View current page
...more recent posts
Brainless Pleasure
You know, if you don't own one, not watching TV is not really much of an accomplishment, or even that much of a laudable preference, I think, because you are never testing your implied conviction that not watching TV allows you to make better use of your time. I say this with all the vehemence of a person who had more or less gone twenty years without a TV in residence and then just went out and bought a five-inch black and white. This year I wanted to watch, instead of listening to on the radio, the New Orleans Saints football games. I really wanted to indulge in a simple brainless pleasure; is that so wrong?
At the risk of sounding as tedious and overbearing as a born again Christian or a recent non-smoker who acts all disdainful of his former nicotine soaked buddies (by the way, its been one thousand four hundred and eighty-eight days since I have smoked any kind of tobacco), I say to you my non-TV owning brethren, get off your mescaline soaked high horses and plop your asses down on that couch. I say mescaline soaked because it just popped into my head. I'm lying. I heard it on TV. I haven't been able to limit my viewing to just Sunday football games. I have watched a few other programs, occasionally bordering on what you might call faithful viewing. I sometimes forget to be faithful though, if I'm reading, or tranced out. One of the new shows I would see countless promotions for and thought looked ridiculous was Push, Nevada. But after watching the first episode--I had come out of a trance state and had time to kill--I thought the show might have promise. One of the characters asked the lead character, a perpetually befuddled, earnest, truth seeking IRS investigator (what a great idea for an anti-hero), if he had received mescaline as a painkiller for the tattoo he had just gotten. It's like that Monty Python bit--"...I think there's too much sex on television, I mean, I keep falling off...," except this one goes--I think there's too much mescaline on television, I mean, I keep tripping over it. Thank you, thank you very much.
For the purposes of this particular piece of preposterous babbling I'm pleading innocent to knowing anything about mescaline. I learned about it on TV is what I'm telling you. TV provides education as well as brainless pleasure. Go on, go on out and get you one. Saints are 6-1.