Television is a strange and dangerous beast. Strange, because it confounds expectations, despite never being anything other than predictable. Dangerous because the uneasy comfort it provides is an opiate, a sucking tentacle wrapped around our mind, placating and digesting.
This morning was good. I got up early, ate a bowl of pecan and oats cereal. Had a shower. Teeth brushed, hair (sort of) combed, I sit in front of the computer and progress. For the first time in a while, I feel I'm getting somewhere. Short breaks here and there to read the news never fully interrupt the flow.
Its just after one, and I decide to have lunch. I'll watch a bit of telly, I think. Scrubs is on at half-past, so I'll make my sandwiches to eat then. Kill a bit of time first, and come my appointment with the grey, imposing structure in the living room, I'm sat, food in hand, ready for a thirty minute treat in the middle of a productive day.
Only its never thirty minutes. A tiny bit of channel-hopping and one episode has become three. And I don't even want to be here, its just a sickening compulsion, a hypnotic trance that I slip into, broken only by the lull of a four minute advert break. This in itself is a further ploy; get some crisps, have a banana, put the kettle on, glass of coke. I consume. And then I can't move, I'm just stuck there.
Television can be a wonderful thing. Educational, partisan or unbiased, entertaining, a conduit for information or analysis, a great way to watch films cheaply and easily. But as an accompaniment to eating alone, it is a sweet and sickly poison.
This morning was good. I got up early, ate a bowl of pecan and oats cereal. Had a shower. Teeth brushed, hair (sort of) combed, I sit in front of the computer and progress. For the first time in a while, I feel I'm getting somewhere. Short breaks here and there to read the news never fully interrupt the flow.
Its just after one, and I decide to have lunch. I'll watch a bit of telly, I think. Scrubs is on at half-past, so I'll make my sandwiches to eat then. Kill a bit of time first, and come my appointment with the grey, imposing structure in the living room, I'm sat, food in hand, ready for a thirty minute treat in the middle of a productive day.
Only its never thirty minutes. A tiny bit of channel-hopping and one episode has become three. And I don't even want to be here, its just a sickening compulsion, a hypnotic trance that I slip into, broken only by the lull of a four minute advert break. This in itself is a further ploy; get some crisps, have a banana, put the kettle on, glass of coke. I consume. And then I can't move, I'm just stuck there.
Television can be a wonderful thing. Educational, partisan or unbiased, entertaining, a conduit for information or analysis, a great way to watch films cheaply and easily. But as an accompaniment to eating alone, it is a sweet and sickly poison.
4 comments:
True, and then just to make it worse some bugger worked out how to put television on the internet, thereby presenting me with dilemmas such as 'should I actually write that essay that's due in tomorrow morning or should I watch 3 episodes of Ugly Betty. . .?'
You shouldn't watch Ugly Betty. Ever.
I think you should count yourself lucky that it was only three episodes of the (highly entertaining) Scrubs that you watched. It could have been 90mins worth of the same song, thanks to channel hopping through all the music channels one by one, as I swear they are each delayed by four minutes to allow for said channel hopping so that viewers can find the same song that they know they like. Have you ever noticed how two songs that you like never come on in succession on MTV or TMF??
Yes music channel-hopping is indeed dangerous. Thankfully if you have completely rejected pop music and only watch alternative channels, this limits your options to one or two channels, depending on the time of the day.
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