Reading Cim's entries just rubs in how terrible German TV is. Right now, and for the first time since I can remember, there's not a single show that I watch regularly. Desperate Housewives is only playing on a pay channel that we don't get and won't be on regular TV until the fall, Lost is in repeats of the first season with no sign of new episodes anytime soon, and the Six Feet Under website cryptically informs that the next death will occur in 35,250 minutes while also proclaiming new episodes in January. The closest I come to what used to be normal TV spectatorship is a Docu-soap called Frauentausch (woman or wife exchange), in which two women change domestic places for ten days. The idea is so perverse and edges up to so many taboo issues (woman as commodity, spouse trading, etc) that I tune in week after week. Though the show has potential to be interesting, usually all it offers is two women cleaning each other's houses, and complaining about what a poor housekeeper the other is.

I guess it's simply the lack of anything else to watch (and thank god the Soccer World Championship will end soon) that makes me tune in. Though it might also just be a matter of timing—it's scheduled for the night when my husband is out playing rugby with his buds and comes on just after I've gotten the kiddies in bed. Every now and then, though, something really funny happens like the time when the really, really born-again Christian woman from the country visited a fairly normal family in a mid-sized city. By the end of the ninth day she was so freaked out that she could only stand in the middle of the other family's living room swaying and singing to Christian pop-music. This is pretty much as close as we get to rural gothic here.

The thing that I can't really understand is why people want to participate in this kind of program. Why would they expose themselves, their families and their homes to a TV audience just waiting and hoping for something interesting to happen? Usually the only thing these women learn from the experience in another family is the recognition that each one is more at home at home. Occasionally the time away results in a break-up. Living with a strange man shows the woman what a schmuck her own husband is. I have to admit that when the show is over I do feel a bit better about my own life, but I can't imagine ever wanting to be on the program. For me that would be just a little too much stranger intimacy. I prefer to watch strangers exposing themselves,rather than exposing myself (but isn't that what I'm doing right now?).

I have another confession to make. Yesterday I didn't write anything because I couldn't stop playing a math computer game I downloaded for my numerically challenged son. This just proves how desperate I am for entertainment.