Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Blessed Television
I have no idea if I have the brainpower to keep anyone’s attention long enough to actually read my rantings and my ravings. Yesterday my boss told me I’m smarter than a third of my coworkers combined. It sounds like a compliment, but he didn’t mean it that way.
This is my first posting, and it’s about distraction and attention.
I remember going on an errand with my dad once. I had no idea what we were doing when he asked me to go, but I like hanging out with my dad. We were going to see a man about a dog.
The dog was nothing special. It was a pointer or a setter or something like that. Who knows? It was hairy and it wet the carpet. That’s what I remember about that dog. My dad finally decided to get rid of it when it came into the house and wet on the Christmas tree.
The thing I remember most about this dog was when we went to go get it. When we went to the guy’s house, we got confused because he didn’t tell my dad that he lived in a garage. We went into the detached two-car garage and there he was, sitting on a couch with, presumably, his wife and child. They were watching “The Worst Witch” on cable. This guy had probably snaked a cable from the house of the guy who owned the garage and was watching it on a console TV. His family’s eyes were glued to it. They never looked up from Tim Curry singing some ridiculous song about Halloween the whole time my dad and I were there in their home.
This has happened to me on several occasions and it always makes me feel the same way, sick. I don’t mean indignant or offended, but ill. It makes me dread the future Ray Bradbury wrote about in his book “Fahrenheit 451” in which everyone watches television like they’re hypnotized and books are banned.
This is my cognitive dissonance: I like watching TV just as much as the next guy. Maybe not “just as much” since I won’t spring for cable. But does my watching TV interfere with my perceptions of my immediate surroundings and the world beyond?
This is my first posting, and it’s about distraction and attention.
I remember going on an errand with my dad once. I had no idea what we were doing when he asked me to go, but I like hanging out with my dad. We were going to see a man about a dog.
The dog was nothing special. It was a pointer or a setter or something like that. Who knows? It was hairy and it wet the carpet. That’s what I remember about that dog. My dad finally decided to get rid of it when it came into the house and wet on the Christmas tree.
The thing I remember most about this dog was when we went to go get it. When we went to the guy’s house, we got confused because he didn’t tell my dad that he lived in a garage. We went into the detached two-car garage and there he was, sitting on a couch with, presumably, his wife and child. They were watching “The Worst Witch” on cable. This guy had probably snaked a cable from the house of the guy who owned the garage and was watching it on a console TV. His family’s eyes were glued to it. They never looked up from Tim Curry singing some ridiculous song about Halloween the whole time my dad and I were there in their home.
This has happened to me on several occasions and it always makes me feel the same way, sick. I don’t mean indignant or offended, but ill. It makes me dread the future Ray Bradbury wrote about in his book “Fahrenheit 451” in which everyone watches television like they’re hypnotized and books are banned.
This is my cognitive dissonance: I like watching TV just as much as the next guy. Maybe not “just as much” since I won’t spring for cable. But does my watching TV interfere with my perceptions of my immediate surroundings and the world beyond?
