tv rots the brain, go outside & play
October 15, 2005
when i was a child i would watch boatloads of television because i was lucky enough to have one in my room. in fact, every bedroom had one along with the family room. my brothers and i didn't have any wimpy 13-19 inch screens—we had the family room's old television sets, and they were all over 27 inches. in actuality, my parents' bedroom had the smallest set at 19 inches (though it was newer than the larger sets the children had). my television was an old gray sony that had long, thin tweeters on either side of the display and set on a large subwoofer-type stand. it looked awesome and i could never understand why my friends would come over and say, "that's your tv?!" uh, yeah... what's the big deal? apparently my friends didn't have the "luxury" of having televisions in their rooms, much less larger-screened ones. i put luxury in quotes because i didn't see it as anything abnormal. we had tvs. big whoop. (as a side note, one day it broke and got stuck on one channel. i was watching mama's family at the time. i loved that show.)
here's a professional and accurate graphical rendering of my tv:
i watched tv a lot, rotted my brain, yadda yadda, so my parents would constantly tell me to stop watching and to go outside and play. sometimes i followed their orders, sometimes i had to finish watching my cartoons, first season real world marathon, mama's family, etc. i'm pretty sure that other children who had televisions that they were glued to, whether in the bedroom or otherwise, had parents that told them the same thing. stop watching tv and go outside and play. if you keep watching tv you'll be more stupid than ever. if you don't stop now you'll get hairy palms and go blind.
how can parents use the same defenses as years past? now their children are equipped with cell phones and ipods, and those technologies are being fitted with video capability (at an extra price, no less). so when mom sends junior outside to get away from the intelligence rotting television set filled with sex and violence and sexy violent video games and scooby doo, he gets to go outside and download the latest cheesy pop video for a nominal fee, which i imagine he will do secretly while the mum foots the bill. reminds me of the time when 1-900 numbers would come on advertising a real live chat with santa claus for $2.99 a minute. man did i get a good whoopin' for that. stupid santa, he was a machine anyway. i knew he wasn't real, that jolly fat bastard.
so what's the solution in this technological age? i don't know, i'm busy ogling the new video ipod. i'll get back to you at a later time. is it raining outside?
