Television? Meh.

In the past few years I have had a love-hate relationship with my television.  The major thing is that not only is television a highly passive form of entertainment, it is also addicting.  You can be entertained for an infinite period of time without moving any muscles other than your thumb, to change channels.  I hate this.  I'll be bored, so I'll sit down and say "okay, let's watch a show for an hour." Four hours later, my eyes are glazed as I watch re-runs of Psych while laying in a poodle of my own drool.   Then I realize that I have completely wasted four hours, and have a really strong urge to punch something (but I usually do not, for I am a pansy).

But I will keep on watching TV, mostly because of a few shows that I could not live without.  My solution is thus: I now will only watch TV if a show I already like or really want to check out is on.  That way, with some amount of structure, I'm less likely to become a drool-saturated lump again.  This puts a BIG limit on television time, mostly because, honestly, most programming nowadays is absolute crap.  /Begin Elitist Rant.  Call me cynical, but most of what I see are "quirky and modern" sitcoms that are differentiated from old sitcoms solely by more racial diversity and the insertion of at least one token gay man (not that there's anything wrong with that; it's just that the ratio of gay characters on TV is significantly higher than that of gays in real life).  If it doesn't fall into that category, it's probably either a mildly-disturbing reality show or a ridiculously-high-budget sci-fi with no originality.  Ew.  Everything on TV nowadays just follows a few simple formulas, because  they work, on all the shallow-minded sheeple that now populate the world.   ...Okay.  /Rant Over.  But I am loyal the few shows that I enjoy, so I still watch TV for those.

I am simply not a fan of passive entertainment.  I mean, I enjoy the internet, but one has more control web-surfing than one does channel-surfing.  I don't really want an hour of addictive nothingness crammed down my throat. I much prefer hours and hours of addictive nothingness that I can marginally control because I CAN QUIT ANY TIME.  I swear.  Totally.  Any time.  Besides, this is America!  I can choose exactly how, when, and where I want to be entertained, darn it!

...I have no idea what happened to this post.  I am genuinely sorry.  I'm sure there's at least 150 usable, insightful words in there somewhere.