Destroyed in Seconds - rapidfire thoughts (mostly those of annoyance)

I'm sure you've seen this show on Discovery, where things of various sizes, shapes, and colors, and usually traveling at some speed get obliterated. Or just broken up less spectacularly. The few transient but mostly deep thoughts that flashed through my mind immediately, I present to you in list form:

5. There is no end to the stupidity of people who try stunts. I just saw a guy who tried to jump a steamboat on an ATV. The guy had a 30 foot ramp, and was going at about 40 mph. He needed 80 feet and 70mph to clear the boat. He clipped the top and got tossed a good 70 feet (so he *did* clear the boat, but the landing left much to be desired...). Not to be cowed down by epic failure, he went at it again, this time presumably consulting someone who had passed high school physics. To be safe, they had the boat safely tucked under the ramp, so all he really had to do was stick the landing. For some reason, three-quarters of the way, after having crossed the boat, but still in mid-air, our resident hero decides to let go of his footrests and the handlebars. Gravity is not kind to stupidity. I forget exactly what he broke, but he isn't riding anything again.

4. What about the poor cameraman? This one was about a BASE jumper who floats into a 300ft waterfall and gets his ass savaged by 12,000 gallons of water a minute. You should've heard the guy doing the voice-over talk about the jackass. BASE jumping legend, daredevil, all that stuff. But I kept thinking: what about the other dude who also jumped with this guy? In my opinion, he's the real hero. I mean, you've got a damn camera strapped to your helmet so you look like a jackass, and you've to keep looking at the jumper to make sure that all of it (success or painful failure) gets captured. And you still have to make the damn jump! And yet, the other dude gets all the glory. That's just wrong. Well, to be fair, the dude probably *did* make some money by selling tape to Destroyed in Seconds...

3. I thought Discovery was supposed to be about, you know, DISCOVERY. We've got environmental issues we can talk about, scientific inventions, docmentaries about the Earth and Space, so much other cool stuff. Why the hell are you reducing yourself to playing tape of things getting blown up and boob jobs? (Not all is bad - Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs are truly enjoyable) Still, I feel it's been watered down recently. I guess talking about environmental problems gets you labeled as a dirty hippie channel...

2. Ron Pitts, you have one lousy agent. I feel bad for this guy, have you seen him? To be fair, it's not like he's a superstar; I think he had a below-average football career for a few years and they sent him packing. Point is, you see him only twice during the show; at the start where he says "Welcome to Destroyed in Seconds, where you see stuff getting destroyed in seconds" or some crap like that, and then winds down the show with "This has been Destroyed in Seconds, see you next time." That sucks balls. I mean, that's as bad as Pamela Anderson and Debbe Dunning on Home Improvement ("What time is it? Tool Time!!!"), except that Stills, unlike Ms. Anderson, got those boobs by benching 350 and then stopping 5 years back...

1. Why do we love watching things getting destroyed? I don't get it, I really don't. For 30 minutes, no matter what, we're all reduced to grunting and puntuating explosions on TV with "Aw Jeez" or "What the F**K!!??" or "did you SEE THAT?!?!" even though we're all alone in front of the TV. Well, being male and drinking beer exacerbates this, but being male and drinking beer exacerbates a lot of things, so that might not be a factor. So why do we find something so inane, so vacuous, so breathtakingly POINTLESS, entertaining? Does this say something about our race? About society? About today's media and how it has conditioned us?

I don't know. You tell me.