Spend some quality time with the TV

Spend some quality time with the TV
The other day I had a moment to pause and reflect, and I really
tried to do it. I would not dwell on past mistakes. I would not
consider what mistakes lay ahead. I would live in the moment.
Spend some quality time with the TV

The other day I had a moment to pause and reflect, and I really tried to do it. I would not dwell on past mistakes. I would not consider what mistakes lay ahead. I would live in the moment.

After a few minutes of living in the now, I decided to watch television. When I turned the set on, two lesbians were throwing hunks of ice at each other in a television studio. The host of the show said “we’re having a lesbian snowball fight.”

  The lesbian snowball fight then became a brawl. There were hard feelings. Hair pulling. Then a young woman stood before the host and said “my father needs to close his eyes while I show  my boobs.”

  I said to myself: “this beats the heck out of pausing to reflect.”

  The station then went to a commercial about toothpaste. A noted celebrity played with her baby and said the toothpaste “fights germs for 12 hours.” There was also a commercial where a man talks about a car and says “a wiper that talks, that says a lot.”

  I’m pretty sure that TV is ruining everything. It has to be making us really dumb. We’re busy watching lesbian snowball fights when we should be reading non-fiction, learning once and for all where Iraq and Iran are located, or listening to Duke Ellington.

  Instead, I watched another commercial. In this one a guy asked his boss “could I just photocopy my butt?”

  We watch a lot of these commercials. According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., who monitors the television watching of our nation, the average child sees 20,000, 30-second commercials each year. That’s a lot of Whoppers, toothpastes, and pills for all kinds of personal dysfunctions.

  Some people say they don’t watch the commercials. But if 20,000 of them are sent your way, some are going to sneak through no matter how cool you are. And you never see commercials promoting vegetables or helping people to get across the street. You get meat, soda, and dysfunction pills. I wonder what our kids think of all that.

  The Nielsen people also say the average American watches more than four hours of television per day; 28 hours per week; and that in the average household a television is on for six hours and 47 minutes per day. They say this adds up to about two months of non-stop viewing, and that in a 65-year life this adds up to a solid nine years of our lives watching television.

  I’d like to act above it all, but what’s the point? I went from the lesbian snowball fight to a basketball game. I watch sports. When you watch sports you also watch beer commercials, truck commercials, and pills-for-personal dysfunctions commercials. At this point in my life I have probably been exposed to billions of beer and truck advertisements. And the personal dysfunction commercials are catching up.

  By the end of some ballgames I wonder what it would be like to drink beer, eat personal dysfunction pills, and try to jump the Grand Canyon in my super-cab truck. But if I did that I would miss snowball fights and hair-pulling.

  Instead of trying to jump the Grand Canyon, I moved on to a show that featured video footage of parachuting, snowmobile, and skiing accidents. Also car, motorcycle, and truck accidents. Any kind of accident you can think of. The parachuting accidents never end well.

  I had a hard time turning off the TV. Everyone talked to me like I was their friend. I felt like the TV was my friend. It reassured me. I could leave the room and it would continue talking. I could do laundry and know it would be there for me when I returned. I could cook dinner and the room would be filled with reassuring voices.

  All this happened because I decided to skip personal reflection, and take a quick respite from our troubled world to watch a little television.

  Finally, there was an advertisement for a movie in which, in the space of 30 seconds, a sweating guy hacks, shoots, and blows up about 80 people. Finally, the guy looks at the camera all serious and says “live for nothing, or die for something. Your call.”

  I turned the TV off. That kind of message was just way over my head. I’ll try to make up the viewing hours later in the week.