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December 27, 2005I've got a bone to pick with TV...
I was reading a little bit of Kobo Abe's "The Box Man" a few minutes ago, and the protagonist talks about how he used to be addicted to news. On the TV, via radio, in the newspaper--take your pick. He talks about how he eventually gave it up, and how it wasn't all that hard.
That got me to thinking about TV. I own a TV, as living without one would render my DVD player pretty moot, but I haven't lived in a house with a fully-functioning TV for over two years now--and truth be told, I don't miss it. Even when I was living at home those two years while I was teaching high school, most of what I watched was news programming or political punditry on MSNBC. And I never really had a taste for sitcoms.
No more TV, you guys. Seriously. FOX strangled "Firefly" (which I finally caught on DVD) in the crib, and you're never, ever going to get caught up with what the hell's happening on "Lost". No more crass reality TV. No more wife-swapping or plastic surgery or harem-"Survivor" or any of that crap.
Read a book. Take a foreign language class at your local JC. Go on a walk with no practical destination--no running of errands on the walk. Just go.
TV is the sugar coating with which the networks wrap their commercials. And folks across the globe are paying for the opportunity to watch said commercials with half-hour and hour-long chunks of their lives that they'll never get back.
J'accuse, Monsieur Television. J'accuse.
This isn't to suggest that I don't ever waste time. I can idle away an afternoon with the best of them. But there's something about TV and so many people's unwittingly terminal-stage relationship that makes me feel tired and sad. Like that old Celtic legend where the animals and people are sitting in a cave, listening in rapt attention as the wind blows through an enchanted harp's sole remaining string. The hero sunders the string and the animals and people attack him, enraged, because the enchantment has been broken and they've realized all at once that they've been dead for years.
Of course, anime and video games are my bread and butter. Feel free to point out my obvious hypocrisy. :)
Posted by patrick at December 27, 2005 12:07 AM
CommentsSays the guy making his living from TV...
That hyprocrisy?
Posted by: Ashley at December 27, 2005 03:15 AM
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