I've recently come down with a case of asthmatic bronchitis. This is worse than acute bronchitis, but not as bad as pneumonia (meaning I don't think it will kill me).
"So what is asthmatic bronchitis?" you ask, or google. I had asthma as a child, but had forgotten what that was really like until this hit me. It's a combination of an asthma attack and a powerful cough reflex. It's like someone is simultaneously giving you a punch in the solar plexus and a swirlie.
This goes on for a minute, while a detached voice at the back of my mind says, "Perhaps I will finally get to see an inverted lung." That hasn't actually happened, and I'm betting if it did, it would be a disappointing sight, what with all the inflammation, mucus and blood.
But aside from these intense moments, the rest of the time this illness is pretty boring. I'm usually too worn out to focus on anything more intellectual than say, a bad SF novel, or a bad SF show on Hulu. Which I did for a while. But eventually I couldn't even concentrate on that.
And that's when I started missing TV. I do own a TV, it's just not connected to anything besides an XBox and a DVD player. No cable, no antenna. I don't like television programming. "Cable" means "hundreds of channels with nothing to watch". But then I got to thinking about this correlation between me feeling sick and stupid, and wanting to watch TV. Maybe this is an indicator of a larger trend, that one of the other beneficiaries in the growth in chronic diseases is the television industry. There are few chronic diseases that rob you of the ability to watch TV, and they often give you time to do not-much-else, because of the effects of the illness and the side effects of many drugs.
So this leads us to an explanation for the popularity of the Jerry Springer Show. You'd have to be sick to be on the show, and you'd have to be sick to watch it. The crisis in health care ensures that there are plenty of people who now qualify.
