COME ON JOIN US IN THIS HOLE

Alice, in Lewis Carroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND, accidentally fell down the rabbit hole. In our case, most of us choose to jump down...!

After all, our multi-media hole down here is really quite a wonderful, full of even more than Alice's astounding diversions. It's wild and strange, funny and confusing; but mostly it's a very safe little hole in which to escape the terrible realities awaiting us up above. After awhile, why you might even prefer it to the alternative.

The alternative, you see, is all those frightening armies and assassins, battling politicians and prelates, clashing cultures and civilizations up there. Not to mention the horrors of joblessness, immigration, earthquakes and tornadoes, coupled with cosmic budget battles in the world's capitols where the economic fate of billions are being decided by the few.

Damn....it's tough up there.

Ah, but down here, we have this daily galaxy of distractions to numb the ravaged brain and calm the tortured soul. In the day time hours we have chatty talk shows, exotic cooking classes, silly court cases, sexy soap operas, reruns of "Leave it to Beaver" & "Happy Days, and until recently we even had "Oprah" to cry our fears away.

In the night time hours, our snug multi-media hole is even more distracting, more comforting, more sedating. We have our favorite cop & doc programs where everything that goes wrong is made right again, game shows that burst with chirpy hosts and busty contestants, flashy pagan rituals like "Access Hollywood" which fill our screen with the lives of the rich-and-insipid, all neatly tied into a programmatic ribbon at the end of our day down here with funny Dave & Jay.

Now there are those ideological doom-sayers who say this is simply the age-old game where the emperors keep the masses happy with bread & circuses (AKA, today's government subsidies & shopping malls). And yet upon closer examination, this is one hole that has not so much been built for us, as we have eagerly found it for ourselves.

Get back up there into the real world...? Get in the game like our teachers and preachers exhort...? Oh, God, I know you're probably right. But like the man once said: When your hole feels so good, how can it be so wrong...?