't treat it's audience as though they sucked on their feet like it was a hobby. Do me a favour, turn off your TV, let the powers that be know how you feel about this dumbed down, bite-sized, celebrity obssessed idiot lantern that sits in the corner of the room mocking you like the slack jawed imbecile that you're not!

Is there anything on the other side?