Apparently, Everything is FINE!!!!

Folks, how cool is this? How excited are you? How much relief do you feel? We can finally go back to our Clinton-Era lives of peace, prosperity and popular music that didn’t yet know about bands like Limp Bizquick or Bush or Cold Play or John Mayer or all that other crap most people seem to like and is sold in Starbucks. If this doesn’t excite you, I don’t know what will.

What? You want to know specifically what I’m talking about? How do I know that everything is okay? I’ll explain: See, I’ve been watching the news over the last few weeks. And from what I understand, the following issues seem to have been resolved:
1 – No more war in Iraq.
2 – No more war in Afghanistan.
3 – No more war in Libya.
4 – Africa is totally fine now, as is the North/South Korean situation, Pakistan v. India, Russia and Chechnya, business in front opposing party in the back, etc.
5 – Japan is magically back together.
6 – Haiti has a functioning government.
7– Giant, killer tornados didn’t kill hundreds of people in the South yesterday, or the dead got better.
8 – Gas is free.
9 – Republicans and democrats get along now.
10 – Beheadings aren’t as common in Mexican border-states as Starbucks is here in the US.
11 – There was no Stanley Cup.
13 – There was no NBA championship.
14 – Everyone is well fed, well sexed, healthy and happy, worldwide.

But, Dan, you ask, how is it that you know all of this?

Easy. I turned on the TV. Go do the same. Now. You’ll see what I’m talking about. I’ll give you a moment.

 

Still waiting.

 

Okay, done waiting. I’ll assume your TV is on, and tuned to a major news network. Now I’m going to put my magic turban on, hold my crystal ball and guess that a reporter is currently talking about…

Wait for it…

THE ROYAL WEDDING!

Ah, yes. The Royal Wedding, the topic that you can’t escape EVEN IF YOU DESPERATELY WANT TO. It’s everywhere. It’s on every channel. It’s the most exciting thing, apparently, ever to happen since the last royal wedding, which was in… um… before.

Alright, fine. I’ll admit it. I’m exaggerating. The world isn’t actually all better. It’s still the giant pile of war, terror, disease and tragedy that it was before the news networks decided to dedicate the entirety of their programming to Kate and William’s holy matrimony. But, none the less, common sense or greater public interest be damned, we have no choice but to be repeatedly informed of every ridiculous bit of banal minutia related to the whole affair. And the big secret - What will the royal wedding gown look like?! – isn’t that just a giant pile of interesting? Are you as excited as I am to know what it looks like, who Kate is “wearing” if you will? (I’m only interested if the dress is engulfed in fire at the time she’s wearing it.)

And here we are, the American people, being forced to take this all in while desperately trying to learn about how bad the devastation is in the South, or what the length of our three current Middle Eastern battlefronts are, or if the radiation spewing from the Japanese reactor is going to kill us all via poisoning our ground water. So, me being me, bitter and highly pissed off at this nonsense, I decided to look up some polls about the collective interest in this crap. And wasn’t I surprised to learn that four out of five Englishfolk really don’t give a flying squirrel about this archaic, monarchist, face-self-slapping silliness. And conversely, only six percent of polled Americans had anything close to a passing interest in ol’ Kate and Will tying the knot.

How do I know that this statistic indicating that there is positively no relation between the interest of news viewers and the programming selected for said news programs is accurate? Case in point: the NFL lockout. Confused? Here goes…

In football we have a sport that has obviously surpassed baseball as being the most popular one in America. Football is, even if I don’t care at all about it, insanely popular. The arrival of football season is met by most people with a collective YAHOO! It’s so loved that news of a labor struggle among legions of large, rich, rapey babies and their even richer and probably just as rapey team owners has fallen by the wayside today as the marriage across the pond approaches. It’s almost like people already know that the lockout is bullshit, and probably orchestrated to keep us interested in the sport during the offseason, only to be magically settled prior to the start of the scheduled pre-season practice sessions. Followed by a season in which every team makes billions of dollars. Followed by the Super Bowl in which people are charged $250.00 to hang out in the parking lot and watch the game on TV.

Followed by more orchestrated drama.

I’m going to make this perfectly clear, and I don’t think that I am only speaking for myself right now. I’m confident that the other 94% of polled Americans will agree with the following statement:

I DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE ROYAL WEDDING. NOBODY DOES. THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT WILL WATCH IT ARE THE FAT LADIES WITH WEIRD ANTHROPROMORPHIC RELATIONSHIPS WITH THEIR CATS AND ORDER COMMEMORATIVE PLATES FROM QVC.

Them and FLAMING queens.

Frankly, this probably is all one giant conspiracy by the English and American QVC networks to sell said plates and other knickknacks.

Screw you so hard for this England. Is this your revenge for the whole “American Revolution” thing? If so, well played.

But watch your back, you limey goofballs.