Spirtual TV Shows
In my first couple of years as a tech, I worked in a place where in-house technicians had staggered lunches. We usually ate in the small on-site break room. There was a TV, an unwritten rule, two soap operas, All My Children and Loving, one after the other, were mandatory. Both shows are long gone. Who knows what happened to the stars? Is it possible that a few ended up working in some real-life financial asylum?
TV struggles for power, love, and betrayal, the captive audience watched soap operatic characters living between proverbial rocks and hard places, comic tragedies that sadden the lonely and amuse the well-liked and loved. As good entertainment requires, the audience suspends disbelief. TV men and women in love need space. Spaced out, people lost in space looking for love, need less space. No matter what they are looking for, it seems like it takes them forever to find it.
Sea Kelp: a Natural Soap?
To provide relief from misery and to promote the idea that the body is a temple, soap ads often featured a beautiful woman smiling in a shower, her head soaking wet, shoulders sprinkled with enticing water droplets. She shampoos her black hair with Sea Kelp, natural and fresh from the ocean. A doctor in scrubs wearing a stethoscope explains how sea kelp fights dandruff and dryness naturally, without man-made or woman-made chemicals. Is it the kelp that’s miraculous? I wondered. Or could it be the millions of gallons of jet fuel that aircraft carriers used to dump into the sea, a wasteful way to save time while heading for the shipyard? There was a time when petroleum dumping seemed quite natural to most humans. Supposedly, the good Lord provided seawater to dilute jet fuel and grow kelp to soak it up. A natural shampoo, sea kelp continues its circle of life, finding its way back to earth, rinsing, running down the Madison Avenue woman’s body, and finding its way down the shower drain for a return to the sea.
Spiritual Cleansing
Soap-sponsored romance sends a convoluted message that somehow implies spiritual cleansing. Watching a good soap makes it easier for oppressors and the oppressed to live with clear consciences. Portraying love’s villains and victims, the stars show real-world players that they’re not alone, bearing the pain of lovemakes and heartbreaks. Married souls lost in love triangles condemn soap characters caught in pentangles. Real-life cheaters get to watch soap opera cheaters cheat on cheaters, situations that create a confusing cluster of mating patterns. I apologize if I’m getting too vague.
Beautiful Dreams Morph into Nightmares
Imagine a lead character, Dwayne, out on a fling. He develops heart palpitations, most likely in his left aorta; he’s afraid the problem is spreading to the right ventricle. The small-town selectmen diverted ambulance funds to pay for a rained-out firemen’s festival. Triple-A can’t start the old ambulance. EMTs hijack a double-decker livestock truck, built to carry pigs, but under the circumstances, a perfect vehicle to rush today’s victims to the hospital. How much does Dwayne know beyond the intense beating of his sick but not yet broken heart? He should be careful; his wife is a nurse who happens to be working day shift in the heart palpitation wing at Dwayne’s destination, Highland Hospital. What a small world; she’s the one who cut his hydraulic brake hose. You have to wonder if Dwayne might develop a severe castration complex if he finds out.