Why Television is Not the Miracle Cure

By Alex Allen

ddd

If you've ever found yourself sitting at home during in the middle of the day watching television, and everybody has, either through illness, laziness or some other reason, then you might have noticed the number of sleazy companies that buy up advertising space to cater for what they perceive to be an audience of drunks, drug addicts and the unemployed looking for a quick fix to their problems. I feel compelled to inform Jamster that everybody that wants their 'Silence! I kill you! ring tone now has it. The rest of us don't want it, in fact, we want the opposite to having it. We want it to disappear. Forever. The same applies to the 'Hey girl! You better check yo' text', and 'Na na na na na I've got a text and you can't see it!' ring tones. I cannot possibly imagine who has bought any of those products. I assume somebody must have bought them, otherwise the advert would be redundant. However, I don't think it's too excessive to recommend that all those caught downloading any Jamster ring tone should be tarred and feathered immediately. It sounds a little over the top, but word would quickly spread and people would start using a bit more common sense. £4.50 a week for three ring tones? Why don't these people just spend their money on magic beans? It's staggering, really.

fff

Also in the same mould of phone based recreation, are those awful girl chat lines (I have seen one advert for a gay text chat line, it was called, I kid you not, Bent Chat). A recent ad suggested, 'Have you made your new year's resolution to meet loads of cool girls through text?' I sincerely hope that nobody's new year's resolution was to just sit at home with their phone paying x pounds per text to receive responses from what must either be a machine, or a fifty year old woman from Slough. Neither of those scenarios should be treated as anyone's ambition, rather the desperate state of affairs a newly divorced and desperately lonely man might find himself in as he sits alone in his cheap hotel room. Another advert advised potential customers that 'to receive messages and videos of woman over 20 dial x, for woman over 30 add 02, for women over 40 add 03, for women over 50 ad 04'. Woah, woah, woah, women over 50, who would want that? The only word that comes to mind, and I think it is appropriate, is 'bleurgh'.

fff

As if that wasn't enough, there are various Skills Train adverts doing the rounds. No man or woman vaguely in possession of their senses would think that their life might turn around after becoming a passenger on the skills train. Their website actually has testimonials on it, “Fantastic! Much better than expected. Learnt so much I can't wait for next practical week.”Tricia, August 2006, is just one of them. Who the fuck is Tricia? That's not evidence! That's not a ringing endorsement that your course is a credible way to learn a trade Skills Train! It's just evidence that you're capable of picking a first name at random effectively. I despair, but have absolutely no sympathy with these people who end up on Watchdog complaining that actually, it was all a scam and nobody is recognising their new found ability to fix electrical goods. The truth is there are no quick fixes people. If your job isn't what you'd hoped for, that almost certainly can't be remedied by paying £75 for a book, even if Trisha things it's the best experience she's ever had! In a similar vein, is that 'woman' you're texting really bringing you genuine fulfilment? Because honestly, I can't tell you how many happy couples I know that started just that way. Rarely can problems in our lives be instantly rectified so quickly and painlessly, and just because these products don't look like magic beans, doesn't make the people that use them any less desperate and stupid.