TV

July 25th, 2006General5 comments

Last night I stretched out on my livingroom floor in front of a whirring box fan and read and thought.

When you want to change something, all you need is consistency. Small, consistent actions lead to huge, seachanging results.

For instance, I read somewhere recently that in order to reduce your TV viewing time, you should only turn the TV on to watch the show you are intending to watch. After you are done, immediately turn it off. Do not channel surf, and do not turn the TV on unless you intend to watch a particular show.

If you have TiVo, this practice is even easier. Turn the TV on, watch a recorded show, then turn it off.

I used to like to have the TV on in the background because the noise and visuals made me feel like there was another person in the room: A loud, often annoying person that would try to sell me things every twelve minutes.

This made me feel less alone.

But I think that this has gotta stop. The well-known problem with TV is that it’s a passive activity. An old saying goes, “Never waste your time by staring at a dog’s butt.”

Thinking about it, watching TV is probably the most passive activity that exists in my life.

Reading is much more interactive because it requires my vivid imagination to bring the novels, short stories, and Dear Penthouse letters to life. Playing Xbox360 is also pretty interactive because it provides various creatures that must be intelligently gunned down.

Even sleeping is more interactive because of my crazy attending-a-lecture-with-no-pants-on dreams.

And writing (or creating anything really) is the inverse of TV’s passivity — it is 100% active, because you are creating something from nothing.

Yeah, see, I’ve thought for a long time that TV gives the illusion of life, just like it gives the illusion of someone else in the room. The mirror in a bird cage. The problem is that you can spend your entire life in front of it, watching other peoples’ lives play on it and never feeling the need to get up and stop farting into the couch.

Yep, no more channel surfing for me. Just gotta be consistent about it.

So anyway, my current favorite TV show is this show called MythBusters on the Discovery Channel.

Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman.

It’s a show in which two beardos take urban legends and test them using scientific experiments and explosions. Here are the things I like about the show:

• It has a high science content.


• There are frequent explosions.


• There’s an Asian guy on the show.


• There’s a cute lady on the show:

Kari Byron.
• The show is shot in the San Francisco Yay Area, home of your humble narrator and the original Rock!


• I like beardo antics.

I like science and I like explosions. This show is my happy place.

One last thing — to figure out whether a TV show is good for you, here’s a useful rule of thumb: Would admitting that you watch it get you beaten up in middle school?

If yes, then it is probably good for you. Watch and enrich your mind.

If no, then it probably only exists to pound your free will into submission, thus making you an easier target for commercials.

For example, Nova, anything on the History Channel, or the Charlie Rose Show will definitely get you beaten up in middle school.

They got rid of Tech TV because it was getting kids killed.