Two Mules and a Television . . .

By Rick Farris

With all the cable TV stations available, and an absence of true quality apparent in many of today's television productions, I rarely look at the flatscreen unless it's a sporting event, or special DVD.
My wife watches the educational shows, Discovery Channel, National Geographic, etc.

Monica is into science, health, languages and art & culture.
I just passed her watching TV and noticed two mules on the screen.
They are being led onto a horse racing track.
I ask her what's going on?

She tells me that they were about to show the first ever race between two cloned mules.
This is on an educational show? A race between two man-made jack asses!
Kind of reminds me of something we'd try when we were kids. Matching a rat with a hampster in a race.
The moment you let go of the rat and hampster, they don't race, they run in opposite directions.

The point is, matching a rat and hampster made sense to me when I was ten. I had nothing better to do.
I think the guy who decided to match the two genetically-created mules had nothing better to do. If he were ten, I'd understand.

I just asked Monica, "Did you watch the cloned mule race?"
She said she turned the TV off. I was happy she had something better to do.

Ozzie & Harriet are rolling over in their graves. So are Lucy & Desi.
We used to have fun making TV, back when there was a system, not confusion.
TV had it's innovators and there has not been creative growth to equal that of technological improvement.
The science is improving, the art gets thinner every year.

They do well with technology today, but somewhere the humanity is lost. When we lose this in visuals, we compromise the art.
TV has become like one of those genetic mules. It can walk and breath, but it is a fabrication.
Something is missing.