"Cultural" Landscape

This is what it has come to.  Last night, I signed up for a package deal in which one company will deliver me wireless internet access, cable television (over 195 channels - and this is the SMALLEST package option), and telephone service for one flat monthly fee.

Now, being a proud luddite, I have not had cable since the nineties, and that is not a fanciful joke, it is the plain facts.  In the ten years in my home, and the two years in my apartment before that, plus a portion of the closing months I believe, of my living in the apartment before THAT - back when I was still a wee lass of thirty - I have not had cable.  TEO and I once joked about the someday we still believed in, in our economic naivete' and middle-class entitlement (and when television was pre-digital) - when we would "get cable JUST FOR THE RECEPTION" ...  Ooh.  Ahh.

I did have it for a while, when I felt (in my late twenties, and in an economy long long ago and far far away from today's) I was Moving Up in the world.  I lived in an end unit, so I had a big "yard".  I was suddenly an Executive Administrative Assistant (for a company which, during that splashy economy, went on to make some nastily splashy headlines in the WSJ ...).  I was Going Somewhere ...  Clearly, cable was an accepted part of my lifestyle, right?

Plus:  there used to be fairly regular Trek marathons.  My only fond recollection of 1990s cable TV.



For one reason or another, I canceled the subscription.  I don't remember missing it initially; probably did - I am a vidiot of extreme proportions, and have never denied it - but certainly, during the past ten years, I haven't felt any pinch.  As naturally one does, there is also the mild sense of personal superiority which comes with (a) nonconformity (*GASP!*  She doesn't have CABLE!  Who ever heard of such ... ?) and of course (b) the absence of dependence on broadcast media.  The bliss which comes with never having experienced Mad Men, the Sopranos, or ... (*shudder*) Sex and the City can hardly be described, to those who have been forced into addiction and submission.

In all this time, I've always said that I'd only really WANT cable if I could pick something like six or eight channels I don't already have, and leave it at that.  Cafeteria cable - give me the History Channel, Sci Fi (I refuse their current spelling flatly), Comedy Central (Colbert, fella babies - I'd shamelessly go for Stephen Colbert, not least as I know someone who's been with the show since the beginning), maybe Bravo and VH1 for some of their kitschier offerings (if they still even do programming like I remember).  That'd be it.

The prospect of 195+ channels frankly depresses me.  My plan already, even before installation, is to simply learn how to use "favorites" on my remote(s), program those few stations I give a damn about, and hope to be able to flatly ignore the rest.

Like, you know, Fox news.  Oy.


So why did I do it.  Well, it has finally, in our country, become CHEAPER to have cable than not to have it.  The package deal I got runs about $80 a month.  Right now, I am paying $72 for a standard telephone service alone.  AND internet, which is a separate bill.

Yeah:  no.

Getting cable will restore to me the major networks which seem to have gone a bit squiffy since getting a new TV for Christmas (the new digital antenna picks up LESS signal than my giant black rabbit-eared antenna did, even with fundamentally broken pieces!).  It'll clean up a bit of the equipment/cord picture I have going on now (the new antenna is hanging within the frame of one of my "art posters" in the living room; classy - it has a white tail - yeesh).  But, mainly, it'll streamline my bills (Heil Phone Company) and save me money I'm currently spending quite pointlessly.  It's basic math - with the equation not solving for "I get cable" but for efficiency and ease of use.


So it has come to this.  In our nation, in our society - in our "culture" - it is cheaper to live drowned in television than it is to remain independent, at least of cable (yes, big brother - I know you have no TV at all; let me know how your math works in the comments if you like!).  Bits of me remain queasy at this prospect.

The bits that don't are already programming my remote(s) mentally when I could be sleeping.