I’m CT, and I’m a TV-aholic

Step 1: Admit you have a problem.  The average American watches about 20 hours of television each week*, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent data.  I watch more than this.  A lot more.  The overarching theme of this blog is about breaking my bad habits, so it’s time I confront this elephant in the room and ‘fess up in the hopes of significantly reducing how much TV I watch. 

Why should you read this post?  You probably shouldn’t, but there are two possible reasons: 1) to rationalize your own excessive television-watching, which won’t seem so bad in comparison, or 2) schadenfreude.

The basic procedure:

1. Get a clear picture of the size of the problem and identify its parts.
2. Systematically evaluate the types of television I watch and the reasons why I watch specific shows.
3. Resolve to adopt measurable changes.

Current Schedule.  My television habit falls into three broad categories. 

1. The TV I watch deliberately and routinely. (~16 hours a week)
2. The TV I watch “when there’s nothing on,” like cable news, Lifetime movies, Jeopardy, Daily Show, etc. (???? >20 hours?  The TV is on pretty much all the time, so it doesn’t get full attention or anything but it’s always there when I am.)
3. Movies. (~8 hours? )

The necessity of one broad goal is already apparent: Be more deliberate about what I watch and cut out the incidental viewing (category #2).  Just eliminate that and I’m already close to the average!  And movies I’m going to deal with in another post maybe, but I might make a rule that if I watch a movie, I have to make a blog post about it, to justify the time spent.

But what follows is the specific in-season (so not counting Mad Men or Big Brother, I’ll deal with them when they return) that I routinely and deliberately watch:

DAY	TITLE	DESCRIPTION/JUSTIFICATION	RUN-TIME	KEEP WATCHING?
SUN.	The Simpsons	Matt Groening’s once-revolutionary animated comedy has seen better days, and I rarely get a laugh out of it, much less a new thought.  I shouldn’t look forward to this except that it’s on when I’m likely to be eating and we watch TV during dinner in the household.  Hmm.  Maybe that’s something that needs adjustment.	30m	No.
	Family Guy	I guess I still find this funny, but it’s definitely on the bubble.	30m	A tentative Yes.
MON.	Chuck	Chuck used to be about two things: the balance between Chuck’s amateur bumbling and the dangerous situations he found himself in, and the romantic tension between him and Sarah.  Even then it wasn’t great but now I find it pretty intolerable.  I started watching this because I was bored.  I liked when Scott Bakula was Chuck’s dad, but I should be embarrassed to watch it.	60m	Definitely not.
	How I Met Your Mother	Hard to believe this CBS sitcom is already in its 6th season.  There are a bunch of early episodes I still never saw, but that’s ok because I don’t think Robin’s character ever started working until she was clearly being placed in the “Not Your Mother” category.  Barney (NPH) is a great character.  I laugh good laughs frequently during this show, but I think each character is running out (if not already run out) of ways to develop, and I’d like the writers to start moving towards closure.	30m	OK for now.
	The Event	Crap.  This sci-fi, conspiracy drama just returned and I think I’m done with it.  The Event tried to capitalize on the popularity of Lost by imitating its structuring ambiguity as well as the popularity of 24 with political back rooms and terrorist threats.  But it lacks the strong characters of Lost and there’s nothing similar to the guilty pleasure we get out of watching righteous Jack Bauer punish the wicked of 24’s simplistic moral universe.	60m	No.
	Being Human	Based on a UK series, Being Human is premised on a vampire and a werewolf moving into a Boston house that’s already inhabited by a ghost.  They want to live normally, but they have issues.  Given my interest in the ways we represent humanity, I’m bound to give this show a fair amount of leeway.  I like the characters, I guess.  I wish it were cleverer though.	60m	Tentative Yes.
	Hawaii Five-O	Awful.  I began watching this out of respect for the original, but Alex O’Laughlin is no McGarrett.  Like McGarrett, his people respect him and he makes every case personal, but there’s something missing: Lord’s sense of propriety? His Hamlet-like graveness?  Only one character on TV today possesses the missing je ne sais quoi, and that is Horatio from CSI: Miami.  Also, Scott Caan as Danno is intolerably one-dimensional.  And he’s playing Danno, so that’s really saying something.	60m	NO.
TUES.	V	Ah, this alien invasion remake I’m a little torn on.  It’s better than The Event, for sure, and stars Morena Baccarin from Firefly and Elisabeth Mitchell from Lost, but it’s like the writer’s have no plan.  The show is thematically incoherent.  Is it about human souls? Emotions? Is it about media and propaganda?  Is it about justice and revenge?	60m	Yes, for now.
WED.	American Idol	Although I’ve really been enjoying this season: there’s a lot of talent on the stage and Steven Tyler and J-Lo are fantastic replacements for Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul, I could easily stop watching this show if it weren’t that it’s a household show.  I would never watch it by myself, but I have fun watching it with others.  I really wish it were just an hour, and not three hours spread over two days each week.	120m	Yes.
	Survivor	Survivor is like Big Brother, but where as Big Brother is primarily mentally punishing and paranoid, Survivor is much more physically punishing.  Also, the set is frequently breath-taking.	60m	Yes.
	Modern Family	A great ensemble sitcom that always promises lots of laughs.  I’m hard-pressed to identify any weak players.  Maybe the Dunphy kids.	30m	Yes.
THURS.	American Idol	See above.	60m	Yes.
	Big Bang Theory	Now that Two and a Half Men is finished, this will be my only source of Chuck Lorre jokes, but maybe I should outgrow them.  I don’t care about the characters and can’t count on belly laughs, so this one is nixed.	30m	No.
	Community	The funniest show on TV right now, I’d say.  They’ve really taken off with the second season (similar to Parks and Rec) with more and more outrageous plots.  I’m glad that television has a place for Chevy Chase.	30m	Yes.
	The Office	I’m ready for this to be over, ever since Pam and Jim got married.  Steve Carell has signaled that he’s leaving, so hopefully the show will end with him.  Still reliably funny, though.  I’m seeing this series through to the end.	30m	Yes
	Parks and Recreation	Another great ensemble sitcom operating on all cylinders.	30m	Yes
	30 Rock	I guess Alec Baldwin is who makes this show for me, but now that I think of it, 30 Rock is probably on the downslope along with The Office.  Those two shows were the original anchors of NBC’s comedy line-up, and one of the main reasons why Thursday’s are/were “TV Night” for me (despite every night being TV Night).  But I’m not so committed to this show that they won’t be due for a reevaluation at the end of the season.	30m	Yes.
	The Mentalist	Hmm.  This investigative procedural has a gimmick like they all do.  Simon Baker’s Patrick Jane isn’t a crime novelist (Castle), a math genius (Numbers), a psychic (Medium), or a pretend psychic (Psych).  He used to be a pretend psychic, but then his wife and daughter were murdered by a serial killer, Red John, and now he’s one of the most cynical, nihilistic, vengeful, calculating characters in all of TV.  On the other hand, Robin Tunney is awful, and the rest of the CBI team are pretty non-essential as well, with the exception of the internal affairs investigator LaRoche, who operates as a foil to Jane, calculating, intelligent, and solitary.  Eventually he and Jane will be teaming up against Red John, and I can’t wait.	60m	Yes.
FRI.	Fringe	Probably my favorite show of all.  I avoided this show until its 3rd season based on my initial reaction to the first 30 minutes of the pilot episode.  I hated Dawson’s Creek and I hated Pacey, so I took it out on Joshua Jackson, who plays Peter Bishop in this X-files-y, family drama, parallel universe sci-fi series.  Like those other show I loved and then were cancelled, Dollhouse and Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, FOX has moved Fringe to the Friday night slot, where it’s already low ratings will continue to drop.  The world is not long for Fringe, unfortunately.	60m	Yes.

Well, that was exhausting, but I’ve whittled down 15.5 hours down to 11.5 (provided I muster the force of Will to carry out my plan).  For several of the shows which I’ve decided to keep watching, I’m going to force myself to justify those decisions even more deliberately by writing blog posts about several of them.

__
*Bureau of Labor Statistics: This number is skewed a little by the unemployed and old people, who watch more TV than anyone else.  Here are some more specific details I found interesting:

Hours of TV	Weekdays	Weekends
Men	2.80	3.81
Women	2.43	2.87
25-34 year olds	2.06	3.16
Employed F/T	1.85	2.98

 

Eating Less Meat: It’s surprisingly easy to do.

Vegetables are delicious.  I bet it was the meat and dessert industry that started spreading the meme that kids had to eat their vegetables if they wanted dessert, as though it were a chore to eat vegetables.  And then kids started to believe it. 

After reading James McWilliams analysis of the rift between animal rights advocates and sustainable farming advocates on the subject of synthetic meat at the Atlantic, I thought I might write a bit of an update to the post I wrote way back in December about roughly the same subject. 

I concluded that post by confessing that I ate all the usual meats without much in the way of guilty feelings.  Since then I’ve pretty drastically reduced my meat intake.  My decision to change my diet was not based on animals’ capacity to think or suffer but because a little over two months ago a few friends of mine and I were discussing the carbon costs of our diets.  Heh… Just writing that makes me feel like such a caricature of a liberal yuppie.

But anyway, my friend was pointing to some research he had read about that suggested, persuasively to him, that given the carbon costs of industrial meat production, going vegetarian was one of the most effective ways for an individual to reduce his carbon footprint.  I don’t mean to evaluate that argument here, but you can read about it at New Scientist. 

Now, my friend is not a vegetarian, so it’s not like he was judging the rest of us, but partly because by this point in the evening we were already several beers in, I decided to call him on his mild hypocrisy.  I told him that if he went vegetarian, I would too, thus doubling the environmental impact of his dietary decision.

We made a few concessions on the spot to make the challenge realistic and decided it would last only 6 months (actually until November 5th, because it’s so easy to remember).  We were permitted fish for two meals a week, some other meat for one meal a week, but beef only once a month because it’s apparently the worst, environmentally speaking.  Other than that we would abide by a strict vegetarian (though not vegan…eggs and dairy are allowed) diet.

Since then, 2 months in, I’ve got to tell you, it has been surprisingly easy and I feel really healthy and good about it.  Here are some ways that my eating habits have changed (or not):

• I order vegetarian meals in restaurants (easy)
• I don’t eat fast food (a little tough at first, but there’s no way I’m wasting a precious beef credit on a Big Mac, now it’s easy)
• I never realized how many hoagies I ate.  On average, I probably ate between 2 and 3 hoagies a week before.  Now I eat more peanut butter sandwiches, potato chips and fruit.  (moderately hard)
• I eat tofu sometimes, like in a delicious stir-fry (easy)
• I’ve been a recipe experimenter for a long time now, and if anything, contrary to what you might think considering that a vegetarian diet only reduces the number of ingredients I have to work with, my diet has grown more interesting, because instead of getting stuck in the old beefporkchickenpastabeefporkchickenfish rut, I’m trying all sorts of new recipes.  (fun and easy)
• I’ve experienced no loss of energy; if anything, I feel less sluggish than I used to
• I save money, especially on lunches, which I can then spend on expensive steaks once a month

So anyway, so far so good.  There’ve been only four or five minor slip-ups so far between my friend and I, and already I think we’re having a positive impact on the environment.  Just kidding, but seriously, significantly reducing the amount of meat I eat has been surprisingly easy for me and it’s delicious. 

There’s still four months ago, but I have a feeling that the eating habits I’m developing now will extend beyond Guy Fawkes’ day.

BONUS: Make this.  It’s easy, customizable, and you will like it.

Marijuana prohibition isn’t just stupid. It’s deadly.

President Calderón of Mexico is visiting the United States this week, speaking with President Obama about a range of issues including the controversial new Arizona anti-immigration law, the North American economy, border violence and even climate change.  But there’s something that the two statesmen are unlikely to discuss (via Drug WarRant.com):

President Obama calls Calderon Mexico’s Elliott Ness…but Elliott Ness never stopped illegal liquor. The lifting of Prohibition did. Similarly, the only solution to the drug trafficking and violence on both sides of the border is to legalize drugs. (Edward Schumacher-Matos, The Washington Post, 5/19/2010)

I have been meaning to author a drug war-related post for a while now, and the occasion of Calderón’s visit seems as good a time as any.  I don’t think I have anything to add to the discussion that hasn’t been explored in much greater depth at Drug WarRant.com, a site which I regularly monitor and highly recommend.  So I guess mainly I’d just like this post to direct traffic there.

Because I don’t think that President Obama is an idiot, I find it hard to imagine that he could identify Calderón as a “Mexican Eliot Ness” without also thinking through the historical parallels that would lead him to conclude that the real problem is not some harmlessly euphoric plant but Prohibition itself and the entrenched paramilitary and propaganda institutions that owe their existences to it.

Obama, at least, spouts relatively less drug-war nonsense than previous presidents, and I’m actually hopeful that if he wins a second term he might opt for spouting sense.  After all, even as thousands have died and are dying needlessly and uselessly in Mexico since Calderón ordered the first 6,500 federal troops into Michoacán in 2006, there have also been positive changes both in law and in attitude in the US.  A bill that could allow seriously ill patients to benefit from medical marijuana (a good start, though full legalization and regulation is really the only sensible policy) has even been introduced in my home state of Pennsylvania (HB 1393).

Nevertheless, it seems that even among my primarily liberal and informed friends, when I occasionally note in conversation that some medical marijuana law has been introduced, or when I point out some politician’s support for either legal reform or the drug war as a point for or against them, there is this smirking sense that ending prohibition isn’t really a serious cause, or rather, that what motivates and organizes my thinking is merely a personal, even selfish, desire for legal weed.  As though the only people victimized by marijuana policy are a bunch of funny, college-age stoners having to watch their cartoons and eat their sugary cereals in secret.

Many of the privileged, middle-class, members of my generation, who grew up during the Reagan administration and graduated in elementary school from laughable D.A.R.E programs will allow that marijuana might make you lazy but is mostly harmless.  According to the 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 41% of Americans over 12 years of age have at least tried it, and I doubt that many of them would conclude from the experience that the outright lies constituting anti-drug fear campaigns are justified.  But surprisingly few will associate marijuana prohibition with the cartel war in Mexico because their perspective as end-users obscures the illegal market dynamics that connects their enjoyment of Pink Floyd and soft-serve both to a prison/enforcement-industrial complex and professionally trained cartel security forces armed with AK-47s and R-15s. 

Hmm.  It sounds a little like I’m blaming the user here, and that’s not at all my intention.  I just watched a commenter on CNN do just that.  He invited any drug users who were watching to “just stop and think” about the “real” costs of your “ounce for Saturday night…as harmless as you think it may be.”  This reminds me of that National Lampoon magazine cover that threatened to shoot the dog if you didn’t buy the issue.  The illegal market dynamic that connects drug use to drug violence is no more natural or necessary than the dynamic that might associate magazine sales with canine stays of execution.  Prohibition policy is what transforms American drug demand into something from which both the DEA and the Sinaloa cartel can benefit.  So it is the legislators and enforcement agencies that should “just stop and think” about the “real” costs of their preoccupation with how people spend their leisure time. 

On the other hand, what I do want to impress upon recreational drug users as well as non-users is that until these drug policies are reformed, we are all complicit in drug war violence.

The Dystopian Future of the Past is Now!

So far the scientists have not tasted it, but they believe the breakthrough could lead to sausages and other processed products being made from laboratory meat in as little as five years’ time. (Times Online, 9/29/09)

Some Dutch scientists backed by a sausage manufacturer have grown "a soggy form of pork" in a petri dish.  Where to begin?

Leaving aside a mostly silly dislike I have for the Netherlands (Rembrandt and Van Gogh...Awesome; pirate capital of consumption and Infernal setting of Camus' The Fall...not awesome), I think this begins with Chicken Little.

In 1952, Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth wrote The Space Merchants, a novel I've been meaning to re-read.  It's sort of a satire of consumer-advertising culture, prescient in lots of ways, that follows Mitchell Courtenay, a future-day Don Draper, as he descends from the halls of Madison Avenue power to the dystopian subterranea of "Luna City" or something like that.  Anyway, the thing I remember most about the novel is when Mitch is escorted deep beneath a food-processing plant by a worker who is secretly also a member of the conservationist, dissident underground:

I asked about the apparently immense weight of the ceiling.  "Concrete and lead.  It shields cosmic rays.  Sometimes a Gallina goes cancer."  He spat.  "No good to eat for people.  You got to burn it all if you don't catch it real fast and--" He swung his glittering slicer in a screaming arc to show me what he meant by "catch."

He swung open a door.  "This is her nest," he said proudly.  I looked and gulped.

The "Gallina" (AKA Chicken Little) is a 100-ton mound of growing flesh, fed from nutrient tubes and pruned by Mexicans with light sabers for general consumption by the people of the moon.

Now Space Merchants is undoubtedly a more sophisticated satire than I recall, but I remember being repulsed by the very idea of Chicken Little when I was younger.  Some kind of blob of meat, fed with tubes and and prone to cancer?  So unnatural and alien, thought I.  But, to quote Augustine, such a fool I then was.

According to a PETA rep quoted in the article, "if meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal, there's no ethical objection."  So for someone who likes the taste of meat but draws some sort of line between animative and vegatative souls, this laboratory pork potentially solves a lot of problems.

But in fact, I'm not entirely sure what line or lines I draw.  I eat most of the usual meats, generally without compunction.  (Although I have been staying away from shrimp for the last several months, purportedly in support of mangrove swamps, but also because my brother once referred to them as the cockroaches of the sea, which maybe means that my ethics are always really aesthetic judgments in disguise).  Occasionally I try to determine a line.  Would I eat a dolphin?  Blue whale?  Elephant? Monkey? Mountain gorilla?  What if s/he knows sign language?  What about a friend of mine who died in an accident?  If something wanted to eat me after I died, I don't think I would mind.  Either that or worms anyway.  Is there a cognitive/non-cognitive line I would draw if I could decide what cognition was?  

It's probably true that the more like a human being an organism is, the more distasteful would be the idea of me eating it, which isn't to say that there's anything natural about this distaste, but I wonder if whatever explains that distaste might also explain the uncanny valley?  On the other hand, I also don't want to eat a bowl of spiders.