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.

Feelings

The manifestation of electro magnetical impulses into paralysing emotion has been the boon and bane of mankind since the beginning of time.  The process is still deeply mysterious, with modern mapping techniques charting the brains neuro transmissions like Cooke or Columbus. 

What is known, is that our feelings - our emotions - cause us to do pretty well everything in life, from cradle to grave.  A constant balance takes place as we fight our emotions, control ourselves and ignore our gut feelings.  As much as we treasure the swoon of new love, or the thrill of victory, we fear the loss of family and the cold hand of death.

Madness, the silent elephant in the room, sits quietly in the corner, allowing far too many of us to be suddenly enveloped in it's enormity, lost to the rest of the world.  We all can appreciate those in the arts who tread so close to the edge, giving us a glimpse of the fiery core, where we fear to tread.  Stray too far and even those who were recently in their midst turn away for good.

How then, do we live with the burden of emotion?  How does one turn off that artery, spilling blood all the way?  Surely the souls who work the child cancer wards and man the distress lines and the like, are made of something special.  It is one thing not to feel - another to feel and do it anyway.   All I need to think about when the hot breath of anxiety and despair touch my neck, is to think of so many who have touched my life in even the smallest way.  I think about the mad giggles of my girls, not how they're going to make it.  I appreciate the roof over my head, even though I will be 75 when I own it - and the mice think they own it now.  I'm glad that although my wife sleeps 18 km from  here - we are still friendly.  But most of all, I'm thankful that I am alive in this flash of time, and my story is yet to be fully written.

It's OK to feel.  Some of us feel more, some less - but we all feel.  Tomorrow perhaps I won't give a shit so much.  But I'm feeling it today.