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Day 13. in which Alex doesn't watch TV.

I tend to have the tv on in the evening right before I drift off to sleep. I don't recommend this to anyone, and I'm not even sure why I do it. It's kind of like viewing a car accident. It's irrisistible, and yet, there is nothing good about it.

We get several hundred channels delivered to our DVR box from TimeWarner. Typically, there isn't one channel that offers anything worth watching. I wish there were only one or two channels to select from that offered quality programming instead of hundreds of nothing.

In the 1980's, there used to be a channel dedicated to telling you what was on the channel line-up. There were maybe only thirty or so channels to choose from. The background was a blue screen, and it rolled by at a speed in which you could actually read.

In the 1990's, this channel became half-advertisement, half-information. The top half of the screen began to display commercials, or even worse, commercials masquerading as programs. It was irritating. After awhile of watching the screen roll by, you would lose track of what you were there to do. Finding nothing of interest on the increased burgeon of channels, you would find your attention drifting to the top half of the screen. You would begin to watch the pseudo-progams.

I never thought it could be worse, but now, hidden in the now hundreds of channels, is one channel of which the screen is split two-thirds advertisement and one-third information. The display is a bit more than a line of readable text. It is no longer presented on a plain blue background. It is now owned and slicked up by TV Guide. Therefore, I don't often use this channel anymore.

It bothers me that I have to go through every single channel to find that there is nothing on worth watching. What bothers me more is that I will continue to go through the channels at least one more time. I stop paying attention after awhile, and just keep clicking through the channels compusively...I can't stop doing this until I 'find' something...

And then, once I do find that something, I watch about three mintues of it, before I pass out. Why do I do this to myself?!