Cancellations

I can't just be me that finds cancellations one of the most annoying things in the world - yes there is something I find more annoying than Fred Barlow and cancellations are it.

The most irritating form it comes in is cheques. This is especially troublesome in my line of work as I deal solely in cash and cheques and there is nothing worse than when someone writes a bad cheque or writes one that will actually clear but then cancels it before I can put it in the bank.

This week alone I have had three, yes three, cheques cancelled on me so quite clearly something needed to be done and being a private investigator it really wasn't hard for me to find out where these deadbeat clients were hiding from me and took even less time for me to beat my money out of them. In my line of work you either get paid or you starve, or get whacked, or get walked all over by scumbags.

It did get me thinking though about other things being cancelled and why it is that you have no control over them. Bus and trains being cancelled are one of the more frustrating things for the general population since they often lead to people having to stand around in the cold and the wet waiting for something that is never going to come and on rare occasions does leave individuals stranded.

I tend to avoid public transport so that doesn't bother me too much though every time I seem to have to take a plane it gets cancelled.

The other form of cancellation that really annoys me is when TV series are cancelled - especially halfway through a series. The one that most people gripe about is Firefly, and yes it was amazing but there are other series like the Visitors, Sports Night, the Magnificent Seven and Caprica that were all cut short in their prime. It's one thing that Fred and Harry never seem to shut up about.

It worries me that most of their conversation seems to be orientated around topics like television and Star Wars and other things that they seem to talk about just to annoy me, but then again it is still better than listening to Rick and Harry discussing which of their female conquests that they have in common.

Television

Even with such a wide variety of channels that you can get free through your TV and even more that you can pay for - it still seems like it is seen by high-brow individuals as being an idiot box.

Now I will admit that things like reality TV shows and panel game shows and competitions are very much overdone, especially when different channels run shows that are almost identical in order to try and "compete" with one another.

But this similar format in programming is not just limited to reality TV, in fact there are so many procedural cop TV shows that glamorize a certain profession that has men with egos that are large enough without the extra publicity and status that these kind of shows bring. The other problem with procedural cop TV shows is that they tend to vilify the poor and innocent bounty hunter, private investigator and mercenary in a very unfair light...well maybe not so unfair but I still don't like it.

There are a certain number of shows that do seem to break the mould of this dreary predictability, shows like the West Wing, Supernatural, Once Upon a Time, the Magnificent Seven, Spaced, Porridge, To the Manor Born, Firefly, Blackadder, shows that are wonderful to watch time and again due to fantastic acting, brilliant scripting and being well produced. Granted their ratings weren't necessarily as high as the more boring television and trashy programs that are broadcast, but that doesn't take away from how wonderful they are.

Then for those who see fictional programs as being a waste of time there are arts channels and programs, ballet, opera and theatre that is broadcast; nature documentaries - most of them seemingly having David Attenborough involved - historical documentaries and even channels that are there purely to provide religious and faith-based programming. 

The television is hardly an idiot box, a great drain and distraction on time - true enough, a killer of the art of conversation? Arguable. An easy way for people to have to avoid talking to each other about problems? Almost certainly.

However as far as television goes, it reached it's peak in the 1990s with Sharkey & George, Poddington peas, Family Ness, Jonny Quest, Earthworm Jim, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and the X-men cartoons. After that they really shouldn't have bothered doing anything else, I mean Top Cat and the Wacky Races defined the pinnacle of television before the 1990s cartoons came along and blew them out of the water. 

I know I am in the minority in yearning for the past glories of television that will never again grace the airways or digital signal as they are now, but then again I still have a working VCR and a TV that has a back box that is four times the size of the screen. So maybe it's me that is stuck in the past and digging my heels in, not wanting to move on, but then again I really don't care; at least my brain is being rotted by high class, time absorbing, entertainment and not modern trash.