Montana n: A state of the northwest United States bordering on Canada. Admitted as the 41st state in 1889. The fourth largest state in the union, it includes vast prairies and numerous majestic mountain ranges.
Syn: Treasure State, Big Sky Country, Last Best Place.
Jones n: slang. An addiction or very deep craving.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Television
At the previous address I had basic cable. It was nice, I got to watch Iron Chef and there was pretty much always a cool old movie on. I had one big beef with it. Commercials. I am growing a huge intolerance for all sorts of advertising. I have adblockers to keep it off my internet and when I see it on teevee I immediately grab the remote and start channel surfing. Basic cable turned me into a huge channel surfer. I could waste hours cruising through the dial. In my effort to skip the advertisements I usually missed big chunks of the programs too. I don't think television has done much to improve the quality of my life.
Here in Montana I have chosen to not spend money on cable television. I am not going to pay someone so I can watch advertisements. Now my teevee has the antenna hooked up for broadcast only, just like they did in the olden days before cable. I can pick up exactly one channel. This is the best thing that has happened to my teevee consumptions since I was forced to upgrade from black and white. My only real problem with the whole one channel thing is the commercials. Now when an advertisement comes on I immediately grab for the remote and I am stymied because there is nowhere to flip too. I often just switch it off at this point. I don't spend very much time with the teevee these days.
A basic roundup of shows on my one channel: Evening news, both national and local (good). Sienfeld reruns (bad). Law and Order (what the hell, people watch this crap?) I have also caught a few minutes of The Apprentice. This show made me laugh, is it supposed to be comedy? Unfortunately it could not survive the 'keep me interested enough to make me sit through the commercials' test. I had the teevee on for the first few minutes of The Office the other night. According to the marketing this is supposed to be some hot new comedy. I liked the dry humor of the supporting cast and it reminded me of my days as a cubical warrior. But the lead character manager dude was just stupid. I am not a fan of stupid. Not only did the show fail the commercial test, I don't think I even made it to the first commercial. It was switched off due to stupidity.
My great master plan with the teevee following the move was to sign up to netflix or do a lot of movie rental action. Well after, what, 2 and a half months I finally got around to plugging in the ol' VCR. (Don't even ask about the DVD player.) Can you guess the first thing I watched on it? - Porn. With the huge selection of video choices available to me doesn't that just speak volumes about the quality of our entertainment industry? I don't know who is going to hell faster, the entertainment industry or me.
Gone are the days of good drama shows (think Northern Exposure), and even ER is predictable. It seems like everything now has to include a lot of sexual references, and sexy people, just to keep us interested. So why not skip straight to porn?
: 2:16 PM, March 28, 2005
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