Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Sleeping through nothing: one year after
It's been roughly a year since I cut off the cable TV. Through most of that year I turned on the TV only to watch AFV on Sunday. Now I haven't even plugged in the one-eyed monster since June. Miss it? Nope.
After a year, what's different?
First, the quantity and target of my outrage. When I was hooked on cable, I wasted a lot of blood pressure on the miserable antics of Comrades Shep Smith, Anderson Cooper, and Wolf Blitzer. Now I spend less time overall in pissed mode, and it's directed at more appropriate targets. Even though I've always tried to avoid the partisan puppetry, it's a lot easier to think objectively without the heart-speeding backbeat and whooshing sounds and endless meaningless Breaking News! of the cable format.
Mostly I've fallen back into my old default Soviet-citizen mode, which is vastly more sane. There's absolutely nothing you can do about all this idiocy. Voting is useless, expressing opinion is useless. Might as well tend your own garden and warily observe the lunatics from a distance.
(Sidenote: The purpose of cable is to turn all public rage against the Other Party so you don't notice that both parties are identically evil. I wonder if they've colluded to pick annoying hosts like Shep and Wolf as specialized getters for the opposing rage?)
= = = = =
Second, I've been producing less graphics here, and a lot more text. This was unintended and rather unfortunate, since I enjoy doing pictures and animations. But it seems that the loss of high-pressure visual input from TV lowers the compulsion for visual output. Or something like that.
= = = = =
Confession: I marked the one-year anniversary by finally taking the set-top box back to Comcast this morning, which was necessary to officially cancel the TV service. In other words, I've paid about $800 to a high-profit corporation for a service I wasn't using. This is a shameful admission for a self-proclaimed miserly curmudgeon, and there isn't any real excuse. It was a difficult bus trip to a bad part of town, but a rational miser would have decided to take a taxi rather than continue spending $70 a month for nothing! ¶ 4:40 PM
It's been roughly a year since I cut off the cable TV. Through most of that year I turned on the TV only to watch AFV on Sunday. Now I haven't even plugged in the one-eyed monster since June. Miss it? Nope.
After a year, what's different?
First, the quantity and target of my outrage. When I was hooked on cable, I wasted a lot of blood pressure on the miserable antics of Comrades Shep Smith, Anderson Cooper, and Wolf Blitzer. Now I spend less time overall in pissed mode, and it's directed at more appropriate targets. Even though I've always tried to avoid the partisan puppetry, it's a lot easier to think objectively without the heart-speeding backbeat and whooshing sounds and endless meaningless Breaking News! of the cable format.
Mostly I've fallen back into my old default Soviet-citizen mode, which is vastly more sane. There's absolutely nothing you can do about all this idiocy. Voting is useless, expressing opinion is useless. Might as well tend your own garden and warily observe the lunatics from a distance.
(Sidenote: The purpose of cable is to turn all public rage against the Other Party so you don't notice that both parties are identically evil. I wonder if they've colluded to pick annoying hosts like Shep and Wolf as specialized getters for the opposing rage?)
= = = = =
Second, I've been producing less graphics here, and a lot more text. This was unintended and rather unfortunate, since I enjoy doing pictures and animations. But it seems that the loss of high-pressure visual input from TV lowers the compulsion for visual output. Or something like that.
= = = = =
Confession: I marked the one-year anniversary by finally taking the set-top box back to Comcast this morning, which was necessary to officially cancel the TV service. In other words, I've paid about $800 to a high-profit corporation for a service I wasn't using. This is a shameful admission for a self-proclaimed miserly curmudgeon, and there isn't any real excuse. It was a difficult bus trip to a bad part of town, but a rational miser would have decided to take a taxi rather than continue spending $70 a month for nothing! ¶ 4:40 PM
