Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Who Is Going To Pay For My Therapy?
Dear National Geographic Channel,
I appreciate your dedication with regards to programming educational shows and documentaries. I have learned many an interesting fact about the natural world from a variety of your shows. In my nightly schedule of settling on my couch and turning to a station that will lull me into a comfortable pre-sleep zone, from which Bruce will move me along to the bed, I often turn to you.
However, there is something about which we must speak. Two nights ago I made a Bloody Mary for dinner and chose your station as the one to which I would pass out. All was going well and I was approaching a full sleep while your program on the hippopotamus played. Unfortunately I was jolted awake because the joyful infant hippopotamus that had been a central character in the documentary was being ravaged by a young male in the school of hippopotamus. (See, that was an interesting fact I learned, the hippopotamus lives in a school. I figured that the biologists who named the group would have called them a bulldozer or a mountain, but no, school. Since the show, I have also learned that the hippopotamus may also live in a pod, herd, or bloat. I guess my point about NGC enriching my life has been well established. Also did you know that the Skipper Caterpillar discharges it’s fecal matter by gripping the matter between its buttock muscles and propelling it many feet away?)
Back to the murder of the cute hippopotamus calf. If there had been just a violent scene wherein the big one squished and drowned the little one, that would have been bad enough. It was the high-pitch, endless screeching that lasted for about five minutes as the baby was being trashed around the watering hole that was just too much.
In closing, I understand your need for verisimilitude and realism, but hearing the death rattle of a cute baby hippopotamus may have been just a bit overboard. Metaphorically, I would say that the inclusion of that very graphic scene was an equivalent to the conversation that Monica Lewinsky had with Linda Tripp regarding the spunk on her dress after a blow job performed in a certain geometrically significant office, that is to say, completely unnecessary.
Please feel free to continue programming for my educational development, but in the future I would appreciate if you could avoid killing the cute babies while I am having my pre-sleep nap.
Many Thanks,
Some Girl