Losing my life to must-see TV

I've been having this problem lately--I have the attention span of a three-year-old. Whenever I attempt to accomplish a semi-important task, something enters my mind and breaks my concentration: the Ally McBeal theme song, a caption from Pop-Up Video. Yes, it's happened: by offering cable this year, Yale University has turned me into a television junkie.

When I first heard about Yale's new cable package, I thought gleefully, "Yes! No more trekking out to Berkeley to watch South Park with a bunch of annoying people who laugh at all the wrong times!"(You know who you are.) Cable would be a convenience, a luxury that would allow me to watch my most beloved shows in the comfort and privacy of my own common room. It would not be an obsession.

But then Yale did an evil thing. It said, "Out of the kindness of our collective heart, we will allow you to sample all the channels and then decide which cable package best suits your needs." To me, a person with an addictive personality, this translates to, "Because we are evil people, we will offer you 99 channels, and we will make sure to do this before classes start--when you have nothing better to do. By the time school does start, you will be so hooked that you will not be able to live without these 99 channels."

That's pretty much what happened. For me, "Camp Yale" didn't consist of nights of drunken debauchery--I spent hours of quality time with my television. During those few days, I got to see everything that Comcast had to offer.

No discussion of my new love for television would be complete without a salute to Pop-Up Video, VH-1's brainchild. You've all seen it before--the little captions that come on during music videos poking fun at the videos while simultaneously providing viewers with little tidbits of information. (Did you know that bestiality is outlawed in 18 states?) When I watch these videos, I'm convinced that some kind of chemical reaction takes place in my brain because I truly become a different person. My mouth hangs open, my eyes widen, drool starts to trickle down my chin. People drift in and out of the room, but they don't really exist in my little world. I can hear my brain cells dying.

That's the worst part about television. Everyone says it, and it's true--it makes you stupid. It makes you do things that you would never have dreamed of doing before. Like watch Three's Company at 3 a.m. In Spanish. And with 99 channels, including a preview channel that tells you exactly what's playing on each one on every hour, there is always something to watch!

There is, of course, an easy solution to my predicament, one I'm sure all you clever non-TV-watchers have already come up with: just don't order all the extra channels once the trial period is over. Oh, if only life were that simple. Remember when you were little and had to have that action figure? Well, I have to have those channels. As it is, it will take all my self-restraint not to order what Comcast calls the "Collegiate Gold Pack," which includes pay-per-view channels and other assorted junk.

I can only hope that the problem will solve itself naturally; that is, that I will overdose on television and become so sick of it that I can't even be in the same room with it anymore. But I think it will be a while before that happens. For now, I have to go--I hear The Wonder Years calling my name. In Spanish.

Jennifer Richler is a sophomore in Berkeley.

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