Ahem...
Ladies and Gentlemen, can I get real wit’ y’all for a second?
I understand that underdog Kris Allen knocked Adam Lambert out of the Winner’s Circle in a vocal fight to the death of epic proportions to take the 8th American Idol Title. I understand that there is trouble a’brewing on John and Kate Plus 8 involving a possible marital affair, which is SO CRAZY because who would have thought that a man with a Nazi wife and 8 little mouths to feed would be unhappy with his Reality TV life and look elsewhere for a little lovin’? And no doubt, I get that NOT tuning in to Desperate Housewives to get the latest scoop on Katherine Mayfair's puzzling return to Wisteria Lane and the true identity of her suspiciously amnesia-prone daughter, Dylan would be synonymous with waterboarding the 8 Gosselin kids while giving a beej to John Gosselin himself, but for the love of god people…
TURN OFF YOUR DAMN TELEVISIONS!
There is a whole, big world out there that’s just waiting to be explored and experienced. Granted, the people are fatter and uglier and the dialogue is generally slower and involves a lot of monosyllabic grunting, but it’s there, none the less. It has fresh air. And plants and animals. It even has live, real-time interaction with people in your immediate vicinity – and no subscription to Verizon is necessary. It’s FREE, people. FREE!
All it requires is that you turn the TV off, get off the couch, open the door, and walk outside. (Don’t be afraid of the bright light: it’s just the Sun. It won’t hurt you)
Look, we all know how good it feels use as energy as possible. There are many times when all of us, myself included, feel the need to slow every physical and mental process down to a near-hibernatory state, save for the movement of your appendages to deliver delicious chips from the bag to your mouth. I’ll be the first to admit; vegetative states are AWESOME.
BUT…I think it’s safe to say that a vegetative state does not constitute as actually living your life. If it did, this whole “pulling the plug” debate would not be such a hot topic in hospitals:
“Mr. and Mrs. Jones, I have some wonderful news. We managed to save your son. He is now being kept alive on a ventilator and feeding tubes, so it looks like he’s going to go on and live a full and productive life.”
“Oh, thank you doctor! Thank you for giving my son his life back!”
“Don’t thank me. Thank the wonderful men and women who create invaluable medical education materials on topics such as hospital-associated diarrhea and cytomegalovirus. I couldn’t have done it without them”
/scene
It’s not that I hate television. How else would I know what an exploding watermelon looks like in slow motion without the quality programming of the Discovery Channel? What I hate is this whole culture that has sprung up around it. Watching TV has morphed from a past-time into a lifestyle. I can’t tell you how many of my coworkers come to work each and every day to discuss the shows that were aired the night before. I even heard a radio announcer comment, between songs, that he was happy that American Idol was finished because he now had “his life back” after devoting 2 hours, 2-3 nights a week to the show.
Uh, dude. Get a life, indeed.
Call me old-fashioned, but I simply can’t justify spending the few hours I have between working and sleeping killing brain cells with mindless television (unless I’m hung-over, at which point watching TV and vomiting is exactly what the doctor ordered). Sure, I have laundry to do and a house to clean and a puppy to wrangle, but even if I didn’t, you can be sure that the majority of my time would be filled with other things. Like exercising. And gardening. And painting. And reading.
The thing is, when I’m old and crazy, I want to have a million memories to sift through when I’m not busy throwing a bed-pan at my nurse or telling my family that the nurses drug me to steal my money. And I don’t want those memories to be about the various goings-on of a thousand TV shows. To make memories, you have to go out and experience life in the flesh and not on a screen. I think people are forgetting this. They’re not investing in their life by going out and living it. Instead, they are content to get through the day expending as little energy (physical AND mental) as possible with the mindset that “free time means TV time.”
…Crikey, I think I just developed a slogan. Better copyright that bad boy before Comcast takes it…
And then we wonder why our children have problems like ADD and autism. Now, I am in no way, shape, or form suggesting that these conditions aren’t serious, medical diseases. Nor am I suggesting that television is the direct cause of these disorders. BUT…when it’s been shown that autism is associated with uninhibited firing of neurons, how can you not think that perhaps television, with its overstimulatory output of flashing lights and colors, is maybe not the best thing for children when taken in large quantities? Just food for thought…
I guess the bottom line is that people seem to be substituting their own lives for the lives shown on TV. They are living in a world that is project on a screen, where too often the masses pick the programming and the lowest common denominator wins every time.
So, on that note, I leave you with the sage commentary of Calvin and Hobbes author Bill Watterson:
I understand that underdog Kris Allen knocked Adam Lambert out of the Winner’s Circle in a vocal fight to the death of epic proportions to take the 8th American Idol Title. I understand that there is trouble a’brewing on John and Kate Plus 8 involving a possible marital affair, which is SO CRAZY because who would have thought that a man with a Nazi wife and 8 little mouths to feed would be unhappy with his Reality TV life and look elsewhere for a little lovin’? And no doubt, I get that NOT tuning in to Desperate Housewives to get the latest scoop on Katherine Mayfair's puzzling return to Wisteria Lane and the true identity of her suspiciously amnesia-prone daughter, Dylan would be synonymous with waterboarding the 8 Gosselin kids while giving a beej to John Gosselin himself, but for the love of god people…
TURN OFF YOUR DAMN TELEVISIONS!
There is a whole, big world out there that’s just waiting to be explored and experienced. Granted, the people are fatter and uglier and the dialogue is generally slower and involves a lot of monosyllabic grunting, but it’s there, none the less. It has fresh air. And plants and animals. It even has live, real-time interaction with people in your immediate vicinity – and no subscription to Verizon is necessary. It’s FREE, people. FREE!
All it requires is that you turn the TV off, get off the couch, open the door, and walk outside. (Don’t be afraid of the bright light: it’s just the Sun. It won’t hurt you)
Look, we all know how good it feels use as energy as possible. There are many times when all of us, myself included, feel the need to slow every physical and mental process down to a near-hibernatory state, save for the movement of your appendages to deliver delicious chips from the bag to your mouth. I’ll be the first to admit; vegetative states are AWESOME.
BUT…I think it’s safe to say that a vegetative state does not constitute as actually living your life. If it did, this whole “pulling the plug” debate would not be such a hot topic in hospitals:
“Mr. and Mrs. Jones, I have some wonderful news. We managed to save your son. He is now being kept alive on a ventilator and feeding tubes, so it looks like he’s going to go on and live a full and productive life.”
“Oh, thank you doctor! Thank you for giving my son his life back!”
“Don’t thank me. Thank the wonderful men and women who create invaluable medical education materials on topics such as hospital-associated diarrhea and cytomegalovirus. I couldn’t have done it without them”
/scene
It’s not that I hate television. How else would I know what an exploding watermelon looks like in slow motion without the quality programming of the Discovery Channel? What I hate is this whole culture that has sprung up around it. Watching TV has morphed from a past-time into a lifestyle. I can’t tell you how many of my coworkers come to work each and every day to discuss the shows that were aired the night before. I even heard a radio announcer comment, between songs, that he was happy that American Idol was finished because he now had “his life back” after devoting 2 hours, 2-3 nights a week to the show.
Uh, dude. Get a life, indeed.
Call me old-fashioned, but I simply can’t justify spending the few hours I have between working and sleeping killing brain cells with mindless television (unless I’m hung-over, at which point watching TV and vomiting is exactly what the doctor ordered). Sure, I have laundry to do and a house to clean and a puppy to wrangle, but even if I didn’t, you can be sure that the majority of my time would be filled with other things. Like exercising. And gardening. And painting. And reading.
The thing is, when I’m old and crazy, I want to have a million memories to sift through when I’m not busy throwing a bed-pan at my nurse or telling my family that the nurses drug me to steal my money. And I don’t want those memories to be about the various goings-on of a thousand TV shows. To make memories, you have to go out and experience life in the flesh and not on a screen. I think people are forgetting this. They’re not investing in their life by going out and living it. Instead, they are content to get through the day expending as little energy (physical AND mental) as possible with the mindset that “free time means TV time.”
…Crikey, I think I just developed a slogan. Better copyright that bad boy before Comcast takes it…
And then we wonder why our children have problems like ADD and autism. Now, I am in no way, shape, or form suggesting that these conditions aren’t serious, medical diseases. Nor am I suggesting that television is the direct cause of these disorders. BUT…when it’s been shown that autism is associated with uninhibited firing of neurons, how can you not think that perhaps television, with its overstimulatory output of flashing lights and colors, is maybe not the best thing for children when taken in large quantities? Just food for thought…
I guess the bottom line is that people seem to be substituting their own lives for the lives shown on TV. They are living in a world that is project on a screen, where too often the masses pick the programming and the lowest common denominator wins every time.
So, on that note, I leave you with the sage commentary of Calvin and Hobbes author Bill Watterson:
2 comments:
You're 100% right!! That's why I don't watch TV...except for Lost.
...OK except for Lost and House but that's it... No. Lost, House and 24 but that's REALLY it. Wait... Lost, House, 24 and Southland and sometimes The Office and 30 Rock, but that's it! I swear (well maybe Heros too).. Damn, I suck....
Can I just say... thank you?! I've been thinking a lot about this lately too (in fact I have a post in my drafts folder on it) and how freaking ridiculous it is that television is ALL. I. EVER. HEAR. ABOUT. For real. And then I go blog-surfing and it's all over there too. I don't own a television or have cable, and it leaves me feeling very disconnected from the rest of the world indeed. And I think that's sad. Because there are so many more important, interesting conversations we could be having.
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