goodbye for good...

It has now been six months since I gave up watching television. DIRECTV called and told me that the six-month hold I placed on my account had come to an end. They informed me that they would be turning my service back on unless I called them and told them otherwise. For a moment, I hesitated. Luckily, the moment was brief. They are sending me large boxes so I can return my receivers and remotes. It's over. The trial separation has become a divorce, but an amiable one where neither party has to fight over whose copy of Catcher in the Rye has the dog-eared pages and smudged cover. Of course, I still watch DVDs occasionally, and I'm contractually obligated to watch The Office on Hulu.com, but whatever. I don't think TV is evil, it's just like...Valium. And I mean, sure, I like a good slanty-eyed buzz as much as the next person, but it's honestly just not worth it. Let's do some math. Yaaaaaaaaaay, math! Even though I can't imagine an accurate figure, let's say that I've watched an hour of television every day my entire life. Some days I probably watched three or four hours, but similarly I'm sure there were weeks I went without turning the blasted tube on -- so this is a total guesstimate. If you add up an hour a day for 29 years, you get 441 days. Full days. 24-hour days. That's not quite a year and a half. That's a lot of television. Frankly, it's enough television to make me ill. So yeah, I'm done. Divorced done. Whoopieeeee!