I Have A TV

This is going to be one of those posts that I put up where I lack the energy to check if I've already written this all before. So if I have, I apologize.

I have a tv. I've had a tv, actually, for a week. But now I have cable too. I have both a tv and cable and I set up the remote control so that I can flip happily through my 64 channels.

For about five years I haven't had a tv, and I haven't had a tv of my own, as opposed to a roommate-owned and -controlled tv, for almost ten years. But now I have one and it nestles sweetly on my nightstand and on Friday night I will be watching the Lakers play the Hornets on KCal if it's not showing on one of the national channels.

So there was one year when I had a tv of my own, and it heavily influenced my decision not to get a tv for a long time after that because I watched tv all the goddamn time. I realized that Magnum P.I. was really a quality show and that Northern Exposure was just as quirkily charming as I had been told back in 1992 or whatever. (I didn't have a tv during my formative years, which is probably why somebody described me as funky today.)

Anyway, I would lie there in this small town in Colorado and I wouldn't go walk along the Purgatory River and I wouldn't hike up into the hills and all that; I would lie on my stomach in my living room and watch Angela Lansbury solve the crime once again. Which seemed, later, like a waste of time. Time was passing and I was getting older and golden opportunity was fucking fleeting and I shouldn't have been watching tv.

So I ditched the tv.

But now it's back. It's back because I guess I'm older and I think I'll miss opportunities one way or another and there are going to be lots and lots of times when I will lack that critical ability to live life to the fullest, you know? But I will still be bored and want to be entertained. And now I have a machine that can make that happen.

Buying a tv is accepting the limitations of human life.