It's usually my preference to reach for the scalpel instead of the axe, the single horse hair brush instead of the paint roller, the sniper rifle instead of the hydrogen bomb: precision and grace instead of massive explosions.
Nevertheless, from time to time, the bold statement is demanded: television is the antichrist and it will devour your brain and excrete it back into your skull.
Or to put it more properly: watch as little of the Glass Screen Seductress as possible.
That is the first thing that came to mind about what needed to be injected into this debate about this Scott Peterson nonsense.
Those of us who do not worship the trinity of the cable news networks probably do not see this as much of a story. "In the name of the father CNN, the son MSNBC, and the unholy ghost FOX News."
No. These trials that always seem to pop up -- ever since the Juice injected some citric acid to sour the media back in the mid '90s -- are nothing next to the things that we should be concerned with: the actions of our leaders and the wars raging across the world.
It's not just "news," though. I have little sympathy for those who whine about the depths of depravity to which television has allegedly descended. Don't like sitcoms featuring degenerate sodomites? Horrified by those graphic, violent crime shows? Driven insane by the inanity of the newest crop of "reality" programming? Here's a wild idea: don't watch them!
If you have a tick stuck on your neck, sucking the life out of you, rip it off and step on it.
What about news and opinion, though? Given the fact that you're extracting meaning from the black marks on this page or computer monitor (I'm not on TV reading it aloud) you're capable of reading. I submit that one can be better informed through thirty minutes of perusing a newspaper, an opinion journal, or a series of Web sites than by submitting to the will of the airwave dominatrix.
Too often I've made exceptions. "I'll just watch some TV while I eat dinner or have my midnight snack." The roommates will have "The Simpsons" or "Malcolm in the Middle" on as we all eat and I'll join in.
But no -- I need to be stronger. No more excuses. The commercials are just too painful. Each of them: a dart soaring straight into my brain. "Hey! What's this doing here? I don't want this garbage floating around, muddying up my subconscious!"
So saith the prophet, Bill Hicks: "Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye." Of course that's kind of the point isn't it?
Turn it on, turn off your brain. I've had a long, hard day working 9 to 5, I just want to come home, flip on the TV, let Peter Jennings tell me what I need to know about the world, watch "Everybody Loves Raymond" where love is defined by how much one character can ridicule the other, and satisfy my voyeuristic urges by watching people degrade themselves.
That's what it has become: television the painkiller, the narcotic, the heroin for the existential pain of life. With that in mind, recalling the second best drug movie ever made, "Trainspotting," two words are appropriate: Choose life.
Write to David at swimminginbrokenglass@gmail.com
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