Oh, but I’m a pearl in the ad world. Each day, says the marketing world, men and women are working diligently to ensure that of all the billions of people on the planet I should be the happiest omphaloskepsic in the world-- Hydroxitcut wants me to feel great! while Bowflex will help me find a size that fits my lifestyle for as little as $35 a month. AIG Direct is alarmed that I may be overpaying as much as $364.46 for health insurance, and if this has a deleterious effect on my joints then Synvisc promises to provide up to 6 months of pain relief. Ericsson demands that I “make myself heard”, as its very important, J.G. Wentworth is out there fighting because “its my money and I need it now!” while J.K. Harris works hard to keep me off the back-taxes treadmill. I’m a beautiful swan undeserving of acne, according to ProActiv, a gorgeous madonna for whom Juviderm is in business to keep the laugh lines at bay. There are thousands of agents in every field from cosmetics to insurance at my disposal because I am a smart, beautiful, hard working, important individual whose existence is crucial to theirs. Why, then, does not television make us the happiest people in the world? Look at us, kings we are with a royal toe in the jester’s mouth, yet not one of these sycophants has managed to make either one of us happy. It tells jokes! Its got Cartman rubbing his dick in the butter and says “Je-hew”. Its got Borat walking around in green speedos and little Japanese boys eating garbage. Compare television to everyone else in your life and you’ll find that it is she, not them, that’s always been there since grade school; she's never lied, stolen, or cheated on you with the neighbor, a fixture as solid as Stonehenge her mood never changes. In fact, she was the only one playing happy commercial jingles when the towers went down in New York. Its been said that television is addictive, but in what sense exactly? In 2006, Nielsen Media Research revealed that the average American watches about 4 hours and 35 minutes of television every day; this amounts to about 23 hours per working week. Now, the average person, working 8 hours per day, has roughly 5 hours of free time after work, which means he has 25 hours of free time per week. The average man, therefore, spends 23 out of those 25 hours he is not working in front of the television– that’s over 90% of his time practically lying in one spot where if he wasn’t blinking he’d be virtually motionless. Its this addiction that has experts calling television a drug, but its not one in the sense that crack or cocaine is a drug, or for that matter Tylenol. Cocaine thrusts us into the savage wilds of euphoria before dumping us off again while Tylenol helps us feel better. I’ve been a tele-whore for the past year and have found that television is more like an antidepressant; we turn it on and leave it as background noise, providing a constant dose of it dripping into our systems. We administer ourselves with it the same way we do Paxil or Prozac, a prescription measured in years, as any lunatic knows that one single pill will not fix anything. It makes you feel less sad, not happier, than you actually do. Point is, television is not there to make you feel anything. Just the opposite- you use it to maim boredom, anxieties and fears; for the course of an hour, Lucy Ricardo will silence the mental fishwife that knows you’re a failure, Oprah will lull the shame of weight gain, Family Guy the pain of bad marriage; it’s the most effective way a man can lie to himself about not closing his eyes to his problems as he’s keeping his eyes wide open for TV. No wonder Burger King promising I have it my way isn’t uplifting- the average person watching television is a desensitized mold; like the antidepressant, that little box on your furniture will flatten any feelings of pain or anxiety, or for that matter any feelings at all so that all that is left of you is a fungus decomposing organic matter on the couch. Everything about television is predictable and harmless and requires that her victim be also; her cheerful lull at 3 in the morning is exactly the same one you heard in the afternoon, and the gaping maw that your face and mind becomes when you’re watching her is just as predictable. Because programs are emptied of useful information and amputated to the familiar and brief, so too must the human mind be pillaged when watching it. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! See? In other words: you and her are, like the fungus rotting through cheese, in a symbiotic relationship with each other. Pity the soul that seeks to wake up again and here I am trying; I’ve watched more televison in the past year than your average grade-schooler and have little to show for it outside of self-loathing. The impetus? You guessed it, lads and lassies: depression. I hate that one episode of Girls Next Door was not a deterrent to watching 10 more. I hate that I know all their names and can, like the lumpenproletariat, tell you what Holly’s nickname for Heff is. I hate that Nicci not getting thrown off Top Chef yet pisses me off. I hate that I can no longer smell the perfumes of Shakespeare as well as I can the grease of fried chicken. The soigne of prose; I hate that it took me so long to remember such a pretty word, ‘soigne’, which I used to glaze on my poetic dumplings. There is always that faint sound of panting as a mind that’s gone to fat is sent scampering to think again; mine is a Sumo, wearing a bib, and he’s angry that I’m making him fetch again. You think slower, you write slower; you are literally lugging from one thought to another and just finding a word for the moment is frustrating as by the time its been found...... the thought that invoked it has passed. Its as if the calories from televised food are magically transported as well so that the mind literally goes fat. It was Nietzsche who thought this stupidity is what makes men happy: (Untimely Meditations, part I) Yet it will be Nietzsche who would turn in his grave were he told that this thing we call television is so powerful it literally makes mold from men; he’d be forced to revise his definition of happiness. A cow at least has the impetus to move when its raining while the man gaping through a window at the Super Bowl would barely notice that his shirt was soaking. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a bladder to empty and you have to go spore for something shorter to read as Madamme Television has supplanted your reading affinities.
Nietzsche also said "Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity." And Marx who said "Religion is the opiate of the masses." I think those two great minds would agree with me when I say that Television has become the greatest narcotic yet! Off all the drugs I have done/used and abused, non has numbed my problems more than Television!
I almost wish it worked that way for me... I find most of it reminds me of the time I tried eating a dog biscuit to see why pooches seemed so eager to get the damned things. It wasn't that it had an unappetizing flavor, but rather that it had almost none at all which left me wondering about its appeal.
Ignore the "programs" - just watch the commercials. They at least display a bit of craftsmanship from time to time.
Gah, poppycock. Maybe it's just that Seppo telly is neutered, formulaic rubbish. And, of course, one shoudn't overdo it - moderation in all things; sunlight is the best disinfectant™; drug use, not drug abuse, etc. I vividly remember Dr. Hilary informing me once that too much excitement is bad for me and that boredom helps me live longer - advice that I took literally to heart. It's weird cuz I was in the middle of a parachute jump at the time and, feeling at 'a bit of a loose end' in between leaving the plane and hitting the ground - as you do - I switched on my mini-TV and was thereupon transfixed by Dr. Hil's soothing tones and impeccable bedside manner. His good advice struck home and, upon splashdown, I immediately sold my all my Xtreme Sports equipment and bought myself an 84" gogglebox. I have basked in the cathode rays ever since and, I'm pleased to say, my heartrate is now as stable and reliable as a Swiss watch. I think there's a lesson in this for us all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZR04dp7QSk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otZqFMmebx8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENlJB9gDs4g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0GxUxKZdHk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvyX-CwHpAQ
Do not worry. Internet will soon overtake TV. Some call TV "the technologic Anti-christ" Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
It isn't necessarily watching television that causes this slowness. This slowness could also be due to becoming more precise, more attentive - being more precise, more attentive, there tends to be less to say, and what one does say carries more weight in one's own perspective. From personal experience, watching a lot of television can make one more attentive, be better able to pay attention, relativize one's preconceived notions (hence the slowness). The problem is that the contents that are offered in this attention exercise via television often are not worth much, while one doesn't have anything better of one's own either. Watching television can make one realize that there is something vital missing in one's life -and I mean really vital, not what television says is "vital"-, make one connect to the primeval existential angst - and it is this angst, and not knowing how to overcome it successfully that gets one down. And then one needs a drug -like television- to lull this angst back to sleep. And then television wakes it up again -and you give it more television to lull it back to sleep. And son on, until something terrible happens, but by then, you are already so exhausted and so deep in trouble that it seems impossible to ever get back to the surface and breathe some fresh air.
Ooh, those seconds and minutes, those endless, interminable hours. How to fill them, how to fill them. Tick tock, quoth the clock. So I smashed my TV screen and peered inside... and there was nobody there.
I liked Female Fear Factor when it was on. That's the ultimate feel good trash TV, IMO. Everything else is boring as hell. Gendanken, maybe it would be healthier if you switched from TV to pot?
Television for the masses is quite a different thing from television for thinkers-cum-neurotic. The thing that appeals to television, to the thinker-in-straits, is its quick-fix attributes: But there's also something else that's subliminally discovered along the way: the maintenance of a sense for continuity—and although vaguely appreciated, also a place to cast anchor. Except that… …the comedown from after turning the set off is so subtle, that the void one wished to divert returns to full tilt. And also, there's something else: self-depreciation: intellectual and creative suicide.
