[m i a o w] the cat

Almost a week ago I was home on a Wednesday night, which doesn’t happen too often. I made M watch Honey, We’re Killing The Kids. I watch it like I would watch a slow motion train wreck, fascinated and unable to turn away. I have never watched Big Brother, Idol, Survivor - but this has turned me into a sucker. I feel like I’m looking through the window of our old Queensland next-door-neighbours (christened the ’shutupandstopits’ for very good reason) as small children with bogan names gargle fizzy drinks, bounce off the walls and look curiously at vegetables.

M had never watched it before, and I explained to him how it worked.

“Now the parents will come into that fake white jail cell room and they’ll be told to look at current pictures of Tay-Lah, Jaiden and Capreece. Then with ‘advanced computer graphics software’ [ha! some old version of PaintshopPro] the pictures will change and the mother will start getting teary and the dad will look stoic. The presenter lady will look at them sorrowfully and say, ‘Sharon and Steve - you’re killing your kids.’ The little walking burgers have morphed into larger burgers. The males always have receding hair look like serial killers. The females scream ‘food court’ and ‘bain marie’. What they never point out is how much they always look like their parents…”

M watched as I narrated, agog. Anyway, the show meanders along, engineers some inter-family bonding, broccoli appreciation courses and [gasp] sleeping through the night in one’s own bed! Yawn.

Because I’d only ever watched it on my own, I realised that I had not been watching with a critical eye, and I realised something. They showed the serial killer mugshot pix at the end [cue: teary mother], and then they showed the ‘new, healthy, has-gained-12-years on their life expectancy’ [until they go back to eating Maccas every day next week] pictures, and the males had full and luscious heads of hair. HOW!??

I think the ‘advanced computer graphics software’ may have forgotten to factor in GENETICS? Or is this new research that shows eating crap and never excerising leads to baldness? Freaks.