Pass Me That Crack-Pipe, Sister

So this week is apparently TV Turnoff Week.

Which got me thinking about how much tv I watch each week.

Which got me thinking about WHY I watch the tv I watch each week.

Which got me thinking about whether it's necessarily a bad thing to watch tv a couple hours each day.

Which got me thinking about whether I'm addicted and those are just the rationalizations of an addict.

Which got me thinking about whether I could give it up for a week.

Which all got me realizing this:

I think I am addicted.

Once I started thinking about NOT watching it all week, despite feeling a sense of strange and buouyant freedom, I immediately thought to myself: Well, what about The Office though? Should I allow that little 1/2 an hour of pleasure to squeak in there or would that defeat the purpose of boycotting? And then I felt the familiar cravings wash back over me: to see the bastardly smirk of David Caruso and to watch him slowly put on his sunglasses, to listen to Michael Scott say something that makes me feel horribly uncomfortable but later redeem himself by doing something obliviously kind-hearted, to listen to Judge Judy chew out some dumbass for being a dumbass. *Jittering and smacking at the crook of my arm out of habit*

It's kind of sick, yes.

But is it really THAT bad, given that I only watch an hour or two a day?

I mean, I know there are those of you who will respond smugly to this question always and forevermore with a "Well, I don't watch tv at ALL. In fact, I don't even own one." And to you I say congrats and fuck off.

I mean, I give folks without a television lots of credit. But just because you don't have a tv doesn't mean that you're not just as big a waste of non-functioning, purposeless blobbiness as those of us who do. If you are FILLING that time with great acts of awesomeness, then all the more power to you. Seriously. You are my hero and all that. But, shit, most of the time when folks say that, I don't see them out saving babies from raging floodwaters or painting great landscapes that are being immortalized on the walls of museums or kayaking through rivers yet untouched by human hands. Most of you are doing something perhaps JUST AS GODDAMN USELESS (or, perhaps, one might argue, just as wonderfully potent and amazing) in the grand scheme of things: playing on the computer. fucking. eating something. drinking beer. going for a walk. partying. etc.

So don't be smug is all I'm saying.

Yes, I own a television. It is large, and it is square. Yes, I own a dvd player, and hell-fucking-no I would never ever ever give up watching dvds. Even for a week. (I'm sorry, folks, but film is good. Film is art. TV, now that's debatable. (At least when it comes to CSI Miami.)) And yes, I watch one or two hours of garbage-television a night. But I do so after returning home at 9 or 9:30, having been gone since 6:15 am, having spent 10.5 hours at work, and having crammed my brain with juicy bits of knowledge for another 2 or 3 afterwards.

I'm drained.

And the last thing I have the ability to do when I come home is read, which is typically my television-alternative. My brain is fried.

That, and I'm just so busy that reading is kinda like weaving a spider web in the crook of a jet-plane. I only am able to grab a quick read here and there, with many large gaps of non-reading time falling in between, so hanging on to a semblance of plot, feeling caught up in the book rather than like I have to stop every short chunk of words to do one of the 1500 other things I need to do, all of these make reading a tenuous effort that, more often than not lately, doesn't stand up against the speed of the wind.

And I say that not as an excuse. I know I have no need to excuse myself, and most of you who know me would agree, because I am a GODDAMN VORACIOUS MOTHERF-ING READER when I have the time. Man alive. When I've got a week or two free, I go through books like beer on a hot and lustful summer's day. They are a pleasurable addiction, and one that I am more than happy to feed.

Maybe this is partially why I can't bear to crack a book when I'm so busy--it just doesn't seem right to the book, to the writer, to the story that I can't give it my undivided attention. And it doesn't seem fair to me to not allow myself to enjoy a book the way I would when I have bounties of free time.

So television. It has become The Answer.

It is the beer at the end of a long, not so lustful, not so humid, mostly just stressful and flaccid and tiring sort of day.

And to me, this is a fairly good reason to turn to television.

But I still don't like it.

And perhaps this self-reflection has revealed to me that I really just need to find other things to do instead. Perhaps I need to not look to reading as the only alternative. And perhaps the spring will afford me a bit more of this opportunity.

But when I don't get home until 9 or 9:30. When I have to get back up again at 5:30 am. When most of my friends are home getting ready for bed (old-fogey nerds!) or aren't around. When I am tired and my coffee-wave is dissipating. When my brain seems to be humming AWAH AWAH AWAH AWAH over and over indiscernibly. When I'm half-drooling and can barely peel myself from the couch. It's hard to not look at the television as a good friend, one that'll make me that cup of tea and some peanut-butter toast so that I don't have to do it myself. One that will TELL me its themes, will SHOW me its images, instead of making me create my own out of thin air and a little bit of spit and wax.

So yeah. There was probably a point in all this rambling somewhere, one along the lines of "yes, addiction--no, not unexcusable--yes, I wish it were different--no, I probably won't boycott" but fuck--what can I say, all that tv-watching has fried my brains and left my mind wandering like that fucking weak signal that makes me spend five minutes trying to jam my antenna into various concoctions of modern art in order to let that technology, that hot fierce sexy speed of digitalness, that oh fuck me fuck me tube of glowing lightness deliver that delicious surge to my veins and let it course through me again, oh yes. Fuck yes. Just like that. Just like that.

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