Stupid Kite

"As the temperature drops on the drunks down in Clapham
I turn on the box and it's like punk never happened
The community's fired up and the West End's alight
And it's Noel fucking Edmonds on a Saturday night."
Carter USM- Alternative Alf Garnett Live in Zagreb, mid-90s

Today I made a very big mistake. I'm on a temp assignment, doing reception for a very nice company who, as I am a temp, have only lumbered me with the post-distributing and phone answering duties rather than (as some people do) every dirty little bit of brainless admin that's been lurking around the office as the usual receptionist would tell them where to 'file' it. Thursday I thanked 'em kindly for this, and set about clearing a months worth of chuff from my inbox, catching up with the news of the very excellent Ariel-X, reading a month of Snoopy strips and reading missed blogs by Meg and all those she links to.
Friday I looked up a few things that have been bugging me for a while on the internet, posted a hugely long blog, looked up my old Greek teacher (he taught Greek, not he was Greek) on the request of a friend who was not so much bored as procrastinating over revision, found an email address for him, emailed him, then read through the general ruck going on on Leo's comments section. Now no offence, mate, but this was when I realized how bored I was. This is not to say that Leo or any of his posters are in any way dull in and of themselves, but these rucks are sometimes hundreds of pages long, and you can only really get into it if you care about the thing they're fighting about. Which on this occasion I probably would have if I'd known enough about it, but didn't. By six o'clock (I hate late finishes) I was chewing my elbows with boredom.
Today I'd run out of stuff to do by about half past ten. After looking up the names of the actors that played the twins in The Matrix Revolutions to see if the 'TV handyman' on celebrity wrestling was one of the 'Handy Hunks' and thus cheating like a bitch, trying to find translations of some Beau Soleil lyrics (which have a nasty habit of being in Cajun French) and failing, and looking at numerous cow websites (Bad news, I can't have a dairy herd because you have to keep breeding the cows to make them produce milk, which means you have to have something to do with all the baby cows, and I wouldn't sell them for meat, and people only want a few bulls, so I'd be stuck. So I'll just have to have a pet cow instead.) , I ran out of stuff to do. I couldn't even think of anything to blog about.
This is when I made my mistake. I thought, 'Oh well, only three hours to go, I'll check what's on TV tonight. That might cheer me up.' Seems obvious, looking back, that this was really really stupid. And unlike me, as I'm not prone to attacks of optimism. However, it did give me something to blog about, that being my rage at having paid my license fee in good faith ONLY TO BE SERVED UP THIS CHUFF. Here's the cream of tonight's viewing from 7pm, when I'll get in: 7.00- Five news/ Storm Adventure- Into the Tornado - When weather goes bad.

8.00- Eastenders - Which would be fine except: Pauline is upset when Derek refuses to mediate between her and Martin, but finds later that the pair have conspired to force her into making a difficult decision. Alfie and Little Mo's plans for a romantic evening in come to nothing, while Pat gives Johnny some excellent advice about communicating with Ruby Doesn't sound exceptionally promising. When do we find out Tina set fire to Ruby's Mum?

8.30- Fifth Gear - It's been a long time since I've been able to watch Paxman without wanting to batter his smug face in, other than that it's Bailffs, half of something I'll have missed the first half of due to Benders, or Corrie, down to which I shall never sink. So cars it is. Don't have one, don't want one, but at least watching this means the husband can't slip a really daft car purchase by me due to my not knowing what a TVR is.

9.00- New Tricks - Not that good last week, but it's that, Channel Five treat unfortunate as freakshow, a program about the 80s (can't we just pretend the whole decade never happened?), some wanker on art, or Celebrity Love Island. I watched Celebrity (?) Wrestling at the weekend, and I really don't think I can take watching humanity sink any lower. New Tricks is an ironic title, as it appears that is precisely what you can't teach BBC scriptwriters.

10.00- ER -Not so bad I hear you cry? Except I've not been watching it, so I'm totally at a loss as to what's going on. Again this is what's left once you discount further channel Five exploitation of the medically imperfect and previously famous respectively, news, news, football related programming and Vic and Bob who, I'm sorry, never have been funny and probably never will be. To me at least.

After this there is a good film, which I therefore have on DVD and have seen 50 times, FAQ U, which I calculate has a 1 in twenty million chance of being funny, Joey which just isn't, and other chuff either aforementioned or too stupid even to mention. Therefore I feel worse than before I looked.

IT'S MONDAY NIGHT. Even people who haven't had a bad day want to slob out in front of the box and have their brains gently guided through a safe channel of lightly amusing and diverting programming. We need to be cosseted and spoiled on Mondays. This feels like punishment for having a weekend. Sure, it's a break from house programs, programs about foul brats, fat people, People Who Don't Need It Have Surgery and Top 100 Things You Don't Care About In The Wrong Order Anyway, but I'm beginning to think maybe that's less of a good thing than I'd have thought it would be. It seems that's all we get because that's all they can do even halfway successfully.
To think I thought Saturday was bad! At least Who Wants To Be £32000 Richer And Slightly Red Faced? has interactive potential. And at least Strictly Dance Fever sparks interesting conversations about how girls who dance that much can still be that chubby, and how that poor lad can possibly lift her, and how they could be so cruel as to make that tiny boy wear that bolero jacket with no shirt. At least Celebrity (?) Wrestling affords the opportunity to see Annabel Croft get elbowed in the face (russum russum darn Treasure Hunt ruining tennis bimbo russum russum). Ok, so Saturday night is Ecce! Homo! night, with channels piling on presenters as camp as a row of Village People. But the new National Lottery game is hardly vintage Clary, and Graham Norton rigidly on script is less annoying than I usually find him but utterly unfunny. They have taken these two very usable slightly off colour presenters and reduced them to typical squeaky plastic ubiquitous gameshow host Daily Mail acceptable cheesemongers, like Tarbuck and Barrymore and Winton before them. Norton is everywhere with none of what got him there on show. And thus it's pretty much, as a wise man once said, "Noel fucking Edmonds on a Sunday as well".