Free Form

Hi Again!! Stefan Sojka here on Channel Three TV. Great To Have your company. Tonight is free form again. I have a stirring in the creative segments of my grey matter and guess what I have for you!!….

Come on… guess… yes, you - Little Kenny Willis, sitting up the back there… any ideas? No not genetic frog deformities…. No, not steak and kidney millinery… what’s that? No I’ll think I’ll leave the amazing adventures of “Super-Greg” til next week… No, Tonight is free form in its purest form. Sheer, unadulterated chaos disguised as a TV show. I will look at the advent of digital television and its impact on our future careers – genetic engineering and it’s impact on our day-to-day lives, and baseball bats, and their impact on the human skull.

But first, the Channel Three news.

NSW launches task force as 80 people die on our roads
And Petrol prices tipped to again reach one dollar a litre

The deaths of 80 Australian road users over the Christmas-New Year break, almost half in New South Wales, today prompted the Carr government to launch a ministerial task force into the holiday road toll.
With 39 deaths, the NSW holiday toll was the worst in a decade and 19 more than last year.
A Queensland man became the final fatality before the midnight end of the holiday toll period last night.

Motorists are bracing for more bad news at the bowser, with fuel prices tipped to again reach $1 a litre within the month following cuts in crude oil production overseas.
Industry experts warned that prices would rise within weeks, by as much as 10¢, after OPEC, the organization of oil-producing countries, agreed to cut production by up to 2 million barrels a day.
Shell Australia, Caltex, Mobil and BP Australia are all expected to pass on the cost of higher crude oil prices to consumers once OPEC cuts production.

That ends the news, now here is the banana…

CUT – BANANA

Welcome back, to this new millennium broadcast, Monday the 8th of January 2001, which incidentally happens to be Elvis Presley and David Bowie’s birthday. It also happens to be, for all you trivia buffs out there - the day the enema was invented – in a freak laundry accident, involving a washing machine drainage hose, the soapy run-off from the spin cycle, and a very clumsy Mrs Irene Winchester, who set off the fortuitous but bizarre chain of events by tripping over a mop bucket.

So what kind of Christmas and New Year celebrations did you have? Although I must say I had a great time, mixing with friends and family, feasting on seafood and barbecues, and the obligatory counting down to midnight for the 37th time this lifetime, I did feel rather unexcited for some reason. Was it the massively overblown hype of world peace, unity, brotherly love and eternal salvation of last year’s Y2K celebrations that was followed by nothing more than a full year of new accounting methodology, or was it the post Olympic ennui, when I realised that yes, the Olympics was just another travelling circus rolling in and out of town and I was neither a ticket holder or organiser, so I had absolutely nothing substantial to gain from the event? Was it the Christmas Road toll? The ongoing conflict in the middle east? I don’t know, but somehow when the 4,256th firework went off, I began to wonder what it was we were actually celebrating.

And the answer I came up with – nothing. But after a little thought, I realised that our little planet making one more rotation around the sun is as good a reason as any, to party hard, so I finished off the slab, blew five big joints, dropped an acid trip, had a couple of lines of speed and vomited all the way to the hospital where I had my stomach pumped – from both ends. No wonder everyone the next day, during visiting hours, was wishing me a happy new year!! And that is what I wish you all tonight.

Well this New Year, besides signifying yet another solar orbit, is the beginning of Digital television! Yes at last, High Definition TV is here. Sure it’s a bit expensive now, but the possibilities are quite astounding, and the increased picture definition is certainly something to marvel at, especially since you realise just how many decades we have remained at the same picture resolution. Yes 2001 is the ideal time to bring in a whole new level of viewing excellence. With the new digital zoom feature, and the extra high quality, I can now count Ron Wilson’s nasal hairs, Tim Webster’s acne craters, or John Burgesses Wrinkles. The possibilities are endless! When you combine TV with computers in the digital age, the viewer becomes a part of the action. You can instantly surf to the web site of a product being advertised to get more detailed information, send actors an email in the middle of a movie, offer your own thoughts about controversial issues on current affair shows, even participate in talk shows. With the advent of robotics, you can get your own Benny Hinn Ministry set-top arm attachment to reach out from the TV set and heal you of your blindness, drug addiction or multiple sclerosis. Attach a printer, and although it might take a long time, you could print out your own sets and backdrops to stick on the wall of your house so you could really feel like you were in the studio audience.
But what will happen to programming. Digital gives you the power to choose what you want to watch, when you want to watch it, and how you would like to watch it. How will programmers handle the powershift? How can they make you watch what they want you to watch? Competitions? Prizes?

“If you continue to watch this show for the next half an hour without checking to see what the infinite alternatives are, and without plugging in your Digital Dildo, if you can just sit there like a mindless sponge and soak up our propaganda, sinister marketing and brainwashing, you could win a NEW CAR!!!! “

mmm.. perhaps Digital TV won’t change a thing, really.

One of the most exciting things about the New Millennium is the timely advent of genetic engineering. I don’t know if anyone remembers a movie called “The Thing” back in the early 80’s, where this alien creature landed on earth and began devouring every living thing in it’s path and using the DNA it collected to mutate into an infinite array of bones, eyes, teeth, arms, legs, and internal organs. I think this is most exciting! Once the DNA code is fully cracked, we will be able to do just that. Combine any feature of any living thing with any other living thing. We can have vegetables that you have to chase around the backyard before you eat them, you can have macadamia nuts that taste like strawberries growing out of your head, instead of hair, you could breed masochists that feel more and more pleasure the more injuries they sustain. How about miniature blue whales with wings, or chocolate flavoured cockroaches? When you think about it, the possibilities are endless! And the beautiful thing is that it is all completely natural! See mother nature created the human being with the capacity to do all this cool stuff, so it’s perfectly natural that we do it! Sure a few things might go wrong like the occasional six foot leg-span tarantula that spits anthrax all over it’s victims, or flesh eating gerbils, but on the whole genetic engineering is all part of God’s great plan. And I don’t think anyone can argue with God, can they? No. Good. I’m glad we got that sorted out.

Well that’s about it. There goes another free form show! I hope you were entertained - and next week is a little beauty. I want to discuss the beautiful things about life…. Is it a baby’s eyes? Your partner’s smile? The Sunset? Dew on a spider’s web? See if your feelings match mine next week on “The Beautiful” Until then, this is Stefan Sojka, saying Goodnight from lesson number thirty five!