Spare Me, Please

While Saturday Night Live may not be particularly funny any more, the Debbie Downer skit hits the nail on the head. What is it with nastiness on the news and in print? They may as well have the newscasters say, "Hoo-Boy! Here's a gross one for the water cooler tomorrow... five children and three dogs were blah blah blah something gross and horrific and wrong, blah blah blah..." Why does that sell? Yesterday I picked up the baby from the health club daycare and three women were sitting in there discussing in detail all of the grisly cases of incest and molestation that they had ever heard of in their entire lives. And I mean explicit detail. It was all I could do to not stick my fingers in my ears and hum Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Actually, I probably would have except for needing both hands to carry the baby and the gym bag. And then I felt nauseous as I could not get those details out of my head for the next hour. Why why why??? Listening to those women, one of whom was from Texas, and apologies to the one Texan reader I know, but I really have an irrational distaste for Texans, it was almost like they were trying to one-up each other for who had the most disgusting and atrocious story. Then I thought, trying to be slightly more forgiving, maybe talking about it made it easier to digest, rather than just internalizing it. But that just ain't right. These women were relishing in these stories, getting more and more animated until I thought they might arm wrestle to see who got to be next. WTF??? Debbie Downer is not funny and gives me nightmares. Debbie Downer, please don't come to my health club any more.

Here she is in all her gory, I mean glory... http://snltranscripts.jt.org/03/03rdowner.phtml