Confessions of a Gameshow Addict

Hi.  I'm B.E. and I'm addicted to gameshows.  

I probably need an intervention or something, but Hubs is an enabler.  (Psst... he watches them, too.)  And I'm not hurting anyone.  I rationalize it by telling myself I'm keeping my brain active, but let's face it... Other than MasterMinds, I'm really not exercising the brain cells.  I mean, Deal or No Deal has no mental value.  The contestant picks cases, for petesakes.  

I remember watching gameshows as a small child, so I guess you could say that The Price is Right and Let's Make a Deal were my gateway drugs.  Mom watched, so I watched.  Later, I got hooked on Jeopardy! so I was in front of the TV every night at 7 watching Alex and the contestants.  

For a while in high school, I was a participant of sorts.  It was called Quiz Bowl and then they changed the name to High School Challenge.  Teams of trivia buffs from high schools all over the area would compete on TV (PBS, so nothing network and no big fame there).  I made captain of the team my Junior year - the previous captain graduated and there was no one else to take over.  

There was a time there when I was too busy to watch gameshows.  I was working, I was a mom, I had things going on in my life.  I dabbled a little after I retired, but I was busy with homeschooling and my writing.  Then we moved here and I spent more time watching.  I got off the shows entirely while I was back to work, but since then, I've been slowly getting more and more hooked on them.

I start at 10am with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.  After that, it's Deal or No Deal.  Then old reruns of Match Game.  (I will NEVER watch the new one.  Alec Baldwin makes me nauseous.)  After that, I take a break because I'm not a big fan of the newer Wheel of Fortune episodes.  Later, I'll pick back up again with shows like MasterMinds, Split Second, Switch, and Chain Reaction.  Then I stop until the next day.  

I really could be getting a lot more done if I didn't watch these things.  Oh, I do occasionally get some editing done on commercial breaks, but that's sporadic.  Maybe today I'll do something else.  But then I wouldn't get to see how far that guy made it on that show.  Or how silly the contestants are on the other ones.  It's a vicious cycle of addiction.  

Thursday This n That

The other day I was walking toward the local convenience store and caught a glimpse of myself in the glass doors.  Whoa, I'm fat.  Not 'Godzilla attacks Tokyo' fat, but still.  My load looked decidedly wider than I had a firm grasp of.  Some women have a body image that they are fatter than they are.  Mine is apparently skinnier than I am.  Either that or those doors were done in funhouse mirror glass. LOL

If I have offended you, get over it.  If I haven't, I'll get to you soon. ;o)

I never had to wear glasses for most things for most of my life.  Even when my eyes started to go, I really only needed glasses if I was reading a book.  I could still make out prices at the grocery store and I could still read my monitor.  Just in the past couple of years have I needed glasses for those things and just in the past few months have I really needed them to read my monitor.  Oh, I can still make things out.  They're blurry, but I can get there.  But if I spend too much time reading blurry things I can tell it's starting to bother me.  Getting old is a blast, ain't it?  Blerg.

I finished the big marketing blast for Natural Causes in its freebie state.  I'll dish the data on Sunday for that.  Now I'm trying to decide which book to hit next.  I'm thinking Blink of an I.  We'll see.

Oh, Facebook, you big ninnies.  Why do you refresh my page?  I just clicked a link to go read an article that a friend had posted.  I read the article and came back to comment on her post, and FB refreshed my damn newsfeed so her post disappeared.  Now if I want to comment, I have to go find her FB page and then find the status update where she posted the link.  I'm too lazy to do that most days and today ain't looking any better.  I didn't have anything groundbreaking to say either, so it's not like the world will be missing out on my comment.  It's just the principle of it all.  

The article?  It was about a city government in a town in CA having their public library pull books off the shelves because they didn't feel comfortable with kids having access to the books.  I think the books were about menstruation.  Sorry, girls who wanted to learn about their bodies, but that topic is uncomfortable.  No knowledge for you.  Derp.

This whole exploding pager thing in Gaza is cracking me up.  Jeff Dunham needs to do a bit about it with Achmed the Dead Terrorist.  People are making loads of funny memes about it.  I saw one that had an old Hassidic dude sitting behind a table full of pagers... "Uncle Schlomo's Discounted Pagers" or something. ROFL  This is the best case of 'fuck around and find out'.  Go Mossad.

I've been watching a lot of gameshows lately.  I like the ones with some kind of trivia component.  Some of the contestants are really good.  Some of them are woefully ignorant.  Yesterday, on one of them, a gal buzzed in to answer the question of who said 'Ich Bin Ein Berliner'? and she answered Thomas Jefferson.  :sad head shake:  I also like Deal or No Deal, which really doesn't require any brains or skill.  And I'm a huge fan of the old Match Game.  I would rather stick needles in my eyes than watch the new Match Game hosted by Alec Baldwin.  The guy kills someone through his own extreme ignorance, and not only gets away with it, but gets a new job?  Bah and feh.

On that note, it's getting late in the morning and I have things to do.  Have a great day, wherever you are.  

Thursday This n That

I'm too old for dissenting opinions.  I mean, people can certainly have them, but I'm tired of looking at / hearing them.  Scrolling down the FB feed, I hide them and block them.  I spent a lot of time in my younger years having debates and poking people with pointy sticks to try and make them see things my way or to try and see things their way.  I'm so over it.  Meh.

The other day I was talking with a younger friend of mine about dating and relationships.  She told me that some numbnuts told her (an unsolicited opinion, btw) the reason she didn't have a boyfriend was that she was too lazy to look for one.  :eyeroll:  Fortunately, my friend's with me - it's better to be alone than be with the wrong person.  I spent enough years with the wrong people to have learned that one the hard way, lemme tell ya.  Lucky for me, I've been with the right one for almost 15 years now.  My friend wants what we have and she's not settling for anything less.  Go her.

Yesterday, the whole area filled up with smoke.  Again.  This time we didn't bother blaming the neighbors. (Tons of them regularly burn leaves and/or trash.)  It was obviously not from around here.  Sure enough, it was out-of-state smoke.  Two controlled burns in AR.  It's like an annual Spring thing.  They burn down there, it gets smoky up here.  I joked with Hubs we could probably hang strips of salmon on the porch and they'd be smoked by morning.

It's time to spray for ticks again.  While the spray we use doesn't kill snakes, it does make them feel weird, so they avoid it.  Win-win.  Particularly good since we had what I believe was a smallish cottonmouth (as in not huge, but still probably over two-foot long) on the deck earlier in the week.  He'd seen it the day before, poking its head out from a hole in the wood siding, and the next day it came out to sun itself on the deck.  We weren't sure what kind of snake it was, not until it started to strike at us with its white mouth open.  We kept it from going back in the hole and Hubs has since stuffed the hole with steel wool.  Unfortunately, this means no more woods time for me until fall.  =o(

I've started watching a couple game shows - America Says and Common Knowledge.  They're a hoot.  If you get the Game Show Network, they start at 4pm Central and run 'til 5.  It's a nice break from the bullshit.

Speaking of hoots, I watched a video yesterday of a dad trying to get his toddler to try ketchup on her fries.  When she solemnly shook her head no, like the thought of anything on her sacred fries was disgusting, I about fell apart.  "Try it.  It'll change your life," he says.  ROFL.  She finally tries it and she has such a look of utter contentment.  Ketchup on fries... it's deep and it's real.

Sometimes the only thing keeping me from going all apeshit on the world is funny videos of puppies, kitties, and kids.

What say you this week?