In this episode, cable tv helps us wax on wax off.

So we had to get this new cable thing at my house. I am not really the one in charge of these decisions. It is sort of like when a new bicycle appears in this special hut we constructed called the bike shed. There are many, many bikes residing in this palace of sorts, and it was not really my decision to purchase them. They just multiply and collect in there. Like are breeding and I believe the technical term for some of them is other than just bike. Is something like Bike. But you know how that old saying goes. There are too many damn dogs around here and people who live in dog houses shouldn't throw rocks at the guy on the bike.

The new cable thing was purchased due to sports. What happened was the Giants, who you can spot from the orange and black lettering on their uniforms that look like fluffy bunny legged pajamas, changed their channel. And lost Barry Bonds. The Giants are the favorite show in my house. But you are not supposed to call them a show. Even though they live in the tv and are on all the time on their special channel, are not a show. Are REAL. This is an argument that could go on for days, trust me on that one. Real or show, real or show? A show with a ball built on the backs of buckets of billions of dollars. Karl Marx would certainly have something to say about the baseball show.

But mostly, is a show that gets screamed at way more than bad dogs. Not normal screaming. Yelling, horrible brutal sounds guttering out of certain family members who should not be named but I will just say are actually my husband who is usually a perfectly nice guy except during his show on his special channel. During the show, these sounds come out of him. Like maybe they sound like elevators being cut off their cable, the loud hydraulic whoosh then screeching and sliding then plummeting and clanking. And smashing and breaking and slapping and flapping.

The Giants, we believe, are having a bad time on the Giants show. I do not think this is a healthy, glowing channel to watch and generally makes everyone that watches it cross and snitchy and drives the watchers to drink. Especially if someone turns off the sound tries to demonstrate how Snoop Dogg dances in his Long Beach ghetto cowboywear when he is channeling Johnny Cash. Also, fyi, apparently dog agility has nothing on the Giants show, even though one may be participatory and one may be directed soley at the consumer. But also dopestick pimpin on a one trick pony isn't neccessarily a nice thing to say or imagine and if you're not producing the culture, you're just consuming it. So there.

So anyways, along with this special Giants channel, we inherited a new one known as HGTV. Do you have this channel?

On any given time, you switch from the screaming channel to this channel, and you will be soothed by some kind of show where either a bald guy with earrings or a tall blond lady or a tall blonde guy with earrings will waltz around a house with some swatches, talk about the power of neutral, rich colors, and take some really crappy tract house house with R11 siding and make it look like a Pottery Barn catalog. It usually takes exactly one half of an hour to do this neutral, non taxidermy magic, and when it's over, a new bald or blonde or whoever person comes on a does it again. Or sometimes they are shopping for a house or trying to sell one but it's all about the neutral colors and rich colors and shuffling around the furniture.

No matter how smokey it was at your work, how much your back hurts from sitting on certain horses, or how late you stayed awake the night before watching out for an old sick dog, if you switch on this magic channel you will be soothed into a sound sleep on the couch. Pottery Barn catalogs used to be the thing of nightmares in my life, but now having a whole channel of them is soothing and perhaps a bit like living in purgatory. There are no shadows in purgatory, right? At least the coffee tables and classy candles bolted onto neutral toned walls and contrasting throw pillows don't make me wake up twitching and retching, now just send me into a trance when they break out the circular saw and start cutting something up to be the new shelving unit. Because all the blondes and balds tote around their own carpenter, who is usually a hottie if a retro and ironic t-shirts from Abercrombie dingle your dangle.

But I guess what we take from our different preferences in Spectacle, I mean show, are one might be sort of more real time, and even if it makes you scream and holler, is not a taped delay. And having your show in the real time might make you more in the present. Where you might have to look at who all is in their own little ugly tract house of purgatory, and where no neutral colors gonna paint you out of it. Isn't right to exist in a land with no shadows. You gotta actually take a cold, hard look at the unpleasant staring you in the face, or staring off in the distance at a wall with a panicky look. When someone's days are reduced to never, no more rainbows, they might have had enough days. Maybe then, they get the rainbows or their own special Paradiso. Rainbow bridge crap and all that.

Right? What was I getting at here? Let's just step away from that HGTV channel for now, I guess is what I'm saying. Let's just turn that cable off for now and come out of Spectacle and just come over here in the Real because that's what it's time for right now.