you're watching afn

I've been watching a lot of TV lately, basically because summer is the only season that I have the spare time.

Watching TV here necessarily means watching AFN. We have like, 15 channels, which isn't bad, but they're pretty bizarre channels. Although, as long as I can get my fill of Law and Order SVU and trashy movies (currently watching: The House Bunny), I'm solid.

The commercials are all military-interest, which means they're all low budget and fairly strange. They advertise things like army chaplains or online courses or saving water, and they use comic sans ms with zero irony.

(There is, of course, a time and a place for Comic Sans MS. That time is 2008, and the place is my AIM default font, in magenta. That is all.)

I'd say the most bizarre part of all of this though are the ads that sort of, declare the channel. You know the ones, that are like, "You're watching this channel!" which are completely redundant, by the way, because who doesn't know what channel they're watching these days?

Anyway, they have these ads that I can only describe as absurdist.

Example 1:

A man is standing far away in a field. He runs up to the camera (stationary) and, panting, says "You're watching AFN!"

Example 2:

A man in a military uniform says something incomprehensible and then says "and you're watching AFN." There's a subtitle at the bottom of the screen, and it says, "whattheheckisthisguysaying?"

Example 3:

A man (dressed in plain clothes) approaches a man in a scuba suit and asks him, "Hey, which way to the commissary?" The scuba man says, "It's just that way," and the normal man thanks him and he's on his way. And then the scuba man faces the camera and says, "You're watching AFN!"

Just try to make sense of this.

Love always,

Clara