by Gideon Evans
"...I had a really good day."
I turned on my TV on Monday, May 1st and had a terrible shock...one of the best television stations in the world was taken off the air. That station is Disney-owned ABC. It seems Time Warner, the company that provides my cable, didn't like the way Disney did it's business. So Time Warner took all ABC programming off the air. Was ABC gone for good? I didn't know. I felt sick that morning and came close to throwing up twice. But, surprise! It wasn't a bad day after all.
My day without ABC was great. Surprise, surprise, I had a really good day that day. Whether I would've watched "...Millionaire" or "GMA" or "Peter Jennings' television show" that day is irrelevant. Let's not even go into the Television Viewing Agenda I had planned for May 1st, 2000. The fact of the matter is that day, for me, was better than average as compared to "my average day".
I ate good food that day, I had a few nice conversations with people, the weather was absolutely gorgeous. I saw a pretty bird on my way to work. I had no more than four paper jams in the printer at work. I smoked a cigarette during my lunch break. I had half a cantaloupe for lunch with a scoop of dry curd low fat cottage cheese in the center. I talked to the postman and he was nice. I drew a funny picture of the presidential candidates getting peed on. I saw someone I knew at the deli. I imagined a clam talking. I put a smiley face on a post it. I gave a cop the finger and he didn't see me. I imagined that I had four heads.
You see, on average it was a wonderful day. I went to bed that night thinking "that was a wonderful day".
"...I've disproved this!"
What can we gain from all of this? Well, plain and simple...I think we can determine that not having ABC on our television set does not adversely (in a bad way) effect one's quality of life.
I might even go so far as to say that, given the clear evidence (which I cited above), not having ABC may even effect one's life in a positive way.
This is interesting, no? I think we all go through our lives thinking the enjoyment we gain from television makes our lives better, or at the very least more bearable. But I've disproved this! Rather, I've disproved it using ABC as a microcosm of all television.
But what if I'm right? What if TV makes our lives worse? What if ABC isn't the only bad channel? It's entirely possible that NBC is equally as bad as ABC! CBS, FOX, UPN, WB, etc. They might also be channels that make our lives worse. Will we someday look back and wonder why we watched so much television?
Don't answer any of the questions I raised in the previous paragraph (except "what if I'm right?", 'cause I am). Simply think about the implications of the issues that I bring up. Okay, now that you're done thinking, you can start answering the questions. Okay, now that you've answered the questions you can stop reading. Stop reading. Stop. I said...uhg you're hopeless.
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