15 minutes

It's funny the things that can get you annoyed. Sometimes it's big things - outrage at social injustice, laws that allow on the spot fines for swearing, stripping the powers from the equal opportunities commission, arguing against a carbon tax that could help slow environmental degradation. Sometimes it's pettiness - that newspapers and magazines feel compelled to devote so many column inches to people who just happen to have won the genetic lottery. Today, apparently, it's the completely insignificant that is getting my goat.

I'm on the final stretch of the assignment run. The last one is due tomorrow, and I'm within sight of the finish line. It's so close that I allowed myself a break to watch some TV - Winners and Losers an amusing little comedy/drama about the lives of four women who win the lottery. It was supposed to start at 9, an annoying enough time to start a show in a land where hourly shows start on the half hour or thereabouts, but manageable. Or it is when Channel 7 don't run so far over time that the show is 15 minutes late. And all because of Australia's Got Talent. Australia apparently has so much talent that it can't be edited to a reasonable time slot. It's not like the show is live, folks. They're quite happy to edit other programs so they can cram in more and more ads, but this one they stretch out to make sure there is enough time to repeat the bloody phone numbers for voting lines over and over again.

So here I am, sitting on the couch again (it's a common theme lately, and clearly I've been doing it too much because my back is feeling like it's about to give up again) and silently building up an impotent rage. Because what can I do about that fact that a TV network decides not to follow it's own programming guide? And then it hits me just how pointless the whole thing is anyway, given that it doesn't affect anyone in a life and death way, and I get angry at myself for being too caught up in something so insignificant, and the cycle repeats ad nauseum until my head explodes, or I find my way onto my blog to blow off steam. I think I might just be sufficiently calm to get back to writing about teaching humanities in secondary schools...Although it's on Channel 7's head if something along these lines creeps into the section on civics and citizenship, because Australia may have talent, but Channel 7's programming department is lacking severely in the clock department.