I've done it again, missed a self-imposed deadline. It's funny, one would think that during summer I'd be more than able to keep up with this cybercolumn, but that's not the case. I'm an educator with supposed extra time over the summer to spend doing all those catch up things, yet was unable to find time during the month of June and much of July to update my musings on this page. Perhaps it's because of feeling that there's so much time available it becomes too hard to "just do it", as the Nike ads tell us.

Where Was I?

We live in an age of constant distractions. It's bad enough with television, which gives several generations a major source of wasting time. We also have computers, and by extension the net, video games, radios, telephones, books, music, magazines, newspapers, theatres, sporting events and families, neighbors and friends to share these with. Not all of these are in themselves a problem. In fact, these might be the reason we exist as social beings. But when our mind numbs and we want to escape, nothing beats the television for instant time killing.

So Many Choices

Even with the relatively few channels available to us in the fifties and sixties, we managed to spend inordinant amounts of our lives in front of this electronic eye. With the multiple choices we have now, we can get culture and/or distraction on a scale undreamt of in previous decades. It's all there for our choosing, no matter where on this shrinking planet we live. News, entertainment, education, enlightenment and time-killing. Push a button and choose or keep pushing buttons and see the veritable smorgasbord of choice a few seconds at a time.

A Guy Thing

Even selecting something to watch becomes a ritual guided by the person, usually the male, with the remote control. Why do you suppose that one of the things we males have come to dominate in our society is a device that decides what type of entertainment comes over the tube? Is it something in our genes or is it just that we're the ones who figured out how to program the VCRs and adjust TV's image. So naturally we have control over the selection of channels. Maybe it's because we're the ones who, for the most part, suggested getting a larger or newer set that makes us the captains of what is watched on them.

Driving' MaMa Bonkers

I know I drive my wife bats when we sit down to watch something on the tube without consulting the listings first. As I flip the channels, I show just enough to get a quick impression of what each station is beaming our way. If the offering is in another language, I may go quicker to the next selection. If it looks like something the cable company offers for the public with poor production values and some poor citizen trying to make a point (like I do on these pages) I click to the next channel even faster. The things I dwell on are the movies or recycled network shows. I generally will hear full sentences of dialog or more before moving on. It becomes a type of game to see if something from one channel makes sense as a part of the next channel selected.

The Game

A man and a woman talking about their relationship. He says, "You know how I feel, you have to."..click.. "If I ever catch you around here, I'll kill you!" ..click.. "But you must act now. Operators are standing by." ..click.. "Mr. Wilson, did you find the baseball my dad threw at your house?" ..click.. "Jesus loves you. How great is your love for him?" ..click.. "A hurricane watch has just been declared for the southeastern seaboard" ..click.. "And what did your mother say when you told her you really had strong feelings about the family dog?" ..click.. "I don't know, Jerry, everything I try with women backfires." ..click.. ..click.. ..click.. ..click..

An Alternative

Maybe there's just a time to turn the thing off and listen to music, play a game or ...gasp... even engage in a real-time face-to-face conversation. "You know how I feel..."