This Is Reality?

Somehow I found myself watching something called, I believe, Storage Wars. If I grasped the concept, storage bins that someone has left behind are auctioned off.

 Apparently the idea here is that you don't know exactly what you are getting, but you bid anyway. Sometimes you bid to make sure the ones bidding against you pay more money than they rightly should. Apparently three or four of the persons doing the bidding win all the auctions. Sometimes they make money. Sometimes they don't.

 This, somehow, is reality television.

 But I was drawn more to the commercials than even the bidding wars. Apparently there are Real Housewives in darn near every city in America. Watching these promos led me to believe that these Real Housewives haven't been real for quite a long time.

But there's more. There are Hog people, Duck people, Swamp people, Road Kill people, Honey Boo Boo people, Freakishly strange people, You mama wouldn't let you in the door if she knew what you do people, and on and on and on.

Where did we get here? How did we get here? How do we get out of here?

Tonight, for a small sample, there is Pawn Wars on the History Channel at 7 p.m. On the HISTORY Channel. On National Geographic Channel at 7 there is Locked Up Abroad followed by something called Alaska State Troopers. Other channels that night have Jersey Shore Gym: Tan, Look Back; Border Wars, Undercover Boss, Project Runway, Making a Model, What to Wear (followed of course by ), What Not To Wear, Lots of crashing going on...Bath Crashers, Kitchen Crashers, House Crashers and that every present Blog Cabin.

Then there are the above-mentioned housewives...New Jersey, New York, Miami and Los Angeles, plus Cult Murders and Deadly Men which I'm assured have nothing to do with a reaction to those housewives.

We are stuck in a serious, serious time of a lack of imagination. We are getting rid of newspapers, getting rid of serious journalism, getting rid of even the best of writing in books, and here we are with all these channels and nothing on TV.

Since the Saints have obviously mailed in this football season, there is nothing left for me to watch, which in the long run might be better for me, my churches and their congregations.

Although that What Not To Wear In A Swamp While You're Hunting Hogs and Stumble Onto Ducks might come in handy, huh?