I was at the gym the other day. I walked all the way across campusto walk some more on a nifty hill-simulating machine (though nothingcan simulate the walk from Villa Alvarado to Storm Hall early in themorning).

While on the elliptical trainer, I glanced at the muted televisionsets perched atop the mirrors (which aren’t fooling anyone, by theway). What graced the screen but a soap opera? This brought a floodof questions to mind.

First and foremost, where’s the soap? For that matter, where’s theopera? Where can I buy tickets to Il Doveatore or L’Irish Spring inAlgeri?

The second query brought to mind by the television program was,”What point do these serve?” News tells us what is happening in theworld, sitcoms add levity to our otherwise supposedly dull lives.Even a drama series has a point eventually: Scully finds the aliens,President Sheen narrowly avoids a policy conundrum, the good peopleof New York (protected by two separate yet equally important groups)get to go about their normal lives again.

Butsoap operas never have a conclusion of any sort. They are kind oflike ice dancing in the Olympics: they hold your attention by theslightest shred, but secretly you want to see those in the spotlightfall.

And they’re all the same: Jessica wakes up from her coma to findher second cousin, Faye, getting cozy with her previous lover Josh,who has amnesia. So Blanche exacts her revenge on Peter themillionaire (who might also have amnesia, just to stir things up atad) by threatening to take baby Sarah, whose father isn’t reallyJosh, but Kevin the milkman — or Enrique the bodybuilder deliveryman — or was it Jared in prison (for killing his sister in a fit ofpassion), whom she used to visit?

So the world turns. So continue the days (hours, years, millennia)of their lives.

The plot thickens, however, with the apparent new breed of soapoperas, the type I observed at the ARC recently. Just when you’regetting used to reading the closed-captioning subtitles, listening toyour MP3 player over the din of the teenybopper music they play thereand running in place on an aluminum frame, you notice that there’s agirl in a huge ice column on the screen. What is this? Then shedisappears.

Now I’m thoroughly confused.

Thanks to the closed captioning, I’m suddenly familiar withBlanche, Zombie Blanche and Witch Blanche talking to Rosalyn aboutthe girl in the pillar of ice. They explain something about havingbroken up couples in ancient Egypt (Antony and Cleopatra, of course).Like that’s supposed to clear things up. Evidently magic has beenadded to the mix of what was heretofore only comprised of sex,violence, deceit, power, allure, mind games, hidden agendas withinhidden agendas, obvious dialogue and a touch of the macabre everyother Wednesday.

I don’t know if I would want my product advertised between thecomatose professions of undying love and the painfully obviousbanter. Perhaps such advertising slots are well-suited for electricalabdominal torture machines (Why even bother with, you know, workingto look decent?), a spray that makes your hair come off (Betterliving through chemistry?) and cleaners that ought to be Level 4biohazards (Sure, it eats through carbon steel, but it gets yourwhites whiter!).

Of course, we are all horrible, ugly people for not using theseproducts. We want to be as uniformly sexy as Jessica and Josh andFaye and the rest, sitting at home all day plotting the demise of ourhalf relatives and old lovers who slighted us, drinking our champagneand having children with the help.

Why do I attack soap operas, you ask? I attack them becausethey’re there. Because I can. Because I can say with full confidencethat there are much better things to be watching on television.

Newton Minow called television “a vast wasteland,” and it isprogramming such as this that underscores his point. What Americaneeds sorely is not 500-channel cable and satellite services. We needto turn off the television and to interact with real people, in reallife. Real people can be more interesting than television, believe itor not. I should know; I am one.

— Scott Simpson is a computer engineering freshman.

–This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of TheDaily Aztec. Send e-mail to letters@thedailyaztec.com.Anonymous letters will not be printed — include your full name,major and year in school.