I finally did it: I got rid of my t.v.
I’d been going back and forth on this decision ever since I moved in January. I didn’t have access to my t.v. at my previous apartment, but in my new space, well, I’d see what I could get with just an antennae.
Bupkis, is what I could get.
So I didn’t watch it, but I kept it around, thinking that maybe I’ll join Netflix and watch some movies. But I never got around to doing that, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to shell out the 100 bucks for a Roku box anyway, and then my DVD player decided everything looked better in black and white. . . and this big lump of plastic, wire, and various toxic material didn’t seem to be worth it.
What really tipped me over, however, were my ongoing and heretofore unsuccessful attempts to transform my main space into a way that, mmm, flowed. It didn’t flow, and moving around chairs and shelves and the t.v. just didn’t cut it.
But: If I got rid of the t.v., I could move this over there and that over here and voila! flow!
So that’s what I did. I put the t.v. (with its remote, instructions, and original box, of course) in the hall, posted a few signs in my building that a free working t.v. was available for the taking and voila! taken!
Please note that I am not proffering any sort of anti-television purity. I greatly enjoyed watching trashy cable shows with my old roommate P., and were I not so cheap, I might have sprung for cable on my own. But it’s also true that I watched very little first-run t.v., far more often plunking myself down in front of the tube for a marathon of Law & Orders or CSIs, or watching Independence Day (i.e., Doritos-on-film) for the eleventy millionth time. After my initial withdrawal symptoms passed, I realized that I really could live without t.v.
Especially when there’s Hulu. . . .
AbsurdBeats 
It’s amazing how little is on TV nowadays, isn’t it? There’s still some shows I stick with, like Dirty Jobs and Mythbusters and such, but in a lot of ways I’m sorta happy there’s so little on TV worth watching as I end up spending more of my time reading.
Probably a better use of my time anyway. 🙂
Yeah, I had that same reaction when reality shows began crowding into the prime-time lineup: I didn’t care for Survivor or Big Brother, so why not do something else.
That’s why cable’s so insidious: a number of shows I did/do enjoy play endlessly, and since I don’t mind watching something I’ve already seen eleventy million times, well, I got caught in whatcha might call a ‘time suck.’
I’m better off without it. Now the web, on the other hand. . . .
You know you can watch anything available to Netflix’s Roku on your computer, right?
I only have my tv for DVDs that aren’t (yet) available to “Watch Instantly”, and for New York One for local news and weather. If I ever get around to learning Spanish again, there are a few Spanish-language channels, too. I can’t afford the time-suck that is Cable, no matter how good the shows might be.
Leaves me out of some conversations, but hey…
I didn’t mention that I was thinking of getting an external monitor and setting it up as an ersatz t.v. console. Thus: Netflix streaming sans Roku.
And given that a Roku goes for a hundred bucks, well, I could just put that amount toward a monitor.
See, I’m really not pure. At all.