Undiscovering Discovery Channel

Since I started on the bottom of on my list, with Joe Girardi, I will keep things simple (for myself) by working towards the Giants on top. Which is also the underlying theme of this post.

Keeping Life Simple

My traumatic brain injury has forced me to make some adjustments to my life. One of these was to get a television set without a tuning dial. This way, I have a few pre–set channels to browse, instead of the dozens provided my cable company.

Since I dislike the gratuitous violence found on the three major networks, and Man vs. Wild is my favorite television program, I used to set my TV to tune to Discovery when it was turned on. This also got me interested in some of Disovery’s other shows, including Deadliest Catch, Dirty Jobs, and Mythbusters. Sometimes I would watch Man vs. Wild reruns too.

But I felt “safe” with Discovery channel. I never had to change the channel to avoid stuff that annoys me, like “gangsta–rap” or idiots shooting at each other.

Bleeping Beeps

The only thing that used to annoy me on Discovery, was the idiotic beeping on Deadliest Catch, when someone used an “profane word.” After violence, beeping is my second gripe about TV.

When I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, I was forced to listen to profanity constantly. Now that I live in Lexington, Kentucky, I don’t have to listen to it, and I don’t want to listen to it.

The only thing worse than profanity, is when television networks mask profanity with beeps. Which is why I rarely watch anything on Comedy Central:

Comedy Central, like all channels, had a choice: either ask performers not to use any of George Carlin’s “seven words”, ignore them, or replace those seven words with beeps. I would have ignored them, but they, and apparently all major cable networks, inexplicably chose the latter.

I think that if someone was going to be offended by a profane word, they would be equally offended by the beep. I also think that a “real comedian” can please any audience without profanity. For example, I cannot listen to Jackie Mason without laughing, or hearing any profanity.

One exception: I used to love Andrew Dice Clay — a special case.

Worse than Beeps

Something else I left behind in Brooklyn, were rodents. Unlike Brooklyn, Lexington is not infested with mice and rats. In Brooklyn, rat sightings are common in parks and beaches. But I have lived adjacent to a 20 acre park in Lexington, for two years, and have never seen a rat.

Do You Like Rats?

Somebody must like them, because Discovery introduced Verminators, which followed “an elite team of pestbusters” around.

As if the show was not enough, Discovery Channel peppered their other shows, the ones I liked, with Verminator commercials. Instead of being forced to see rats and roaches during commercials, I simply stopped watching Discovery.

I still watch Bear Grylls, but I quit watching other shows on Discovery.

Did you watch Verminators?