EPA suckage, Woody Allen ownage

One of the wisest things my roomies and I decided to do when we moved into an apartment was to declare it a television-free space. We have lots of nice things in our living room--a bookshelf, painted walls, a hookah--but one thing we do not have is a TV. The practical aspect of this is that it would be one more temptation in our already distracted lives, but the more important aspect is that the gray box is a drain on intellectual and visual aesthetics.

Being home, however, has accustomed me to the ugly gray box once again. The first day I could only watch about half an hour, and I think it was the news. Gradually I drifted to the National Geographic Channel and HBO, but now that my mind has been officially recolonized by the maggots that produce the crap that gets shown, I'm ashamed to say that it no longer turns my stomach to flip through channels.

If I sound so pretentious it's turning your stomach, just ask yourself: with your mental capabilities and potential, with all you don't know about, say, the nation of Uzbekistan (and I, for one, know nothing about it), with all there is to learn about exotic Indonesian fish, or the benefits of Vitamin B-12, or the guy you never talk to in physics..

...do you really want to spend your time watching 4 brainless plasticky pretty people fight over some other brainless plasticky pretty person? With 10 minutes of advertisements in between?

This is what I've learned from my past few days of painful, rapt television-watching:

1) Almost every show now is a competition to become a model;
2) FOX News has become somehow even more conspicuously reactionary, and yet they're still promoting that "fair and balanced" bull;
3) About half the commercials on TV operate on a self-ironic basis--make your audience laugh at you, and they'll think you're cute and buy the product;
4) HBO has the same movie playing on at least three channels at one time;
5) Politics is about 95% entertainment to the American public;
6) I prefer slow and painful torture to the sound of a laugh track.

You know, what really creeps me out is that people just sort of... go along with how stupid it all is. If they fed us a show of a group of people competing to date a wall, we'd watch it. If they fed us a show of a guy bashing his head against a wall for half an hour, we'd watch it. If they fed us a show of the daily trials and tribulations even faced by a wall, we'd watch it.

WHY?

In happier news, I got Annie Hall from Netflix today, making just slightly more of a dent in my Woody Allen filmography self-education. I loved it. I watched it twice; first by myself, then with Kristin at my mother's apartment (after an attempt at tofu soup that called for about 5 times too many split peas, such that it became split pea stew with other vegetables and tofu in it).

I think Woody Allen might be my favorite director. Everyone, I feel, should have a favorite director--and I've adored all of his movies so far.

Here's what I've seen:

--Annie Hall
--Manhattan Murder Mystery
--Match Point
--Small Time Crooks
--Take the Money and Run

..OK, so it's a small fraction of what he's put out. But I'm getting there. Next in my queue is Scoop, and though it hasn't gotten the best reviews, I love Scarlett Johansson.

Also, Woody Allen's birthday is December 1, which means he joins Noam Chomsky on my list of very cool people that redeem December birthdays.

(In other news, the EPA sucks and is full of crooks, cronies, and just general shitheads. Or maybe just a few people that encompass all three important political qualities.)

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Last note: Today is December 19, which means I've fulfilled my goal of writing every day for a month. I think I might keep trying to write daily, though, because a) It gives me a tangible goal, b) I like it, and c) I don't have any other sort of journal to record my thoughts/misexperiences.

What existence do I have if I'm not documenting? At least for the indefinite-feeling time that I'm here, in the cold rurals of many-churched, mini-vanned boringland--near non-existence.