2004-04-21

This morning I heard one of my adjacent-cubicle-mates opining quite seriously to a co-worker that she refuses to watch organized sports: not doesn’t watch, but refuses to watch. Also: “I won’t watch any TV program that has a continuing story. Even sitcoms, if there’s a story that continues over more than one episode. I’ll watch a program once, and if I have to tune in the next week to find out what happens, I won’t watch it again. I don’t like being a slave to television.” She was very intent about this.

Way to take a stand, eh? Stick it to the man, sister! People weird me out. This woman has obviously put thought and effort into this decision. The very fact of a story arc has struck her, somehow, as sinister – a ploy on the part of television producers to rob her of precious free time. For the sake of freedom of choice, never will a single second of The Gilmore Girls disgrace her television set. Never, I say!

In my opinion, if you’re going to go out of your way to take a decisive stance on media consumption, or on anything, really, you should go all the way and expend the marginal added effort it would take to develop an opinion that isn’t catastrophically retarded. It’s television, for God’s sake! Conspiracy theories and unpleasant statistics are ripe for the picking – in fact, they’re on TV! Television will tell you why it is bad! All you have to do is watch the evening news once in a while and a story is bound to turn up about the influence of television on the development of ADD or its suppressive effect on the metabolism or the worrisome emergence of a post-literate society or OH GOD WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN or whatever. You can’t swing a remote control without hitting some paranoid naysaying about television. And out of all that, you’ve firmly decided to avoid…continuing storylines?? That’s like reading about nutrition, and then deciding to avoid peas because of the disproportionate amount of energy it takes to get small spherical objects to stay on a fork. You’re a tard, and then you’re a RE-TARD, lady.

I also like the implied lack of independent will on this woman's part: obviously, if she catches wind of Jess’s return to Stars Hollow, she will be absolutely powerless to resist the urge to find out how Rory will react. Will Rory fall under Jess’s bad-boy spell again? WILL SHE??? MERCIFUL JESUS, I CAN NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE ON A WEDNESDAY NIGHT AGAIN!

I’ve crafted a memo, to be sent anonymously, to aid my intrepid co-worker in her valiant battle against serial plotting: “Dear Fuckwit: TIVO. Look into it.”