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I hit the mute button and stand up from my comfy chair, stretching, and wander into the kitchen, eyeing the fridge. Swinging the metallic doors open, I cast my eyes over the shelves: cheese, expired. Milk, expired. Sauces and relishes, probably expired too.

Cider it is, I guess.

Walking a little awkwardly (my legs are still half asleep) back through to the TV, I sit back down, opening the cider and taking a sip before setting it down on the table beside me, missing the coasters entirely but not really caring. I returned half way through an infomercial for ceramic knives.

A youthful brunette woman stands in two thirds of a kitchen, slicing up a chunk of raw meat dripping with blood. The set is dimly lit, the outline of cupboards and counters barely visible in the background, but she's standing in a spotlight, harsh shadows highlighting a set of ceramic knives with shining black blades and dull silver handles. Sliding the chopping board to one side, she picks up a stack of paper. At first, it appears to be blank, but at second glance I notice it's a stack of documents of some kind. They don't look like the standard fare for an infomercial. If anything, they looked like bank statements. I've seen this kind of infomercial before, and usually they slice through the edge of the paper, chopping off one of the corners. However, this woman sliced clean through the middle of the paper at an odd angle, not quite diagonal from corner to corner, and shoves them back off-camera, a little angrily. Her fury builds as she pulls the meat back on screen, discarding the black-bladed chef's knife and pulling a cleaver from the block beside her. She hacks and chops viciously at the slab of what presumably used to be a cow, slowly beginning to smile. There's a glint of madness in her eyes, something frenzied about her movements as she picks up a vegetable knife with her free hand, shredding the meat with both knives at once.

Slowly, her feeding frenzy dies down. Out of sheer curiosity, I reach for the remote, tapping the mute button. The woman talks about how the knives are sharper than steel and don't blunt as easily, how they don't shatter, and my mind wanders to the oh-so-familiar fact that I'm probably the only person on the planet who can't skip these things, or at the very least fast forward them. Still, I guess I don't really mind; it gives me time to grab a drink, maybe go to the bathroom, all without missing anything.

The infomercial ends, and a commercial for women's clothing begins. Yawning, I go for the mute button again and make my way to the bathroom. Coming back, I catch the end of a commercial for hair dye, and the entirety of one for makeup:

A woman, also brunette, applies mascara in front of a mirror in a well-lit, almost harshly lit, close-up. Her hands are shaking, and black goo drips from the brush across her slightly tear-stained face. The camera zooms out as her grip on the brush tightens and a smile twists across her face. She hurls the brush at a mirror, her still shaking hands snatching at lipstick, roughly applying it to her lips as a deranged smile plays across them. She appears to be saying something, and I take it off mute to discover she's talking in a distraught, high-pitched whisper, unintelligible apart from the occasional exclamation of 'with her?' and 'how could he!' and wordless exclamations of fury. The camera zooms out more, and she angrily sweeps several other cosmetic products off a counter in front of her and they clatter into the sink, smashing bottles as skin-coloured goo blends with powder and more mascara, dripping slowly and steadily into the sink as tears fall...

Once again, the commercial ends, a logo half-heartedly flashing up on screen. I take a sip of my cider, the harsh apple flavour biting my tongue, as the show starts back up. I settle in for a while.

About half an hour later with little else to do, I switch over to the +1 channel. These things are handy, I guess; that said, I'm still in the minority that watches them rather than recording a show or just watching it online. I reach the episode I was watching earlier, finishing the last of my cider as the next one starts. Setting it back on the table, I knock the remote to the floor.

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