Daytime TV

I've got to start with an apology to anyone who really loves gameshows -- you'll see why at the end of this blog.

While I've been recuperating at home, I've been watching more TV than usual. It's a different world (no pun intended). It's not just more TV, it's different.

For a while I thought I was doing well at holding back the influx of the inane, not to mention the insane. I limited myself to one talkshow per day, and chose the one that even seemed to have some edifying moments. I prided myself on avoiding the daytime dramas, and didn't pick up any reality shows.

But then I had a bit of a relapse, and found myself channel surfing. I innocently found a rerun of Jeopardy, and didn't realize that I had been sucked into the Game Show Network. Hour after hour passed, and the quality dropped show by show. By the second day, I clicked to GSN immediately. Some of it was like being in a time warp (just look at the haircuts on Family Feud). But some of it was culturally up to date -- did you know that there is a show where you indicate your desire to play the next round by chanting: "I need greed"? For some reason everyone claps at this point.

Anyway, I reached my nadir with an episode of the Newlywed game, followed by the Dating Game. I can't even explain why I was watching. It wasn't even particularly interesting or funny, and certainly wasn't edifying.

That night I was praying, and confessed to God that I had wasted time on this junk, and asked for help since I didn't even have the motivation to say I was going to try to do better.

This is where the apology comes in, because the following incident probably impacts lots of people besides me.

The next day, I found that Cablevision had pulled the channel from their lineup -- you need a different level of service to get it.

The moral of that story is, to be careful of what you pray for! Of course, another way of looking at it is that God was protecting me from myself.