Sometimes I DIDN'T Watch TV

""Sometimes, people forget..."  The Who says it bestly...

Oh, there were times.   I remember them, because I was actually DOING things.  Probably, push-ups.  So, there were memories of things other than laughter sound-tracks, unpaid characters vying for a tax-laden Mil-spot by debasing themselves, Honda CRXs, bad beef jerky, Manhattanites with big apartments and bad banter...
Kinda glad I missed that all, actually.  The Early 90's SUCKED, as it were.  Television wouldn't have helped.  (Except for 'Star Trek: The Next Generation.'  Because of Whorf.  It's a long story involving salvation, combat and glory, so...)
Being outside the USA during the late 80's, now - hindsight 20-20 and all that - seems like some sort of enforced bliss.  I was permanently employed in the US Army as some sort of mercenary, but, without digressing, I was okay with that.  Plus, the foreign experience thing.  Have you ever eaten a pig's foot in jelly?  Bought good mustard in a convenient squeeze-tube?   Bread-lets by the kilogram?
Yeah.  Precisely my point.
From what I read in The Stars and Stripes, the homeland then was becoming a mess.  Bush I wasn't that good for the world after that CIA fuck-up in Kuwait.  Was anybody paying attention in 1989 or 1990?  I ask because I didn't see it in the neon and hand-print t-shirts.  Lots of bad beer.  No evidence hidden in the newly-mown grassy knolls?  No ankle tattoos?  And what's with these new 'latte' things?  WHAT THE FUCK?!  
"'Have you even been to deep Mexico?' comes to mind."  Norteno mariachi... with the tubas?  Hmm?  Spit it out!
Maybe This Is a Test.  El pero esta blanco?  Quick - what is 'pi' to seven digits?


Wow, I DO digress.  It really is all I do.  It's practically a career.  Digressing.  I'm a digressor.   I'll readily admit it.  That's why I have a sword by the door, because this ONE time...

...so that mailman isn't on this route anymore.

Phew.  Is it hot in here?

"If I could make a wish, I think I'd pass..."  The Hollies rule.
SO, I didn't watch TV for  a long while.  Minus a bunch of movies on VHS or early, 12 inch videodiscs, I basically missed the 1984-1999 television time period.  (You KNOW the movies - "Repo Man" "Dune," "Terminator" and "Empire Strikes Back."  so shut up about that.)  (GAH!)
Perhaps, you can imagine my imagined horror.  No "Urkel."  No "Alf."  No Olsen twins.  It was almost magic.  I didn't know who Jon-Benet was because I was in Korea.  A pageant girl murdered? (Is this a quiz?)  I say the brother DID it.  His voice was in the 911 background, but he was supposed to be of fat college.  What possible outcome would make parents clam up?   BEEP!  Alex, 'What is a guilty sibling?"
"Correct."  
"I'll take Onion Recipes for $1200."
"This double-named city in WA State is famous for sweet yellow onions."

(Hey!  It's not Kent, Auburn or Federal Way.  No answer EVER will include them unless the answer is "This shithole has horrific crimes and doesn't do JACK SHIT about it, because everyone who lives there is a an actual piece of shit.  We checked.)

It's Saturday night.  I'm not watching "Saturday Night Live" and that's something.  I can recall staying up late enough in 1977 to watch the new episodes, but I was more of an SCTV fan, truth be told.


Maybe it's okay to go without television.  Maybe you can survive... I did, for almost a decade, until those damned "X-Files" debuted.  I DO Believe.  
(The evidence is out there, unless you're too busy, or watching TV.)
But if you watch Fox News and believe it, I'm gonna be the boogey-man that comes and gets you.
TV makes monsters.  I just emulate them.


SO delicious.
Except "Roswell."