Washington, DC The hearings to confirm Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor have become so long, overwrought and boring that many cable subsscribers have decided to cancel their subscriptions and throw away their televisions.
A Neilson poll showed that a small minority, 3%, have even gone as far as to research the anesthesia drug propofol as a means to escape the monotony.
Said an executive from CNN, "We can't control the news. If there was something that we thought might keep the public from falling into a coma, like gay penguins in the San Francisco zoo, well, we throw it out there. Unfortunately, these types of distractions have been few and far between this week. We seriously hope another celebrity kicks the bucket so that we can move on to another story."
To give you some idea how boring the hearings have become to the average american, prisoners in ADX Florence, Florence, Colorado, the only 'Supermax' prison in the United States, have taken to shutting off their televisions and performing shadow puppet shows on the blank screens.
"I've almost come to the point where I wouldn't mind a prison riot," said one prison guard. "To see grown men performing shadow puppet shows is mentally debilitating.