Television. The scourge of modern society. Once having given up this carnival of souls it seems odd that one would reenter the realm of what is affectionately referred to as "the idiot box." But that is exactly what I did.
It was about a year ago now that television once again invaded the sanctity of my castle. Like many of my decisions, including the one that caused me to begin the off the air experiment, this one was partly financial. You see, the NFL football season had started and I gots to watch my Cowboys. Well, with no TV reception, this was a major problem. I did manage to stream one game off the internet, but the rest of them had to be watched "off-campus." Meaning I had to either barge-in at a friend's house and risk severing the tenuous bonds of friendship by making a nuisance of myself or go to a sports bar to watch the game.
I chose the latter because I have so few friends as it is and the sports bar scene held the promise of better atmosphere, not to mention cute young waitresses in tight, sexy outfits. This is where the financial part of the decision came in. Because one has to spend money to hang out at a sports bar for 3+ hours and, because the irresistable Mrs. B tagged along, I found I was spending as much as $30 or more per game. Since the NFL plays once a week, that's about $120 a month just to watch football.
I decided, screw this. I mean, I like football, but come on. I can get a really mamma-jamma cable package for $120 a month, and get to watch more than a football game every Sunday (think Skin-emax). So, not wanting to feel like a complete failure after only 3 months of TV-lessness, and to still save some dough, I went for the cheapest basic cable package available. This consisted of all the locally available channels plus WGN and Bravo. Not much to get excited about, but at $20 a month it was a heck of a lot cheaper than any of the sports bars and still made the NFL and other sports available to me. Of course, I had to give up the slatternly dressed waitresses. But, hey, if I want to look at barely-dressed, hot girls, that's what the internet is for. Right?
The basic cable thing lasted until June of this year when, due to the World Cup (soccer) starting in South Africa, I had to get digital cable with DVR to be able to watch all the games. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. And so do I.
Anyway, that's where we stand today. I have become a television junkie again. It is so easy to become spoiled by things like pausing and rewinding live television. I mean, isn't that just the coolest?
I know what you are thinking. The experiment was a collossal failure. No, I don't agree. Back in the 80's, there used to be this college professor who hosted a 30-minute show about physics on the local PBS station here in Dallas. His name was Julius-something I think and he had hair like Einstein and was obviously very passionate about his trade. He would perform little experiments and then talk about the results. Whenever he got an unanticipated result to an experiment, he would always caution the student that the experiment did not fail. It was just that the parameters were not sufficient to acheive the desired result. That is how I feel about this. Well, ok, not really. Actually, I got the results I wanted. I lived without television reception for 3 months and got along just fine. There was very little that I missed at all. So, in that sense the desired result was acheived and the experiment a success all around. The only failure was my inability, or rather my unwillingness, to keep the experiment going.
Well, I think I'm starting to ramble a bit, so I guess I should end this post. Besides, TNT is having a Law & Order marathon that I just can't miss.
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