I Want To Be Undeserving

My buddy extraordinaire Stennie and I were just talking about it last night. We're in a rut.

Well, actually, we're not in the same rut. We're in different ruts, but the ruts are pretty much the same. Same old boring job, same old stress, same old needing more money, same old wanting a new car, same old needing to say "fuck you" to the world and get away.

And that was when Stennie, in her infinite wisdom, said, "It takes too much work to be happy, anyway."

And that's true. Evidenced by my sister. She's happy, and she doesn't stop moving long enough to take a breath. Oh, it's always dinner with friends, a party here, a dance lesson there, a cruise this week, a trip to some sporting event the next. Personally I don't see how she has the time to, well, to sit in the chair all night and watch TV. Imagine.

It kind of reminds of what a friend of mine said years ago. "Only boring people are happy. Think about it - think about the people you know who are happy and content. They're people you don't want to spend more than an hour with." And to a large extent, that's true. Maybe it's because they're working so hard at it.

But then, there's the other side of that same coin that I wonder about. Mr M seems to think there's a great deal of luck out there associating itself with certain people, and it follows them the whole of their lives.

So hmmm. Is happiness a result of hard work, much more hard work than apparently I am ready to take head on, or is it the result of dumb luck landing in the laps of people who are definitely not myself?

Frankly, I don't know. All I know is that I'm on my second day of giving up coffee, and my head hurts. And thinking about that too much isn't doing me a bit of good. Or making me the least bit happy.

Now, speaking of happy, unhappy, working, and dumbly lucky people, there's a TV trend that's just about to get on my wick. And that's people getting something for nothing. Every TV show nowadays seems to want to give plain old undeserving schlubs something they neither worked for nor deserve.

This does not apply to some reality TV. "Survivor," "The Amazing Race," even the dreaded "Fear Factor." At least they have to invest a little something. You know, run a race, eat a bug, build a fire, win some money. I can handle that.

I'm talking about crap like what's been going on on the "Today" show this week. People wrote in and wanted romantic new bedrooms. And they got them! They just fucking got them. Of course, they had to have a conversation with the odious Katie Couric to do so, so maybe some of you out there are saying they paid their dues for their new digs. But I think they got off way too lightly.

And crap like Oprah giving away all those cars. I mean, really. All she was doing is showing us all how rich she is. So she went out and bought a shitload of Pontiacs (not exactly the most glamourous car in the world, btw) and started handing them out like Elvis on a good day.

Another example is that "Extreme Home Makeover" show on ABC. Now, let me be the first to admit that I've never seen this show. But I've seen the commercials. And I've read several articles about it. And based on that, well, not that I ever would have watched it anyway, but I'd certainly not watch it now.

This is a show that takes a family that needs a new home. Say they're poor. Or a stiff wind blew their roof off and they've been living under the stars. Or they have a handicapped child who needs a wheelchair ramp.

Well, they go find these families - and build them a fucking mansion! I mean, I saw the house they built for the wheelchair kid. It had terraces and patios! It had a fucking swimming pool!

Now, I see nothing wrong with a company pulling down as much cash as ABC is, what with "Desperate Housewives" being such a big hit and all, taking some of that and fixing up someone's house. But why can't they do that? Why can't they fix up 12,000 houses that need repair for poor people instead of giving one family a mansion with a fucking swimming pool?

Because that's not exciting, that's why. I'm not that dumb, OK?

So apparently the American Public, or at least the TV Public, tends to lean towards the "dumb luck falling in your lap" theory of happiness. And that's fine. I guess it does find its way to some peoples' houses, no matter in what state of disrepair they may be.

I still hold with the "lots of time-taking hard work" theory of happiness. I just don't know if I'm willing to do the work necessary.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* So Corey Feldman's now speaking out against Michael Jackson. You know, it might be a lot more believable if his career wasn't two or three levels below the skids.
* And the "baby tossed out of the window" story has been found to be a hoax. And people are outraged. They're outraged because a woman didn't want her baby and took it to a safe place with a weird story. They're outraged because they'd rather be outraged that the baby was actually tossed out the window.