Homer’s Iliad and channel surfing
7 March 2016(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 7 March 2016 issue)
Dear Kam,
My son is a big disappointment to me because he’s never even heard of The Simpsons. I was hoping that he and I would have the same quality relationship that Homer and Bart have. Oh well.
Son of Springfield
A bit like Malaysia, The Simpsons used to be more fun than it is now and so, the long-running TV show is in its final season before closing down forever (which I hope won’t happen to Malaysia as well). But Homer has left us with so many pearls of wisdom to inspire us in our lives. One of my favourite moments was when Bart failed to learn how to play the guitar because he quickly discovered it was a lot harder than he had thought. Bart was worried that his father would be upset with his failure, but Homer had never been prouder.
Homer: Son, come here. Of course I’m not mad. If something’s hard to do, then it’s not worth doing. You just stick that guitar in the garage next to your shortwave radio, your karate outfit and your unicycle, and we’ll go and watch TV.
Bart: What’s on?
Homer: It doesn’t matter.
Homer’s contention that “if something’s hard to do, then it’s not worth doing” would be a brilliant legal argument for, say, not suing somebody despite them having made the most egregious accusations. And if that fails (and it never does), then you can always rely on another of Homer’s beliefs: “The three little sentences that will get you through life. No 1: Cover for me. No 2: Oh, good idea, boss. No 3: It was like that when I got here.”
These quotes might seem like they are excuses for complacency, covering up and generally getting away with bad stuff, but actually they are part of a higher philosophy, part of humankind’s quest for perfection. As Homer said to his wife: “Marge, don’t discourage the boy! Weaselling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel.”
Dear Kam,
Ohmigosh! What’s Dr M done now?
Dr Strange
Dr M (Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad) has finally done the hardest thing that anyone can do. He’s cancelled his Astro subscription. No? After a quick search on the Googletubes, I have discovered that he has left Umno, which is apparently for some as difficult a decision as cancelling Astro is for me.
I’ve noticed that a small but steady number of people are cancelling their Astro subscriptions because they find the service to be, well, not very good. I’ve thought about it but it’s too big a step for me despite the fact that it has so many channels that I never watch. It’s got really old Tamil movies (do they only make really old Tamil movies?), lots of Chinese game shows and dramas, lots of Arabs (I guess because, you know, Arabs are just the best!) and something called RTM (which sounds very familiar and I feel like I should know what it is). I’m not even very interested in what’s on the English language channels that I do understand because UFOs, Bigfoot and car restorations are neither history nor science. And yet, I just can’t bring myself to cancel my subscription.
Unlike today’s children, I grew up with TV. I only had three TV channels and if there was nothing on worth watching, then I had to do … what’s that thing called? Oh yes, “reading”. Or I would have to go to that place, what’s it called? Oh yes, “outside”. Fortunately, those two things rarely happened because there was always something on TV. But then I visited America in the 1980s and I was stunned that they had so many TV channels. There were hundreds of channels and I spent hours clicking through them all without ever stopping to watch any of them. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was a glimpse into the internet experience of the future … where I now endlessly scroll through without ever stopping to concentrate on any one thing. Entertainment now must be designed as a distraction within a world of distractions.
I’m old and at least some part of my brain has been conditioned by the TV formatting that I used to watch so that I can still occasionally put aside time to concentrate on a single entertainment. The popularity of binge-watching a series like Game of Thrones might suggest that there is still an audience for uninterrupted long-form dramas. I do believe that if the programming is well chosen and well curated, then Astro, or something like it, still has a future. Incidentally, I wonder if Dr M watches Game of Thrones.
Reprinted with the kind permission of
