The illusion of reality....

“Humans are the only creatures able to behave irrationally in the name of reason.” A. Montague

I don’t watch ‘reality’ shows...’n I don’t believe there’s anything real about them...I mean, other than the fact that they don’t use actors...maybe they use wanna-be actors, I dunno... I know that a lot of the oldtime game shows (Groucho Marx, etc) used more actors than regular people, I expect becuz actors or wannabe actors are more prevalents in the LA area than regular people...(I’m not sure that southern California ‘n regular people actually coexist anyway but that’s another story)...I don’t have anything against the so-called ‘reality’ shows...

I simply don’t understand why people watch them...I know people who watch them, or at least, claim to watch them...members of my own family do so ‘n they actually discuss them sometimes in my presence altho’ I must confess I simply ‘zen’ them out when they do so...I find at my advanced age that it’s becoming increasingly easy to ‘zen’ out lots of things...the snooze nooze, for example...newspapers are becoming ever more irrelevant in todays world...’n thanks to cable, there are more news outlets than a poor boy c’n shake a stick at...you can take your choice among a myriad of channels all spouting off about essentially the same things...’n while most news shows deliver the news, the commentary that you get is very often funnier than anything the late nite comics can come up with...the partisanship is, I think, unintentionally hilarious at times...the non-liberal Liberals will report on a story while their counterparts on the radical ‘Conservative’ side will report on the same story ‘n if you don’t know any better, you’d never know the difference but...’n it’s a big BUT, there are so many people out there recording ‘n reporting ‘n blogging ‘n tweeting that the ‘real’ story is available to anyone that’s interested enuff to look for it ‘n to quote Gomer Pyle, “Surprise, Surprise!”....the actual story is most often less than either partisan side reports...’n the ones who look most foolish are the bigtime talking heads who are guilty of simply reading what their bosses put in front of them...(yawnnnnnnnnn...)

So I saw this woman on teevee prodding her child to ask Gov. Perry if he believed in science...he was walking away ‘n had the good sense to ignore her but I got to thinking that people who truly have faith in science are the same kind of people who have faith in any other religion...where have all the sceptics gone?

The Sceptic

Robert Service

“My Father Christmas passed away when I was barely seven..

At twentyone, alackaday, I lost my hope in heaven.

Yet not in either lies the curse,

the hell of its because,

I don’t know which loss hurt the most,

my God or Santa Claus.”