Too Busy For TV? Apparently So.

        Now I may have mentioned this before, but I don't really watch TV. If I catch an hour a week, then it's a fair bit for me. Not that I have anything against TV, mind. I just don't watch it. I have a TV, but that's because I have an X-Box and it would be a very noisy and pointless decoration without one. Plus, you've got to centre the sofa around something. However even if I was overcome with the swelling and irresistible urge to be able to join in knowledgeably when someone asks "ooooo, did you see what Dot said on EastEnders the other day", I don't know how I would fit it in. I mean, I barely have enough time to do do everything I need to do as it is, let alone joining the rest of the country with four hours a day watching people in Essex say "er ma gerd" and someone in America say "gee" a lot. Also, as I've possibly mentioned before, my house lacks an actual arial in the roof, meaning that I'd have to spend even more time climbing up there, staring at the wall and pretending I know exactly what I'm doing before giving up and ringing someone, possibly called Nigel, to do it for me. Then I can spend many hours sitting in a semi-catatonic state watching other people pretend to be other people, just so I can join in a conversation that I wasn't really that interested in anyway.

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Just A Lazy Man, In A Complex World.

        After a lifetime of observation of both myself and others, I've finally concluded that laziness is as natural as having eyes. Just think what you do when, say, the batteries in your TV remote start dying. Do you do the sensible thing and get some more, so you can suddenly change over in case they throw Hollyoaks at you without warning? Of course you don't. You do what everyone else does: presses the button harder, because that's clearly how they work these days. Or, if it gets really bad and you want to break out the big guns, you take the cover off and, for reasons that are clearly not backed up by any logic whatsoever, you roll them around a bit in the hope that this will remind them of their duties and they'll buck up their ideas. Then, when they totally give up and the TV remote takes on the shape and usefulness of a child's toy phone, you still don't do anything about it for weeks. What about that squeaky door that annoys the hell out of you every time you open it? You could go and get the WD40, but........ well, it's suddenly not that bad, right? In fact, you could leave it to squeak until it makes a tune! Or, like these people, you might discover that it sounds like Chewbacca, and the Internet absolutely must know!

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I Don't Watch Too Little TV, I Watch The Best TV. There's Difference...

If I stood up and announced that I was planning on selling my shins for medical research, I'd probably not get a strange look. Instead, people would probably point out that without shins, I should now be called Tony (toe-knee, get it? I'm here all week, try the beef). If I decided that I would now sell all my worldly possessions, set up in a tent and wear nothing but shoes on my ears, I'd barely get so much as a raised eye-brow. Even if I went so far as to declare that I will dive into the sea with a Great White Shark because I thought he wanted a hug, then you'd probably come up with a reason or two to agree with me. However if I tell people that at most I watch probably two or three hours of TV a week, they stand there gawping at me, their jaw sitting on the pavement three feet away from them, while they wonder if I've injected an extra strong dose of stupid. I might as well have said that 1+1= a jam sandwich, the reaction would probably have been better. But, honestly, I watch so little television simply because I am too busy doing other things, like working, studying and maybe using the screen to work my Xbox. If I do watch it, it's normally to watch one of the endless Top Gear re-runs on Dave, new Top Gear when it comes on, and sometimes Come Dine With Me.

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Get the world into perspective. Trust me, it's a big place.

Here's something that makes me go all weird for a few minutes if I think about it: the Earth's crust is only 70km thick at it's largest point, and something like 5-10km thick at the lowest points of the ocean bed. below that is 2,200km of mantle. Have you ever seen lava flow from a volcano? That stuff is magma. This swirls round at stupidly hot temperatures at very high pressure, and moves the earths crust around. Want to know what causes things like earthquakes and grounds your flight to Iceland? That'll be the mantle. below that is the core. This is mostly iron and is more dense than your average Big Brother contestant. it's constant moving causes the magnetic field that helps you find your way. It is unimaginably hot, and the whole shebang goes down a total of 6,500km, which is about the distance from England to Uganda. Wowzers!

Now, look at the ground. All that is going on right under your feet, right now!

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Lack of Honesty = Broken Wine Glasses = Hilarious X-Factor Auditions

This morning, I have this to say: the world is now full of people who have this massively mistaken belief that they can sing! Have you ever wondered why that person in your office, or on the bus, or in the room next door to yours keeps belting out "ballads" that have yet to feature a correct note? Are you sick of replacing your wine glasses because your neighbours singing makes them explode on cue? Where did these people, and their mistaken beliefs, come from? Well, I blame "X-Factor" personally. I mean, let's look at someone like Gareth Gates (yes, I know he was on Pop Idol). He started as a nervous nobody with a stutter. Now, he's a household name. He's a successful recording artist. He's even appearing in Les Miserables in the West End! The thing is that previously, we were used to hearing of great singers after they'd been working at it for years. People like Rod Stewart seemed to have been born for singing; I can't imagine anyone like that having a stutter. This does cause a slight problem, however...



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Oh Charlie Sheen, how you show us all how to live!

This week, for your TV viewing delight, there's a programme about a TV cook who does no cooking but does design a school, there's a chat-show starring someone who's barely famous and annoying but has a Dad who's barely famous and annoying, and a whole programme about a house that Queen Victoria stayed in, maybe, for 4 whole days before she was even Queen, thus rendering the whole thing pointless.

Now, I'm not going to spend next Wednesday's blog telling you how it all turned out, because I rarely ever watch TV. Now, I'll give you a moment to take that on board.... You OK? Good! That's right, I barely ever watch TV, due to a combination of what is on being a waste of my time, and my aerial having a personality of its own. This would be fine, if it wasn't a personality that sporadically hates TV when it decides, and sometimes simply can't be bothered to do anything. This week, my TV has been used mostly for watching copious quantities of LOST on DVD, Xbox and occasionally, re-runs of QI and Top Gear on Dave. When the Aerial lets me.

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