The Big Effing Thing

Ah, the holidays! The time when family gets together, and the adult children return to their childhood home to provide helpful suggestions to their parents on the status (and improvement) of the family home. In this instance, one of the Hotflash offspring was quite concerned about our lack of modern technology, in particular, our lack of flat screen TVs.

Now, I realize that flat screen televisions are attractive, lightweight, and high definition. But seeing as we mostly seem to watch “American Pickers” (Mr. Hotflash’s favorite show), do I really need to see Mike and Frank’s facial blemishes and stubble as they roam the backroads of America for rusty crap that they will sell to the suckers of America? I think not.

And my new favorite show, “Botched” (admittedly, a guilty pleasure), exhibits the bad plastic surgery of various idiot patients who got way too much filler in their lips and elsewhere. But I don’t need to see these imperfections up close and personal, I work in health care, and see plenty of bodily “variations” up close and personal.

Furthermore, we have sufficient technology for our television watching pleasure. For example, we have a 13 inch television in the “master suite” which has a built in VCR! Top that! And a lovely tube TV in the family room, which weighs about a thousand pounds and will never be moved again. We could probably put a sign up on the front door directing the burglars to both televisions, and I think they would run in disgust.

However, the real reason we don’t have a flat screen television is The Big Effing Thing. (Yes, this is a family blog). Lewis Black, a comedian, did a routine a few years ago about how the best cure to a bad economy is to build a Big Effing Thing. Examples are the Pyramids and the Hoover Dam. Puts lots of people to work, and if you build it, they will come. (see photo of my parents in front of a Big Effing Thing in Egypt).

Our Big Effing Thing, unfortunately, is our entertainment center. Built in the olden days when folks needed a place to put that thousand pound tube television set. It didn’t seem quite that large in the catalog that Tammy, our interior decorator, showed me. But when it arrived, oh my. It’s big. It’s really big. It's... monolithic.

So, you may think, just sell it! News flash, kids. Nobody wants an entertainment center. There are 765 entertainment centers listed on our local Craigslist today. So what to do?

We could have a bonfire in the back yard, with very expensive wood going up in flames. We could somehow cart it to an area where the homeless gather, under the assumption that a family of four could probably fit into it. However, I think this is a national problem.

If Obama wants to resurrect his image from all those awful things he has done, such as providing health insurance to those awful people who were previously uninsured, he should tackle this problem. I suggest a national decommissioning authority to take all the old entertainment centers and dispose of them, in the same way various countries “decommission” their old nuclear power plants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning

Just like a pesky nuclear facility which needs to be buried under concrete, the government could pick up our entertainment centers and do something useful and ecologically correct with them. Or just burn those mofos. Either way, then I can purchase a lovely flat screen TV for my family room (or a specific Hotflash offspring can buy it for us).

Until then, we will continue to watch bad television on a bad cathode ray tube TV, with the option of watching old video tapes of our offspring in their younger years at swim meets and cheerleading competitions. Really, who needs more than 13 inches for that?

Naked Pictures!

One or more hackers recently stole naked pictures of various female celebrities, and posted them on the internet, thus creating quite a media kerfuffle. Besides the outrage of the various celebs, Lena Dunham (of the HBO show “Girls”, who peels down to not much at the blink of an eye) was uber-outraged! She huffs, “Remember, when you look at these pictures you are violating these women again and again. It's not okay.”

So, being weak and without moral compass, I must shamefully admit that I DILIGENTLY searched the internet to find these naked pictures. It was either that or do laundry.

Amazingly, Google Images is just chock full of naked celebrity pictures, all with aforesaid celebrities performing acts of various athletic prowess and undress. And all Photoshopped. I really doubt that Brad would let Angelina do that stuff with two other guys, I mean, Really. She, the mother of 6 (or 7 or whatever…)

So obviously some 12 year old boys have become proficient at Photoshop, which raises the question, why didn’t these celebs just laugh and say the pictures were just Photoshopped?

And this whole issue raises other questions. For example, are celebs just hanging around the mansion, wondering, “So, what should I do tonight? Go to the Apple Store? Torment the paparazzi?  I know, I’ll take naked photos of myself and post them on a pretty insecure internet site!”  Granted, these folks probably have much better bodies than the general populace, but couldn’t they be content with just gazing adoringly into a full length mirror?

And this involved SO MANY celebs. Why are so many people taking naked pictures of themselves? Did I miss the memo?  

I suggest their managers (or parents) sit them down and have a stern talk about being careful with their naked photos. I know, as Ms. Dunham has said, more or less, celebs have the right to “share their bodies however they want”. But except for the laundry bills, keeping your clothes on is just so much easier. But of course, that doesn’t make the news.