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May 23, 2005 If you hate television, the best possible thing you can do is get out your sledge hammer and beat your set into smithereens. Other sensible options are to give it to someone whose brain you don’t mind shrinking, or sell it at a garage sale, or leave it on somebody’s doorstep at night, or give it to the garbageman for him to decide its fate. Surprisingly enough, life goes on without television, and very pleasantly I might add. Sometimes when I read articles posted by UK’s contributors, I don’t even know who it is they are talking about. I can name several TV personalities and other celebrities that I never even heard of until I saw their names mentioned in one article or another on this very website. Feeling a little humiliated and retarded, I then did a search in each case, and generally I was pleased, after all, that I had never heard of them. Offhand, I can think of Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Sean Hannity, Fabio Lanzoni, Julie Popovitch, Natalee Holloway, Frank Tipler, Carl Sagan, Osho, Eminem, Pink Floyd, Mos Def, Tom Cruise, Dan Brown and Michael Moore. My reaction, in my mind or even aloud sometimes, has most often been something like, “Who the Hell is Tom Cruise?” Then I would do a Yahoo search, and usually read the biography at Wikipedia, providing it didn’t go over about 500 words. And I would do an image search too, to see what this clown looks like. In this particular case, all I had to see was the word “Scientology” for me to dismiss Cruise out of hand. I’ve never heard Michael Jackson singing a whole song, though I’ve caught a phrase or two here and there. I had to look up Michael Jordan recently to see what he looks like. For years, I had them confused, but finally got their names straight. I never once saw Johnny Carson, though I know what he looks like. And of course there must be a myriad of actors, newsmen, singers and entertainers that I still have never heard of. If the singers are singing jazz, rock-and-roll, country music or rap, I don’t want to know who they are. If the newsmen are just glorified partisan shills, I don’t want to hear the news. If the actors are comedians or if they stoop to a lot of swearing and pornography, I don’t want to see their films. When I hear that someone like George Burns, Bob Hope, John Lennon, Elvis Presley or Frank Sinatra has died, I’m usually pleased as punch. I just want to escape their influence. Some people may think that loudmouthed, amplified American culture is great, but I'm not one of them. So what do I do instead? For one thing, I’ve been in 50 countries and half of the top 100 cities in the world: London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Athens, Hong Kong, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, Cairo, Casablanca, etc., etc. I read several languages. I’m a good mathematician. I’ve written books. I’ve invented my own language. And I made my small contribution to the design of many power plants, buildings and bridges. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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