Ralph's Recliner / David's Alarm Clock

Yo readers, what's good?

In searching through my bottomless pit of emails today, I ran across a paper that I wrote in college.  It's dated April 21, 2001.  

I remember it was from my "Mass Media & Society" class, which was a fantastic experience. I missed the 8-year anniversary by a week, but I still thought I'd post it for the hell of it.  It still seems pretty relevant to me.

I can't remember what grade I received on this thing, but we'll pretend it was a B. (It was more than likely a C, but I used to threaten my professor a lot with knives and other stabbing weapons, so that usually merited a few extra points on the side.)

Reading stuff that you wrote 8 years ago is always so weird. I thought it was pretty neat, though, so have at it.   Pasted 100% in its original form:

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Ralph's Recliner & David's Alarm Clock

(Matt McClane strikes again)

(Don’t worry, however, this one isn’t about Frank Stallone.)

It’s 5:00 in the afternoon. Meet Ralph Bernard. Ralph, a large man of 40 years, is walking home to his basement level apartment from his minimum-wage-paying job. Ralph owns a television there in his basement level apartment, and he has plans to sit down in his thrift-store bought recliner tonight, turn down the lights, and see what sorts of wonders magically appear on his 19” box of information.

It’s 1:00 in the afternoon, four hours earlier, and across town, Rebecca Lewis, a 17-year-old high school student sits in her public high school chair at her assigned desk in Mr. Noonkesser’s Government class. Mr. Noonkesser decides to challenge the class with a question.
“Why don’t we see any anti-Disney programs on television?”

The class looks confused, never even hearing of such a thing. Rebecca looks down towards her desk for a thought on the matter.

It is 5:30, and we are in Ralph Bernard’s basement level apartment, and he finally makes it to his television. It seems to Ralph that switching the power button to the “on” position and hearing that little surge of power accompanied by the “click” sound is not unlike making it to his own personal heaven. He leans back in his comfortable recliner just as planned, and takes aim with his remote control.

“Because Disney wouldn’t want that at all,” exclaims Rebecca from her desk. The other kids in class all turn around to look at her.

“Exactly,” Mr. Noonkesser agrees with a smile. “So why don’t we ever see any diversity on television at all? Do you think this is what our founding fathers would have wanted when they began our nation? A great new free world where everybody can be heard and the stage is set for a free and open marketplace for ideas?”

“Not at all,” says Rebecca with a frown.

Mr. Noonkesser smiles again. “I agree with you, Rebecca. I think that today’s world is just about as far away from what they had wanted as we could get. Instead of great diversity of ideas, we have about ten million movie channels to choose from. We have about ten million sports channels to choose from. Is that diversity?”

“I think it’s brainwashing,” Rebecca mutters.

The clock on Ralph Bernard’s wall says 5:40 as he leans in to see the newest episode of Baywatch. His eyes are fixated on Pamela Anderson’s breasts as she runs down the beach wearing a small red bikini.

“There are six corporations which own basically the entire media as we know it,” explains Noonkesser. “Starting with a new merger in Universal and a company called Vivendi, better known as the colossus of the privatized water industry. You’ve all been to ‘Universal Studios’ theme park, I’m sure, right?”

The entire class smiles with delight. “Yeah, I thought so. Next you have ‘News Corporation’, headed by a man named Rupert Murdoch. They own the Fox network and many other forms of media, and they pull in a mere 13.5 billion dollars a year. 

Then there’s ‘Viacom’, which owns MTV, VH1, and CBS. They’re worth about 12.8 billion dollars. 

Next on the list is ‘Bertelsmann’, which is raking in around 16.3 billion dollars a year mostly in Europe. 

Our friends at Disney are next, making 23.4 billion dollars a year. They also own ABC and of course practically a million theme parks. 

Last on the list is, of course, ‘AOL/Time Warner’, making a very modest 31.8 billion dollars in revenue. They own around 12 TV/Film companies, 29 cable/digital operations, 24 book brands, 35 magazine titles, and America Online has about 27 million subscribers easy. 

Now with only 6 companies owning and controlling everything we see on a day to day basis, what do we do about this?”

“Nobody cares about it,” Rebecca says from her desk. “American people are just plain lazy. They don’t even have a clue.”

Ralph Bernard scratches his crotch as he struggles to find his lost remote buried somewhere under the cushion of his thrift-store-bought recliner. Getting up from his own personal heaven for a few seconds seems like almost an impossible feat to attempt, however, so he decides to leave the station where it is, and stop all the worry. Unfortunately, he’s stuck watching an old re-run of “The Andy Griffith Show.” He decides to make the most of it anyway.

“They just eat whatever’s put in front of them, without question,” Rebecca further explains. “Americans are just some byproduct of what television and these corporations have made them into.”

Mr. Noonkesser frowns as he nods in unfortunate agreement. “Yes, you’re right, I believe, but what could we do to make a difference about this?”

From across the room, a voice rings out from a quiet student who hasn’t said much at all. “I wish there was some way to not let these big corporations take over everything. I wish that it all could be more split up and more open.”

The children all turn to see a short little student in the back row that usually tries to go unnoticed. Mr. Noonkesser is excited to hear David finally speak up.

Ralph looks at the clock and suddenly realizes that something is missing. He looks back at the television for the moment, however, finding immediate consolidation.

“This concentration of corporate ownership tends to reduce the diversity of media voices and puts tremendous power in the hands of only a few companies,” Mr. Noonkesser reads a small exert from an article he pulled from www.fair.org.

“An independent media is essential to a democratic society, and that aggressive antitrust action must be taken to break up monopolistic media conglomerates. At the same time, non-corporate, alternative media outlets need to be promoted by both the government and the non-profit sector. So in other words, David, you are exactly right.” David’s face lights up like a Christmas tree, and Rebecca Lewis turns back around and smiles.

At 5:50 in the afternoon, Ralph Bernard’s door opens. Ralph, still absorbed in the wonders of Mayberry, fails to notice.

“I had a good discussion in school today, dad.” Whispers David as he tiptoes by the living room of the small apartment.

“Quiet, son,” Ralph sternly exclaims. “I’m watching television.”

David looks down at the carpet and quietly goes into his room. There he quietly climbs onto his bed and opens his notebook from today, and he silently congratulates himself for writing down every single thing that Mr. Noonkesser had said. 

In the other room, Ralph cheers, “Damn it, Barney, you are such a freakin’ moron!” 

David reads over the last of his notes, “We must be vigilant, or we won’t be free.”

In the other room, Ralph Bernard slowly falls asleep as the people of Mayberry coax him into a dream world of Pamela Anderson and The Home-Shopping Network. He’ll sleep well.

David, however, has just woken up.

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Have a lovely week, readers.  I'll see ya on the flipside.

-M

REUNITED!! ... Now with gators!

Readers, I've come back home.

Sometimes life will ransack you. You'll get all tied up with work, bear wrestling, making diamonds out of coal, cock fighting, spinal surgery, tennis lessons, shark hunting, slaughtering a bunch of trespassing teenagers who are having pre-marital sex and doing tons of drugs on your camp site property, warning those same teenagers that the camp they're visiting has a death curse, taking pictures of birds, finding new and better ways to raise domesticated octopuses in captivity, kicking your meth addiction, burning down an entire city block by accidentally letting the grease from your gas grill flame up in complete terror, hiking, and plowing up your back yard to make room for your summer herb garden.

The next thing you know, a month or more has passed by, and you haven't updated the Tirade!  A mentally abused blog is a horrifying thing, I promise you that, bud.

Well, no more of that.  Thanks to my friend Tommy Forrester's comment on the previous post, I've decided to stop working for 20 minutes and get down to the most important job of all:

Giving hope to the hopeless by writing a bunch of crap on this blog.

So attention hopeless!  Get your shit together!  Snap out of it and let's get down to business here!

Now that the hopeless have hope again, let me tell you guys about this in-sane dream I had last night.  It was unbelievably awesome.

Wait, before I tell you about the dream I had last night, let me tell you about a dream that I had last week that was pretty important.  Last week, I dreamed (for the first time in my entire life) that Jason Voorhees was actually coming to kill me.

It seriously, really, really scared the hell out of me.  I woke up with a snap, a jump and a gasp.  I gasped like one of those old women gasp when they see the price of cauliflower by the pound has quadrupled in the past 5 years.

Basically, out of nowhere, I was being chased. The events leading up to this crazy moment aren't really important, I think; all I remember was the chase sequence.

And then suddenly I was on horseback.  Somebody was with me... I can't remember who exactly, but let's call him Karl.

Karl ditched me in the first few seconds of the dream.

Now that Karl was gone, I was flying down the old country road near my mom's house. I tried to lose him by leaping off the horse, and letting it keep on going down the road.  In retrospect, I don't really think this is lucid... since the road is a total straight-away, and he would have obviously been able to see me fly off the horse like Wyatt Earp and run into the bushes.

Nevertheless, there I was, in the bushes.  I watched as he slowly came trotting up on his horse.

Yeah, that's right. Voorhees was riding a damn horse.  Don't tell me you've never thought of this actually happening. He grew up at camp; there was bound to be some equine action going on at Crystal Lake. I bet the camp had some really nice stables, actually.

Anyway, he came clopping up on the pavement with his horse. I was looking through a bush, but then suddenly realized that the bush was super small, and he could probably obviously see me. However, he didn't.  He went trottin' on down the road.

So I gasped a sigh of relief, just like the kind of gasp that old woman gasp when they see the price of cauliflower has quadrupled in the past five years... but then the sign falls off the display, and underneath is another sign that says, "just kidding, this cauliflower is the same price as it was in 1943. Please, take a bunch for free."

I was elated.  Until I glanced back over my shoulder... and the son of a bitch was sprinting straight towards me through the field, those dark, hollow eyes with a massive machete. I couldn't get away, I was stuck in the bush, and he came right up on me to slice my entire body in half.

Needless to say, I woke the hell up in total terror.  That was IN-TENSE!

Now that all that has been cleared up, let's go back in time and talk about that dream that happened last night.  Last night I was fishing with my woman on the back of some lost, mysterious pond in the middle of nowhere.

I was super stoked. I had my little chair, cold beer in hand and the lady was kicked back, sliding some dog food on the end of her hook.  What a secret weapon.

Anyway, I threw a top water plug in, for some reason, just to see if anything would strike in the shallow. Working it back and forth under some low-hanging limbs, I got a strike, set the hook, and pulled in this massive 3" bluegill.  Needless to say, this dream was very, very close to real life.  I was so excited that I looked over at the lady to show her.  She just smiled and held up this huge 5 lb. bass that she'd apparently caught when I wasn't paying attention.  Women fisherman are sneaky as hell, man.

Anyway, so I got up to go to the truck for something.  As I was walking away, I looked back and noticed something insane.

There were giant alligators crawling out of the water at every single foot of the pond. These things were MASSIVE.  For some reason, the lady didn't even notice. She was probably determined to catch even more bass to show me up with her damn dog food.  Anyway, I kept yelling and yelling for her to run, but she kept fishing. This chick was SERIOUS about the bass.

Anyway, I finally flagged her down and she screamed in terror and ran like hell. It was crazy how fast these things were moving, crawling everywhere on the banks.

At that point, the dream went all to hell, as they always tend to do when you've eaten a bunch of leftover Easter ham with ranch dressing and Cheetos before you pass out for the night.  It switched gears and turned into this insane sequence from "The Lost World," Jurassic Park II. There were jeeps flying around everywhere, and pilots, and giant stun guns and nets and camouflage and sonic bazookas.  (I actually didn't get a good look at those bazookas, but I have a feeling that that's what they were.)

I don't really remember anybody getting eaten, which was a plus, and also there were no mad scientists or giant snakes, which wasn't so much of a plus.

One thing's for sure, readers, I'd much rather be fishing today with alligators and a beautiful woman than working.  However, before I packed up my tackle and beer, I'd sit down and write another 10 posts, just to keep on giving hope to the hopeless.

And cauliflower to the old women.

Sorry I've been gone for so long, readers. It's good to be back.

Muah.

-M