Friday, May 22, 2009

Idolinterruptis

Dear Emergency Broadcast System:

The other night, while watching American fucking Idol (on a one hour dvr delay), you rudely interrupted me no less than 15 times (my FB friends may have seen my live rants). Each time you would stop my dvr and switch to the TV guide channel for an announcement about a missing kid.

Now, don't get me wrong, I've nothing against announcements about missing kids generally, but in this particular case, let's just say I was not the happy-go-lucky girl I should have been to watch the much-hyped Adam Lambert fall to cutey little Kris Allan. And here's why:

First: ummm, hello. I don't give a flying fuck what the goddamn emergency is, there is no excuse for telling me about it every 5-7 minutes. Did you not realize its the fucking AI finale? Do you live under a rock? I realize a lot of us 'mericans are a bunch of fucking moe rons (I've complained about it myself) but come on. No one is that dumb. Once is enough. I'd even give you a couple reminders. But 15 times?

Second: it don't matter how many times you play the fucking announcement cause it told me nothing other than that the state police had issued a state of emergency until 2am for about five NJ counties because of a missing kid. That's it. No gender. No 'last seen'. No nothing. What the fuck? Talk about dumb.

Third: I don't fucking live in any of the affected counties. Hell, they aren't even in my fucking part of the state for pete's sake (btw, who the fuck is pete?). So, technically, as far as my life was concerned... no goddamnmotherfucking emergency. Ergo, no need for interruption after interruption. Come on EBS - I have to believe the technology exists to target people better than that.

Fourth: even if I lived in one of the counties...why the fuck are you telling me (and the rest of the at home tv watching public) anything? What the fuck am I supposed to do sitting at home in my pjs? Hmmm? Go out searching? Even if I knew what the kid looked like or was wearing or where s/he was missing from or how s/he went missing (which you idiotically forgot to mention despite having like 15 tries at it), what the fuck good is me knowing that doing for this kid? I mean obviously, if I see a kid wandering about lost I can help without a useless tv announcement about it. Then again, I'm in my fucking pajamas so its not like I'll be goin' anywhere I'm apt to run into missing kids.

Fifth (yeah, that's right, there's more): why on earth did you keep changing the start and end times for the 'state of emergency'. From 9pm-2am to 10pm-3am to, finally, 11something-12:11am. Why is that? Was the kid less missing? More found? What? There must have been some reason, right? (Ok maybe the state police did it, but still, you are responsible for your own broadcasts, no?) Which leads me to...

Sixth: why the fuck, if the emergency is over, would you keep on issuing the fucking announcement? Sure, AI was over (although I did not enjoy it as much as I normally would have) but at this point you were interrupting me watching the dvr'd pilot of Glee. I was not amused. Nor was I in the slightest bit gleeful (although that show rocked!). Or...if you were going to interrupt regularly scheduled broadcasting (and apparently dvr viewers as well - wtf is that about?), you could at least have changed the fucking end time from 12:11 to something later. Cause it was well after that time the last time you fucking interrupted me.

And, after all of that - I still don't know what the fuck the whole thing was about. For all I know some drug-addled-excuse-for-a-mother woke up from some hazy place, couldn't find her usually neglected children and called the cops to report them missing, forgetting, of course, that in her stupor she'd asked her sister to take them for the night.

Needless to say, EBS, I am way pissed at you. So don't call me again, m'kay?

2 comments:

~DokterKenny said...

That's AWESOME Stina...Tell us how you really feel! man I can so relate to your anger. We should go out shooting stupid people sometime! :-D

Adan said...

having worked in broadcasting and having worked with the EAS [its the emergency alert system now] its actually the police that broadcast that, and then hit the button to distribute. i would call the state police and complain. i get your anger, its annoying, and i couldn't agree with you more.