God bless america... quickly.

Let me start by saying that I don't have television. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy sitting down and watching T.V., only that I've made a conscious decision not to have T.V. because I know how quickly and easily it can suck you in and sap your productivity; also I have a very short attention span and I can't deal with commercials (or most of the programming for that matter). Now don't get me wrong, I'm not some adamant anti-television type, in fact television can be access to a world of highly informative and entertaining..... sorry.. I'm having a little trouble writing this at the moment because I'm currently watching Mythbusters (at someone else's house)... what was I saying? Oh right T.V. can be great, its got a lot to offer, such as shows like Mythbusters and that latest installment to the planet earth series, Life... but as a whole its so riddled with contradictions that its hard to bear, yet no one seems to notice.

I mean lets simply start with Mythbusters, now its not purporting to be a specifically wholesome show, but it is indeed educational, except now they've added a secondary team which is comprised of fairly characterless characters, one of whom is the standard attractive girl, all of whom are obsessed with blowing stuff up and inane use of powerful weaponry. Alright thats not too much of a strike against the show, I like beautiful women as much as the next guy and explosions are indeed cool. So maybe thats a bad example. How about Ax Men or Ice Road Truckers or Deadliest Catch (and I'm just picking on discovery at the moment)... I mean the shows are about average Americans with tough jobs who are doing some real crazy stuff; fulfilling a need, no shame in that... But these shows are about deforestation, raping the ocean, and putting in pipelines to harvest the fossil fuels which we are so quickly and frivolously depleting. There are two sides to every coin; shows about the interesting lives of people who are simple doing a job that needs to be done are also depicting whats wrong with the way we treat the earth... and these are the good shows. These are the shows I watch if I'm at a television, shows that, despite the hypocrisy I'm claiming to see so blatantly, I still enjoy.

The real problem is that Television is more than just a simple thing: it's a mass media. It generates a thought process thats filtered through multiple millions of people, and so much of what is filtered through is pure garbage, not just that little bit of hypocrisy with some human interest attached. Half of television is commercials, commercials for McDonalds and Taco Bell, commercials for prescription drugs to keep you alive and addicted, commercials for insurance, commercials for useless products, propaganda, whatever. Allowing these things to resonate in our skulls is like signing up for mind control. I don't have T.V. and yet I still know the phone number for Nation Wide Warehouse; I feel like I've lost some sort of battle against an enemy I didn't even know existed.

And don't get me started on Reality T.V.