Self-Aggrandizement: The Tube

I don't mean that I don't have a physical television - because I do. I just don't get live programming - cable, broadcast or otherwise. Nothing but DVDs.

And not because of some vague, haughty sense of moral 'superiority'. I'm not one of those no-TV people who, when someone else is discussing a new HBO show, will smile disdainfully, say, "I'm sorry, I don't have a television", then stare off, self-satisfied, into the middle distance.

Instead, it is out of profound inferiority that I don't have television. The problem is, if I do have it, I watch it.

Which, arguably, is the point of having it in the first place. But, as I said, I'm well below average in my dealings with television. I'm addiction-prone, dragged by the gateway drugs of The West Wing and Law & Order onto the icy top of a long, slippery slope that runs down, down, down, through Desperate Housewives, Survivor 8 and re-runs of Full House.

Over the years, I've slowly come to recognize in myself the procrastinatory inertia that makes going out and really doing wonderful, exciting things - the things I treasure for years, even as the rest of my daily endeavours blur behind me into an unrecognizable mass - a constant battle. And, simply put, having television just doesn't help. It's one more temptation, one more internal set of arguments. It's a painless route to forgoing reality in favor of reality TV.

So, in short, I don't have TV. I haven't for the last year and a half. And in that time, as I've slowly forced myself to stop watching and start doing, I've been reminded again: life isn't a spectator sport.

The Tube Filed Sunday, February 26 2006.

The Tube
Filed Sunday, February 26 2006.