Question 11 – Are we getting our just deserts?

I always assumed that the phrase “just deserts” was literally talking about desert – such as the punishment you were reaping after the “meal” of what you did.  As per usual with the English language the truth is odder and more stupid.  Dessert is an old noun that literally meant “deserved reward or punishment” and even though it was spelled like the arid thing with sand it was pronounced like the thing that’s a banana split with whipped cream and nuts.  So it’s like a quadruple homonym or some bullshit, I don’t even know.  In that sense the phrase “just deserts” is mildly nonsensical because the word desert itself implies that it’s just. 

One time a dude from Portugal asked me why English is so stupid and I explained that it was because it’s a common gutter pidgin language that was originally spoken by only the lowliest vagabonds and it’s merely a weird quirk that it’s become so widely used today.  Another dude not from Portugal overheard this and flipped his lid – how dare I say that about English.  He was very upset.  People are very weird about what upsets them.  In their defense though it is fun to play the victim, I do it all the time. 

There have been three different movies called Just Deserts on Hallmark, all of them baking themed as you might imagine.  Lifetime can say whatever they want, but in my book Hallmark is the real source for women’s programming.  Lifetime started out as the Cable Health Network and was all health shows.  Then when ABC and Viacom merged it was changed to Lifetime – Television for Women.  But they had a problem.  Most people thought that Lifetime was one of them religion channels which actually makes more sense if you think about it.   Drastic measures were needed – a massive rebranding campaign was launched.  Lifetime was now “Talk Television” where you could find all the Donahue and Oprah rip-off call in shows your heart desired.  This accomplished nothing, Lifetime was still losing millions – and this is back when a million dollars was sort of a lot of money (but not really).

More drastic rebranding!  A woman was put in charge of Lifetime programming!  Can you believe it?!  And this was in 1988, before people even know women had rights.  The network was refocused on current women’s issues – by which I mean re-runs of LA Law and movies where Meredith Baxter and Judith Light were beaten with curtain rods.   Also I think they showed a WNBA game once at 3 AM.  With this new programming things took off like a rocketship full of curtain rods with which to beat Judith Light in space.  Now Lifetime was only losing hundreds of thousands of dollars instead of millions – this is what’s known in showbiz lingo as “massaging the monitor” which of course is a reference not to computer monitors but to monitor lizards, the only animal with a natural sense of television programming. 

In order to make up the gap they decided what they needed was programming for women that was for men.  Enter Spenser for Hire!  I recently just read the first three books in the “Spenser” canon and I enjoyed them overally but in terms of women characters they’re a bit shaky.  I mean actually they’re pretty good considering the time and place but you know what I mean.  The female character aren’t terrible but also on the other hand in the first book Spenser bangs the lady who hires him, her daughter who he was hired to find, and some rando within the same 24 hours.  He’s very handsome you see and he’s always banging the ladies.  Always.  Remember when dudes on TV always had a “little black book” where they’d have a roster of broads on file to were DTF with little comments like “does not have chlamydia” or “husband has a gun”?  It has some of that vibe.  I have not seen the Spenser TV show nor the movies but it was probably even worse. 

Anyway with Spenser being hired Lifetime was making money with their new strategy of targeting “upscale couples who shared a television set”.  I find that to be a very confusing target audience.  Are they implying that in the early 90’s sharing a TV set was “upscale”?  My family wasn’t upscale but we definitely had TWO TVs.  Three if you count the little black and white one my dad would watch ISU football games on while he was in building something in the shed.  Or were they specifically targeting upscale couples that also happened to only have one TV?  Because that seems like a VERY small slice of the viewing public and also a weird demographic to go after.  What could such people have in common to target?

Anyway, by making sure that women’s programming was for men Lifetime became the #6 rated cable channel which is known in the biz as “putting a wool coat on a dolphin”.  Anyway, in modern times like 88% of all cable channels Lifetime is a bunch of reality bullshit brought to you in High Definition to make sure that you can see every detail The Hottie and the Nottie Didn’t Know They Was Pregnant After Show After Dark Dark MILF Edition. 

“Jeremy I feel like you’ve got way off course here.”

Indeed, but I felt like most of what I had to say about the question at hand was very similar to my blog post about “how much is too much” so I had to pad things a bit.  If I don’t get the word count right I have big trouble with the union.  The logical answer is of course, everyone gets whatever they can, ergo they deserve to have it because they have it. 

Morally though the answer is probably not.  Look at me, in most other countries in the world I would have starved to death years ago.  But here I am alive and fat as a golf course alligator breathing sort of clean air and reading books and eating sugar free apple pie whenever I want.  That’s definitely not fair to anyone.  If there was any justice in the world I would be dragged into the streets and shot in the neck with a crossbow.  Thank goodness there isn’t any justice in the world huh?  People aren’t thankful enough for the lack of justice in the world.  Your ancestors worked hard for this injustice – show a little gratitude.  I don’t even have to leave the house to go to work anymore.  My main problem in life is that I’m sitting at my computer too much.

I’ve seen a bakery called Just Deserts.  I assume there are many others out there named that.  I wonder if puns are a modern phenomenon or if they’ve been around for a long time.  According to Wikipedia puns have been around since ancient Egypt (5000 years ago) where they were heavily used in the development of myths and interpretation of dreams.  I don’t understand what that means.  How do you use a pun to develop myths or interpretation of dreams?  That claim is attributed to Geraldine Pinch in a book from 1996 – I’ll pop her off a tweet and see what she meant.

The wrestler Becky Lynch loved puns ( I guess she still does probably but she’s no longer a wrestler).  Specifically puns with her name.  A while ago she was the biggest thing going in wrestling and now everyone hates her because she quit wrestling to have babies.  What bothers me more is that she’s having these babies with Seth Rollins.  He’s a greasy haired weirdo and based on all the interviews I’ve heard with him he’s a dork to boot.  She’s a foreigner so I guess she doesn’t know any better.  Equally as egregious little Renee Paquette/Young married Dean Ambrose/Jon Moxley.  At least he’s a good wrestler but that dude is a fucking moron.  I hope he’s a good lay because I can’t imagine anything else that man has or offer a solitary human soul on a personal level. 

When Dean/Jon left the WWE his main complaint was that they never listened to all his great ideas, and then later on he was able to talk about what those great ideas were.  Here were his great ideas that WWE rejected  –

• He’s an awesome cool guy who never loses
• He’s totally sweet and awesome and always wins
• The bad guys suck and he’s totally awesome
• Sunglasses are awesome and should wear them
• He’ll be the champion and always win and never lose and it will be cool

One time was on the Stone Cold podcast and the idea was that WWE were going to use this as a platform to catapult him into being a superstar and then he said that education isn’t important and kids should drop out of school and then responded to all the softballs old Stone Cold was lobbing him by saying “I don’t know” and sitting there like a turd.  If you can’t get over riding on Stone Cold’s coattails you’re a god damn moron.  What are you doing Renee?

Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose/Jon Moxley were both in The Shield, not the TV show, the wrestling trio.  It was pretty great.  CM Punk claims that he came up with the idea for the Shield.  That may be true, but there’s a grand wrestling tradition of everyone claiming they came up with something that worked well.  And in a way I bet a lot of them are right when they take credit for whatever, I bet the really big ideas in wrestling involved a lot of contributions from a lot of people – and of course in their mind the “main” idea was theirs.  I suppose wrestling is no different than any other industry in that sense.  Anything that does well everyone says they did, anything that crashes and burns somehow is no one’s fault. 

In conclusion are we getting our just deserts?  I don’t know, but I do know that the Great Muta is a fantastic wrestler.