Cable Has Ruined My Life

Dodo and Kleine can back me up on what I am about to share regarding my childhood: The limitations on media in our home growing up make the Chinese censors look like amateurs. We were never allowed to have video games, or cable tv, and by the time my mom allowed us to get the internet in the house, I was already in college.

On my way to Philosophy 101.

The tv shows we did watch had to be pre-approved (basically just the stuff on p.b.s.), or were snuck in during the golden hours while my mom was still at work. I'm positive this screwed me up, somehow. For example, while other people watched characters facing similar life choices and learned to identify with them, I had to learn to identify with some pretty weird things.

You guys got Joey Potter, and I got to project all my teen angst onto this guy.

Although I have been able to adapt to some media and technology quickly, I am sometimes reminded that I am incredibly stunted. For example, Bubble Bobble is the only video game I ever played prior to my senior year in college, and I only ever played it once or twice at my friend's house in 4th grade.

However, because it was the only video game I had ever played, Bubble Bobble became what I picture whenever other people talk about video games.

I'm pretty sure this is what Call of Duty looks like.

My foray into video games post-Bubble Bobble has not been very successful, and the only game I seem to have any ability at is "Erotic Photo Hunt" (aka Nudey Touch), which is basically just Bubble Bobble with naked ladies instead of dinosaurs.

Not that I'm complaining.

Unlike my strained relationship with video games, my relationship with tv is probably the other extreme end of the spectrum. I got cable for the first time in college. At the time I had mono and was basically too sick to leave my dorm room for about two months. Having cable was awesome. It was like magic... there were so many channels and stuff I wanted to watch was on all the time! Since then I have developed what I have to admit is a freakish devotion to television. I will watch almost anything at least once.

Seriously. Anything.

I am kind of like a goldfish, who will just eat and eat and eat whatever you put in its bowl until it gorges itself to death...except in my case, my bowl is my living room and I am eating repeat episodes of Cake Boss, and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I don't know if that metaphor works, but I am still recovering from the following:  I came home on Tuesday to find that our cable had been shut off because of some finagling with a previous roommate (A situation I will address only with the following NKOTB quote by Jordan Knight from the song The Right Stuff: "You know what you did.").

Friends, when I found this out, I lost it a little bit.


"I swear if Santana and Brittany kiss and I miss it, I will hold my breath until I pass out!" - Me, Tuesday.

 Anyway, the cable company (I won't say their name, but it rhymes with Bombast), said they couldn't reconnect it until SUNDAY!!! Luckily, when I called the next day to harrass them a little bit and see if they could come any earlier, they found a way to get someone to our apartment on Thursday morning. After 36 hours, our cable was reconnected. The whole ordeal made me wonder how I had become someone who would make more than one call to a cable company in order to get my service restored. My guess is that years of not getting to watch episodes of South Park along with everyone else in High School is somehow at fault. But somewhere between trying to figure out how to work a dvr for the first time, and watching the American Idol results show, I pretty much went back to not caring.

xoxo
zuzu