Monday, March 20, 2006

The 8th deadly sin: Television

My flat has no TV. That's right folks. NO. DARN. TELEVISIONN. Surprise surprise. Well, in my almost a year of nOt having any TV, I have discovered, and largely agreed with my dad on the evils of TV.

TV WASTES TIME. Seriously. The average adult spends 24 hours a week glued to the television. Just imagine what you can do with the same 24 hours of perfect, usable, fully-functional, fully-awakened time? Go, write a book, read a book, help somebody, make new friends! You only spend about a quarter of your life in school. so tRy to make the most of it!. Instead of watching Desperate Housewives. Seriously, who needs Naruto in his life?!

Contrary to arguments for TV, what can be learned that is helpful to you is very limited. I think the only truly adult educational channel is Discovery Channel (no, not the Playboy Channel..)

My take on some of the few interesting channels.

News. Yes they have videos and slick presentations. But the same, or larger amounts of info can be gleaned from newspapers and the internet.

MTV. So you have awesome dance moves, videos of people doing stupid things like shooting firecrackers at each other, and hot underdressed babes. hmm. Watch to get inspiration for performance arts.

Discovery Channel. This one's awesome, and can provide a glancing, trivial knowledge of a little bit of everything. But with all the heavy machinery, ocean exploring, American Choppers... you'd think that it was a channel made bY guys/geeks fOr guys/geeks. Thay should include a show called Fashion: A Nerd's Take or something.

Sesame Street!! A stunning revision of your childhood, where the world was cheery and colourful, and everyone sang songs and danced the whole day, and fussed about broken plastic alphabets!

Okay disregard that last one.

Impossible in this day and age? When TV was first introduced, people mocked at it. They said that no one would ever want to sit in front of a wooden box watching videos for hours on end, doing nothing else. TV would fail, they said. And yet, many decades later, the converse is true. People actually dO want to spend hours on end sitting idle in front of a plastic (haa.. new material) box when they could be out doing something more productive.

Well, conclusion is, cut down your TV time by 90%, cut away all those soppy chinese/japanese/korean dramas, how the heck can someone else's (scriptwritten) love life be of any help to how you conduct yours, cut away all and every anime/cartoon, cut away anything that is in any way unproductive to you, and you'd find much more time on your hands for doing things that are actually helpful to you, and an investment to your future.

I do sound wise, dont I.
Muhaha.

jOhn thought at 9:30 PM