I haven’t had television for several years now. I mean I have a physical television set covered with a thick coat of dust and collecting more (totally intentional since I think the thick coat of dust will protect the TV set in case of it being knocked over or something despite its size and weight… you never know… it could happen!)  in the living room corner but it doesn’t have any input unless I pop a DVD into the DVD player because I don’t subscribe to cable or satellite service. The main reason for that: I loved TV too much. You could say I was addicted.

For the longest time, I had resisted getting cable TV and just used rabbit ears. I didn’t really feel the need for cable TV except for better picture quality and not having to adjust the rabbit ears whenever I changed channels. I didn’t understand why people would complain about not having anything to watch on TV, and these people had cable or satellite TV with several premium channels. I always had something to watch. The show didn’t have to be good. If I started watching a show, I tended to get sucked in no matter how bad it was. Also, I never got sick of reruns even if I had seen it more than once already.

Do you remember my infomercial purchases? You don’t seriously believe I only bought thirteen items off infomercials, do you? I mean, consider the extreme lameness of the things I listed there. There are A LOT more convincing infomercials hawking products that look and sound much more practical and promising. You can infer that I probably watched almost all infomercials out there at the time, and you’d be right. I did. Many times, I could be found watching an infomercial at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. Most of the times I would resist the temptation to dial that 800 number and place my order, which led me to watch the same fucking  infomercial over and over and over whenever it came on until I finally decided to make the call.

Now you see why I hadn’t needed more channels. But I finally caved in and subscribed to cable TV after watching a couple of episodes of The Sopranos at a friend’s place and got completely hooked. Now there were still more shows to watch, and I started losing sleep trying to watch TV. If you know me just a little, you just KNOW how much I looooove sleeping and so you might understand how much I was addicted to TV. And when I moved to a new apartment with Dish Network, I had even more to watch!

I realized I had a problem, but it was still hard to keep away from TV. All these years, the first thing I had done when I came home from outside was to turn the TV on, and it would be on until I had to go out again or until I went to bed. It was hard to break that habit. And did you know realizing you have a problem doesn’t make you stop loving the shows you’ve been watching? So one day, I canceled the service after convincing myself that it would save me about a grand a year. I missed it terribly for the first couple of weeks, but afterwards, I hardly thought about it except I occasionally missed Late Show with David Letterman, my all time favorite TV show.

It seems there are much more good TV shows to watch nowadays because I constantly see plurks or tweets about TV shows and how much they love them and how much they have waited for the season premiers, etc. But these TV talks have never really affected me other than feeling a little left out. It hasn’t really made me want to get cable or satellite service. UNTIL NOW, that is. Yeah, I have the itch. It’s been itching for a couple of weeks now ever since citizenjaney and some others live-plurked the goings-on of the first episode of What Would Brian Boitano Make on Food Network. And I must say, my eyes were glued on that plurk. Yes, it’s a cooking show and it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever make anything Brian Boitano makes on that show. But it was hilarious just to read about it and I can’t imagine how fucking hysterical to watch the actual show!

I’ve searched the net for  a video, but I haven’t succeeded yet. So for two weeks, I’ve been agonizing over this question. Should I get it? I know it’s a lot of money just to watch a 30-minute cooking show, but once I get it, I will be watching more than just one show, so it would be worth it, right?And I would like to know what Brian Boitano would make every week. Is that so wrong? And Letterman every night to boot? That’s a fair price to pay, no? But will I fall off the wagon and devote my already too short time at home to watching TV? Should I, or shouldn’t I?