What follows is something I wrote while I had no Internet connection. It's terrible. But that's not your fault, is it? Clearly you could make the decision not to read it right now. And, to be honest, I think that's best for all of us.
Another week without Internet access. I’m going insane. I haven’t been able to receive a single forwarded email with a cute movie of a dog peeing on a car nor has a single Nigerian offered me the opportunity to make millions if I just gave him my bank account number.
Damn I feel so lost.
So, instead, I’ve been spending what free time I have watching my brand new satellite television. It’s great. There are a hundred channels that I can watch whenever I want. But I can never settle on one thing. Sure, that episode of Get Smart is fantastic, but there may be a rerun of A Different World on somewhere. And I love Dwayne Wayne!
I’ve also been reading a lot more. Neal Stephenson to be exact. The man frightens me. He can describe things in such detail that I’m sure, to him, they exist. But they are just made up. In his little head. I can’t even tell you what color my shoes are. (Kind of a tannish, brownish, beige-y type of color. Only darker but a little lighter than that.)
So far I’ve discovered an addiction to two stations and an intense hatred for another one that I’ve been longing for.
The hatred is for the Sci-Fi Channel. Home of Farscape, the best Sci-Fi show in recent years. Of course, Sci-Fi anally raped Farscape and left it sore and bleeding in a back alley. Now they only show reruns at 11 p.m. on weeknights. I know I’m a geek and everything, but I’m a tired geek who can’t stay up to watch Farscape that late.
Yes, I could tape it. But that’s so archaic. If I can’t digitally archive it, I don’t want it. No lossy video for me. I need beauty and clarity with 5.1 Dolby Digital sound.
Yes, I could get Tivo, but then it’s stored on my hard drive.
Yes, I could get a recordable DVD player but they are so damned expensive.
Yes, I do complain a lot.
I hate Sci-Fi more than I even imagined. The sting of getting it AFTER Farscape ended is painful. But what is more painful is the horrid crap they push off on you. Reruns of the X-Files. Great. Everyone has those. Quantum Leap. Very cool, but on at random times. Battlestar Galactica. I thought I’d be excited but now it just feels like every time Dirk Benedict is onscreen and someone calls him “Starbuck” someone in Seattle yells, “Cha-Ching!”
Plus, these guys have The Twilight Zone. And they BURY it in late nights. One of the greatest television shows in history and they don’t allow the masses to see it. Screw you Sci-Fi. Your shows suck. Stargate SG-1 is a rancid pile of raccoon crap. Scare Tactics is a boring piece of crap made even more boring and crappy by the inclusion of Shannon Doherty. The last thing she did I liked was the short-lived TV show she co-starred on with Wilfred Brimley.
I like Wilfred Brimley.
The first station I’m addicted to is The Travel Channel. Beauty. There is a show on called “Great Hotels” that I could watch twenty four hours a day. They show beautiful hotels and all their amenities. I have a minor television crush on the hostess. I don’t know if it’s because she’s cute in a goofy sort of way, or because she gets to travel for a living.
The second station I love is Trio, an obscure station that clearly has me as its audience. For example, just yesterday I could watch:
True Stories, a film by David Byrne.
A Rufus Wainwright concert.
A Joe Jackson concert.
An Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach concert.
Today I can watch Tori Amos and Elvis Costello. Groovy. Plus they have a TV show called “Book Television”. An oxymoron, but cool anyway.
On Friday, the Independent Film Channel is playing Wild at Heart. Extra cool. Sunday is Barton Fink.
Of course, I only have an hour a day to watch any of this. Rabid bastards.
Still, I worry about what sort of message Satellite TV is sending to the space aliens who are receiving the signals years after they are transmitted.
They probably all assume that we were born in the Ozarks but moved to Beverly before we became secret agents and then went to live on a desert island only to vote off members of society.
In fact, if they watch Univision, they’re scared witless of us.
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