"Your cable television is experiencing difficulties. Please do not panic.

...Do not attempt sexual relations, as years of TV radiation have left your genitals withered and useless." ~Matt Groening, The Simpsons

I let my parents sift through all the crap on TV. They watch an entire show, DVR the good stuff, and then I watch it on my own time. Today I learned that Mike Rowe used to sell Precious Moments figurines on TV shopping channels, Brazil’s dress in the Miss Universe pageant was godawful, and the Sterling Hall bombing in 1970 killed a physics researcher and injured three others when no human harm was intended. Time consumed= 45 minutes

I wouldn’t want to watch TV any other way. Why should I have to waste three hours on a couch learning what I could have in ten minutes? And I can’t say that the things that I actually learn from watching TV are all that important anyway.

I watched the series Chuck starting the day the first episode aired, until the third season or so. I watched Glee until the second season. I watched How I Met Your Mother for about three consecutive seasons. The reason I stopped? I simply didn’t have time. Some shows reached a point where you couldn’t make any sense of an episode unless you saw the three one-hour specials prior to it. Others had nothing to do with the three seasons prior to the show. The plotlines became too demanding. I couldn’t keep up.

It wasn’t as if I was missing out on much. The shows reached a point where their storylines held no merit, either. They were releasing episodes faster than they could come up with stuff to fill them with. So, what happened?

SEX. That’s what happened.

I turned on an episode of Glee one day, and it was eerily reminiscent of the day I watched Grease 2 (minus the “HEY. THAT’S NOT JOHN TRAVOLTA” moment). The ENIRE show was like “Reproduction”. A little raunchiness isn’t inappropriate for a teen audience, but uncomfortable (and repeated) sexual situations are a total turn-off.

On another note, I find it absolutely appropriate that the announcement of the Nobel Prizes is relatively reserved. I don’t believe the recipients of that honor want that moment tarnished by the superficial aura that excessive media attention brings. In the case of the Emmy awards, more attention is paid to the glamour on the red carpet rather than who actually won. This simply wouldn’t be proper for the Nobel Prizes. Their work is what deserves the recognition.

Currently, I watch the Discovery Channel (Dirty Jobs, Mythbusters, Sons of Guns); the History Channel (American Pickers); Animal Planet (River Monsters); TLC (Cake Boss, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding*) the world news (MSNBC)- which has become terribly biased as of late; and miscellaneous cartoons.

*This show is actually a rather insightful documentary describing the conflicting cultural differences between the average citizen and the traveling gypsies. They address common myths and allow the gypsies to express how they feel on topics such as discrimination and marriage.