My goodness. No wonder the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra is filing for bankruptcy protection - have you seen what TV has to offer these days?

• Suggestively dressed, cat-fighting women trying to woo the heart and win the Platinum Card of an oily-haired, grinning construction worker who's executing the biggest date lie ever recorded.
  
• Midgets pulling airplanes.
  
• Sweaty, starving, unhygienic twenty-somethings flirting, hurting and sleeping with bugs.
  
• Tough guys and gals eating things that would make a slaughterhouse worker lose his lunch.

The superiority of the Western way of life is clearly demonstrated to the world in such nationally-aired, prime-time, patriotism-inducing offerings such as these. Check out this quote from a recent Fear Factor winner:

I started (by drinking) the glasses of (liquefied) liver. I thought those would be the toughest so I wanted to go ahead and knock some of that out. It got a little tough at the end just because my stomach was starting to get filled up and the texture just started to get real thick and more difficult for me to get down. Then I moved on to the eggs and I ate both of the eggs and I think I started to gag a little bit. It wasn't just the eggs, it was just already having the liver and then the eggs on top of that.

Any parent who's ever fed their child strained vegetables can appreciate the entertainment value inherent in shows like this.

And to think I've been wasting time exercising, playing with my kids and going to classes when I could have been watching the telly.