Zen and the Art of Watching TV

I’m bored and was thinking about the dismal state of TV for some time, so I‘ve decided to “clear the air” and offer up my vast knowledge of TV viewing for the benefit of all you nice people here….At this place.

I start a typical day by rising early and groping my way to the primary TV set, which is located in the living room. This is a 19” model we purchased some time ago to replace the previous model, which still had buttons and stuff on it placed in the traditional “Tuner” and “Volume” positions. This “New” TV (which is actually old now) has a couple buttons along the bottom that I can never figure out what they do.

So I have to look for the Remote, which is never where I left it but always somewhere else.

Then I punch in the numbers for CNN to see if the world is still intact. If so, it means I have to go to work soon. I look at CNN for awhile and come to the same conclusion as I do everyday…all the important news is being withheld so that we can be informed about the latest weather in Nebraska and the current reason that oil prices are going up. So far I believe it is a combination of 1. Storms in the Gulf of Mexico, 2. The threat of war, 3. The Chinese, 4. The Russians, 5. OPEC, 6. A refinery blowing up in Texas (which is NEVER an act of terrorism) 7 Not enough refineries, 8. Mixing the wrong type of gas for my area of the country, 9. Snow, 10. Too many people headed to the beach, 11. SUVs, 12. Antelopes and grizzly bears in Alaska, 13. The stock market, and so on (there's always a new excuse, today it's because the king of Saudi Arabia died).

Nothing happening here so I switch to MSNBC. This doesn’t last long as the entire morning consists of some idiot called “The I Man” wearing a cowboy hat indoors and laughing like a moron (which is a word he likes to use) about somebody I don’t know.

So I then switch over to TCM and check out an old BW film that has William Crawley (Fred from I Love Lucy) acting tough and pushing people around. This is pretty good so I watch it for 15 minutes, check back at CNN to see if I have to go to work, then I leave.

At night I check CNN, still nothing going on, or conversely something going on, like a bombing somewhere which always brings out 25 experts and 50 eye witnesses that tell you things you already figured out.

So I turn it off and play around on the Internet till I get tired of that then go to bed.


On rare occasions I will actually decide to “find” something to watch. I do this by quickly scanning through the entire basic cable group, which is all I have. Click, click, click, click, and so on. I hardly ever find anything to watch unless I stumble across that Japanese game show deal where all the people fall into water filled ponds and land on their face, back of the neck, or top of the head. This show would never work in the U.S. of A. as every person on the show would sue everyone involved. This is why I watch it.

The other show I stumble on from time to time is The Antique Road Show. This is a great show as there are no commercials (I never watch commercials which pisses my wife off for some reason). Sometime during the show I drift off into a daydream about digging up my old “Freak Brothers” comic collection and showing them to the “toy expert” hippie type dude with the little ponytail. He has them lined up on display right in front there and is telling me about the rare #1 issue with Fat Freddie’s’ Cat pooping in his shoe that I don’t have as mine cost 15 cents and the original went for a dime.

I’m all bummed out when he sez, “However, at the bottom of the pile I noticed this old “Whole Earth Magazine,” (I think that’s what it is, but I don’t really remember and its buried up in the attic somewhere and I’m not going up to look for it.) “This is an extremely hard to find edition, can you tell me where you got it?” “Well”, I say, “I was laying on the floor in the Art Department Sculpting room in my college daze, for some reason, when I noticed it under some clay and old newspapers, so I snatched it up.” “Well that would explain the stains and tiny burn holes all over it.” He chuckles. “This particular issue has the famous “Cornstarch Ad” on the back page where Ken Kesey extols the benefits of cornstarch for the private parts of the male anatomy.” “Do you have any idea how much its worth?” Uh, $300,000 dollars?” I say hopefully.

Just about then I wake up to find out that I had fallen asleep during my “daydream”. There’s a pledge drive going on public TV and the show won’t be back until everyone makes me feel extremely bad about not sending them $225.00 for “free” public TV.

So I shut the thing off and go up stairs to the tiny “Bedroom” TV, stick in a DVD of the Cisco Kid and call it a day.




…….think I’ll go see why the price of oil’s going up today.

 

Hey Hefer,

If you like Sitchin I can suggest some other stuff that I think is better.

Sitchin (I think) tends to speculate a little too much. Very interesting though!