Maybe that $100,000 college degree will be put to good use

One of my pet peeves is when someone tells me they "never watch TV" in a snotty tone, like they just know that I do watch TV and because of that I am a lesser human being. Oh, please, let me be as cool as you so I can look down my nose at everyone who knows the names of the people on the latest season of the Real World (guilty) or wants to know whether Locke is actually dead. It's fine if you don't watch TV, and I know there are alot of people out there who are genuinely uninterested or too busy to spend time with the talking box.

I would like to think that I am not a great consumer of television. However, if I allowed myself to believe that statement I would only be leading myself further into the depths of self-deception. I do like TV. I get attached to shows, I feel like I know characters, and I think TiVo is one of man's greatest inventions to this point. Seriously. So maybe I'm just hearing these snotty tones in my head and taking offense because I feel as though I may be judged by the televisionless person. Or not. You be the judge.

As of late I've felt as though I'm slowly losing my mind and I blame it on a combination of booze, TV, and the confusion of being in my early 20s. I realize that TV is a great distractor, but once I flip it off my overactive mind comes out to play. Having been sent into dormancy while watching Brooke's latest rant on the Real World Denver, I have not only managed to lose a half hour of my life that I'll never get back, but I've also allowed my mind to flip off. Somehow, when the switch for my mind is turned back on thoughts don't just trickle in, the floodgates are literally opened. Pretty sure the levees of my mind are pretty much irrepairable at this point. Plus I have a knack for excessive worrying which I can prove is genetic.

What is the point of the long rant in the last paragraph, one might wonder? Well, I've basically come to the conclusion that I need to spend more of my free time reading and come the end of the this television season I am (gulp) canceling my cable and thus losing my TiVo.

Tonight, as I worked on on latest fun read, I came to the realization that even though I wasn't reading Hemingway or Chaucer, my mind felt active and alive. I was processing my own stories, felt inspired to write blog postings, and was composing scenes for the Next Great American Novel in my head. I am alive! That last Miller Lite did NOT kill off as many brain cells as I had once feared.

Really, it's an unbeatable feeling. My goal for the summer is to keep it up so I feel sharp and ready as fall approaches.

P.S. Entirely unrelated, but Patches is, at the moment, eating red ants which have somehow busted in my second story apartment and are crawling across my floor. Don't know how good that is for her, but I guess she won't be starved for protein, eh?