The Mook Maker

Do you know what a mook is? Every young American male is at heart what advertisers and media experts call a "mook." A mook is a perpetual adolescent. He is pre-occupied with sexual matters and cannot rise above the level of the trivial. A mook is a demasculinized male. perpetually stuck in immature behaviour. In other words, every man shown on television. Guess what? The mook maker is dying. It is scheduled to die in two days. The government mandated switch to digital television has in effect stopped all free television from airing. Yeah, I know, you can buy a special converter box and still get some free television stations, but I have chosen not to. You see, I have been at war with mookishness since I first had a son. I am not sure that I can pinpoint the exact moment that the light bulb went on for me, but I do remember thinking that if I was to raise men of honor, the mook maker would be my biggest challenge. You see, it is my husbands closest friend and lifelong companion. It greets him at the beginning of every day, and it is the last thing he spends time with at night. Every conversation in the house is centered on commercial breaks. Superbowl week is the worst since everyone knows that is when the "coolest" commercials are on television. We have never had cable or satellite television, so the programming choices were limited. Since it has been several years since we were into VEGGIETALES, the life affirming choices were even more limited. My sons come home from school and turn on the mook maker and sit and eat until their dad comes home from work. He then joins them. It does get turned off when I serve dinner, but the first person up from the table turns it back on. The programming around dinner time is the worst. They have fallen in love with a show called "Two and a half men" I have listened to enough of the episodes to give a good summary. Two brothers in their forties have found themselves living together in the older brothers home. The older brother is a commitment phobic, drunken slacker who brings a different woman into his bedroom every day. In one episode, he was apologizing to the women he had hurt and had relations with at least four of them in the same afternoon. The younger brother, a feminine, neurotic father is recently divorced. He and his young son are living in the brother's home because the B***h ex-wife is getting child support and alimony and he is only a chiropractor (as opposed to a "real" doctor.). Which brother do you think is rubbing off onto the other more? Which do you think is influencing the pubescent boy more? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the ex-wife is experimenting with her sexuality.
TURN THE $%^&* THING OFF! you say? been trying for fifteen years.
In two days, it dies! I am going to dance at its funeral. I am going to sing the praises of the usually retarded federal government! Maybe, just maybe, someone will actually move a muscle in the six hours between school and bed. Maybe, just maybe, the creative juices will start flowing and people will develop hobbies. Now, if only the DVD player would fall off and break the DVD collection.