I have been confined to bed.
The wife finally had enough of me sat in the lounge with my nose constantly dribbling and making
noises like an asthmatic pig having an orgasm and ordered me upstairs. I have to reluctantly admit this was a sensible move,
as it must have been driving her mad. On one side she’s got her mother coughing and farting like a machine gun on constant
fire and me on the other using up half a rain forest in lavatory paper. She’s allowed me to take the laptop to bed so
I can write my blog on the condition that she can bring it back once a day to check her e-mails and surf clothing sites.
As there is no Internet connection the bedroom (I’m not allowed to have one), I’m
obligated to watch television in between my frequent visits to the bathroom. It is from this forced activity that I’ve
discovered an appalling infliction on modern society.
Daytime television programmes.
I don’t mean the semi-decent ones available on subscription but rather the mindless crap
that is pumped out for the general network.
Black and white movies that never found an audience when they were first released sixty years
ago vie for position with low budget audience participation programmes for people who want to explain to an indifferent World
why they’ve had their scrotum pierced or fallen in love with their neighbour’s hamster. But these are towers of
intellectual broadcasting in comparison to the game shows.
The presenters seem to be either failed actors, who are prepared to do any kind of work providing
it gives them airtime to bolster their egos or comedians who’s careers should have had a decent burial when Kennedy
was in the White House. Every now and again the camera pans to an audience that is full of bewildered looking pensioners who’ve
been wheeled from their retirement homes and made to clap like performing seals and laugh on cue to gags they didn’t
find amusing in their youth.
Most disturbing of all, however, are the contestants.
People who two hours earlier couldn’t write their own names are thrust in front of a
camera crew and asked questions that a ten-year-old child would find derisory…and still manage to get most of them wrong.
But there’s a hypnotic fascination to it, very similar to slowing down to gawp at a car accident on the motorway. I
knew it was time to switch channels when a contestant confidently informed everyone that the first man to set foot on the
moon was Neil Young.
Much more of this and I’d end up eating my own head.
I was tempted to phone the producers to find out where they obtained such astonishingly brainless
individuals, and then it hit me…freerolls on Internet poker sites!
Which brings me very conveniently to the poker report.
After some outrageous pleading on my part, the current Mrs. Snowman finally relented and allowed
me to come back downstairs and play a few hands, probably just to shut me up.
Once more I sidestepped the tournaments and headed straight for the cash tables. Again, I invested
$2 on the 1c/2c section and after ninety minutes or so made a $2.90 profit that has been added to the bankroll.
This little victory ensured I went back to bed without too much of an argument and I found
myself in such a good mood I even managed to watch “Diagnosis Murder” without throwing something at the TV.
I finally drifted into sleep and dreamed I won a tournament at the Dyslexic Society; easy really,
whatever cards I was dealt I just told them it was a royal flush.
Starting bank: $0
Current bank: $14.60
