"Click 2 - The Continuing Story"

I never thought it would happen. 

Television is definitely losing me. 

More and more, it’s becoming easier to dump. 

No, that’s wrong.

Television is as hard to dump as it ever was.  Maybe harder, because I’ve been watching it so long.  As far as I know, my declining enthusiasm is not “age related.” You know, “Time’s running out – don’t waste it.”  Television doesn’t waste my time.  I do.  Whatever there was before television, I’d have wasted it that way.

“Stop staring at the dog.”

“Few more minutes.  I am almost at the tail.” 

The issue at hand is television itself.  Not the actual device, the content.  In sports, they say, “You don’t get cut; you ‘play yourself off the team.’”  (Due to substandard performance.)  It is analogically like that.  It took a while.  (Sixty-five-plus years.)  But television is finally playing itself off of my team.

I spoke last time about the commercials, targeted to my habitual “Channels of Choice.”  (Through a dark process, the calculatingly opposite of “thoughtlessly.”)  There is little “entertainment value” watching a bereaved widow drowning in her late husband’s funeral bills. 

So there are those joyful interludes, along with reminders of looming  diseases and their treatments' hideous side effects.  I could put up with the mindless inanity of “You’ll wonder where the ‘Yellow’ went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.”  At least toothpaste doesn’t generate “suicidal thoughts or actions.”  Not even today’s toothpaste.  Otherwise, they would warn you about it in the commercials.  Their attorneys would make them. 

Let me be clear about this.  It is not that I decided it was like that joke, “Doctor, I can’t pee.” – “How old are you?” – “74.” – “You peed enough.”  It’s not about “enough.”  It’s that, for me, television, as a free-time activity, is rapidly losing its appeal.  (Explaining its inexorably playing itself off of my team.) 

It began with Law & Order SVU.  Stabler had long since “turned in his papers”, leaving Olivia, dealing with “lightweights.”  Also, as I have previously written about “SVOO”, I got it.  I understood that even if you’re a hooker you can still be abused.  Not to disparage a painful reality.  It’s just that, from a “Repetitive Idea” perspective, I had internalized the message.

Then when we got back from Hawaii – I can’t believe I am saying this – I “pulled the plug” on the original Law & Order.  My “go-to” series for throwing my life away, and I was cutting it adrift.  I had watched it too much.  I was saying the dialogue along with the actors.

(Plus, we were robbed in Hawaii and I may have have lost faith in the trusting protection of Law Enforcement.)

That’s two shows I readily relied upon, dropped from the roster, a roster that was never that deep, because I have never been drawn to one-hour dramas about terrorists wreaking perilous havoc on public places, because, though a regular “homebody”, I occasionally frequented public places. 

It’s not just politicians who “sell fear.”  One-hour dramas do too. 

Just not to me.

Sports?

I have also cut back on football, missing “great plays performed under punishing pressure” but also immobilized players rolled off the field on gurneys, their thumbs encouragingly raised to the crowd because that was the only thing they could move.

Basketball?  Our team stinks.

"A real fan would keep watching."  

I am not a real fan.

I am even souring on baseball.  Players are spitting on $300 million contracts.  How do I root for those guys?  “Sabermetric strategies” are also diminishing the game. Where’s the heroic respect for players who play four different positions and don’t bat against lefties?      

So that's sports.

What else is there?

TV comedies?  

Yeah, right.

Some traditional Republican quotably complained, “I didn’t leave the Republican Party.  The Republican Party left me.”

No disrespect to the current practitioners, but these are not the half-hours I aspired to write for.

So what’s left?  Cable news channels?

Wake me when the Mueller Report is released.

With my rising indifference for the current alternatives, you’d think it would be easy to stop watching TV.

But it isn’t.

Part of it’s “Longstanding habit.”  It is hard to “just stop.”  I could pull the Band-Aid off slowly, cutting back incrementally, though addicts are wisely aware of the pitfalls of that strategy.  “An-hour-a-day” morphs into “I just watched seven hours of nonsense!”

I never thought it would happen. 

Television is definitely losing me. 

More and more, it’s becoming easier to dump. 

No, that’s wrong.

Television is as hard to dump as it ever was.  Maybe harder, because I’ve been watching it so long.  As far as I know, my declining enthusiasm is not “age related.” You know, “Time’s running out – don’t waste it.”  Television doesn’t waste my time.  I do.  Whatever there was before television, I’d have wasted it that way.

“Stop staring at the dog.”

“Few more minutes.  I am almost at the tail.” 

The issue at hand is television itself.  Not the actual device, the content.  In sports, they say, “You don’t get cut; you ‘play yourself off the team.’”  (Due to substandard performance.)  It is analogically like that.  It took a while.  (Sixty-five-plus years.)  But television is finally playing itself off of my team.

I mentioned last time about the commercials, targeted to my habitual “Channels of Choice.”  (Through a dark process, the calculatingly opposite of “thoughtlessly.”)  There is little “entertainment value” watching a bereaved widow drowning in her late husband’s funeral bills. 

And that’s without mentioning the ads about looming diseases and their nightmarish side effects.  I could put up with the mindless inanity of “You’ll wonder where the ‘Yellow’ went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.”  At least toothpaste doesn’t generate “suicidal thoughts or actions.”  Not even today’s toothpaste.  Otherwise, they would warn you about it in the commercials.  Their attorneys would make them. 

Let me be clear about this.  It is not that I decided it was like that joke, “Doctor, I can’t pee.” – “How old are you?” – “74.” – “You peed enough.”  It’s not about “enough.”  It’s that, for me, television, as a free-time activity, is rapidly losing its appeal.  (Explaining its inexorably playing itself off of my team.) 

It began with Law & Order SVU.  Stabler had long since “turned in his papers”, leaving Olivia, dealing with “lightweights.”  Also, as I have previously written about “SVOO”, I got it.  I understood that even if you’re a hooker you can still be abused.  Not to disparage a painful reality.  It’s just that, from a “Repetitive Idea” perspective, I had internalized the message.

Then when we got back from Hawaii – I can’t believe I am saying this – I “pulled the plug” on the original Law & Order.  My “go-to” series for throwing my life away, and I was cutting it adrift.  I had watched it too much.  I was saying the dialogue along with the actors.

(Plus, we were robbed in Hawaii and I may have have lost faith in the trusting protection of Law Enforcement.)

That’s two shows I readily relied upon, dropped from the roster, a roster that was never that deep, because I have never been drawn to one-hour dramas about terrorists wreaking perilous havoc on public places, because, though a regular “homebody”, I occasionally frequented public places. 

It’s not just politicians who “sell fear.”  One-hour dramas do too. 

Just not to me.

I have also cut back on football, missing “great plays performed under punishing pressure” but also immobilized players rolled off the field on gurneys, their thumbs encouragingly raised to the crowd because that was the only thing they could move.

I am even souring on baseball.  Players are spitting on $300 million contracts.  How do I root for those guys?  “Sabermetric strategies” are also diminishing the game. Where’s the heroic respect for players who play four different positions and don’t bat against lefties?      

TV comedies?  Yeah, right.

Some traditional Republican quotably complained, “I didn’t leave the Republican Party.  The Republican Party left me.”

No disrespect to the current practitioners, but these are not the half-hours I aspired to write for.

So what’s left?  Cable news channels?

Wake me when they release the Mueller Report.

With my rising indifference for the current alternatives, you’d think it would be easy to stop watching TV.

But it isn’t.

Part of it’s “Longstanding habit.”  It is hard to “just stop.”  I could pull the Band-Aid off slowly, cutting back incrementally, though addicts are wisely aware of the pitfalls of that strategy.  “An-hour-a-day” morphs into “I just watched seven hours of nonsense!”

I don’t know what’s going to happen.  I just know the adhesive is loosening between me and television and I need an alternate avenue for passing the time.  Right now, “Reading’s” my most intriguing “Escape hatch.”  Though I will tell you something about reading.

But not now.

You have already read enough.