Cleanliness is Next to Goddessliness
Love, love, love.
I think I've decided the thing that most of my friends had decided long ago and that my sister made mandate even earlier. TV is crap. I don't mean MTV or girls' hipbones cutting their belts to ribbons or the sex ever or any of the other ways that TV truly does obliterate the self-worth and identities that people try to create for themselves. I don't mean that TV programming is crap...instead, I mean, that TV is a narcotic. It really doesn't matter what is on, it can turn off your brain and glaze you more than a Krispy Kreme doughnut. It can make you and all your idiosyncracies suddenly sugared and smooth and folded in. You can find an answer in any pat phrase that a character or an anchor or a TV "personality" spits out. Suddenly, you've got a self-satisfying ideology supported by people who are obviously measuring up in some aspects of their lives. Something that made it past the editing process, gemtumbled so that it glistened like truth. But it only shines as sugar does. It only melts away and doesn't last. I don't want to lay on the couch or the bed and feel bad and find the answer in something some guru says. Someone who doesn't know my best intentions or my atlas that points other places than south, than hell.
I feel like it's something that must be done.
I made a list of TV shows that I really didn't want to miss, that I would allow myself and I thought before I started that there'd be more than fifty, that suddenly I'd realize how very tied I was to the TV. Instead, all the thoughts I had, I felt they shouldn't be on the list if my time would be better spent writing or reading or in any other way. That I could easily miss them and get over it. I do know that I watch a ridiculous amount more than what I put on that list. Watch Emeril make a pizza takes up a serious thirty minutes of my life. Laying there, prone, while he talks about proofing the dough.
There's seven shows that I'm giving myself permission to stop work to go and watch provided: 1. I can't see them at a later time. 2. I haven't seen them before. If I have seen them before and desperately want to see it, I'll try and tape it or find it online. If not, holy fuck, the girl missed a TV show.
Otherwise, I'll let this list get up to fifteen and then re-evaluate.
1)Deadwood...actually WORTH my not-writing not-active time.
2)Queer Eye...fun and gives me my empathic high when the poor men finally see the decorating personal light. God knows I still don't get it.
3)Starting Over...these women are so dramatic but they really have suffered too.
4) As Time Goes By...Oh, Alastair! Jean and Li and Sandy and Judy and the gang have the absolute most romantic and normal dialogue I have ever heard and funny as hell. I love them in their Britishness.
5)Coupling!...more Britishness, and Jeff!Replacement man aside, there's no better sitcom for my money. It actually experiments and doesn't bring in a monkey for some sadsap character to bond with. Ahem.
6)What Not to Wear. More reality that is obviously not reality. Everyone WOULD dress better if someone gave them money and showed them how to do it...but the show's quirky and the ambiguous Clinton is a nice bland match to catscratch Stacy.
7)Best Week Ever. Actual comedy included. Commented on the slash between Kerry and Edwards which, while I didn't need it, is another reason to vote Democrat this year.
Why did all of this come about? I'm looking online for help writing this story I'm writing...for fantasy writing help, for basic I want to be a full time writer help and I came across this great site: hollylisle.com and realized I really am not close to approximating anything that full-time writer's life would be like. That if I don't buckle down and try and deal with it...I'll be working retail and angry, seriously angry that I let my dream go the way of the tiger...off into the jungle alone.
Time to clean my room.
