Cutting the cable

Well - I did it. Due in part to financial justification and time management, I have reached (and acted upon) the decision  to effectively give up television. I also choose to stop paying my local cable provider the 55, 60, 70 or however many dollars a month they decide to charge. Plus the phone - plus the internet. Not only do I hope to dramatically increase my creative output and lower my bills, but I'm going to stop allowing the fuzzy memories of our past obscure the fact that she is now but a crass whore.

Having grown up in the glow of her cathode rays, I was blessed to see television through the early years of innocence, the awkward teens, the cocksure but dumbass 20 something, the conceited know it all, the insecure aging starlet - and now, finally, the electronic hybrid of Joan Rivers and William Shatner  - the shameless splaying of former greatness.

My demographic mirrors that of television and I will shit you not that my background and careers (for lack of a better description less odious than this explanation) have all been connected to television. From Broadcast Journalism to retail video, video production, television production, television market research, my whole damn life was somehow centered around this thing that could somehow quiet the hyper kid and teach the unteachable kid. It always seemed bright, exciting, noble...not any more.

The advent of computers shoved TV and newspapers into denial, and then eventually into the dumpster. Wherein cable television had enough time to amass a great deal of money, they were amassing a large overhead. The effects of that trickle down is at the point where single advertisers now own majority advertising rights to a 30 or 15 minute show and play their 15 second ad up to 16 of the 32 potential timeslots. Yep, you get bombarbed with 32 - 15 second commercials every time you watch a 30 minute show (8 min pr. 30) ..pretty sick eh?   That is also why most all TV ads are aimed at women - men simply don't watch them.

So - I will be forced to re-learn all my bad habits of watching shit for no reason. I will have to get many things done because the computer will make me blind and more crippled than I already am if I attempt to use it as my full time fix.  The forums, movies and docs available on line are fantastic, and I'm in control for the first time.  It stops when I do., it doesn't just keep going and going and going. The best thing however, is that I will be saying goodbye to an unhealthy relationship that has run it's course.

Goodbye baby.