Where's my Big Chief tablet?

The cable guy comes down the street and it's just like the time the dish salesman came along.

Okay, a little different. The satellite kid wanted to know if I was happy with my cable, the cable guy wanted to know if I was on a dish.

I told the satellite kid I didn't have cable, and he said, 'So you're already on a dish?' I told the cable guy I didn't have a dish, and he looked at his sheet to be sure I didn't already have cable.

'An antennae,' I have to explain. 'On the roof, it came with the house, and there's no monthly bill or anything, it's just there.'

I know how Amish people must feel as folks in cars drive slowly past them, staring.

'How'd you like to get 130 channels in digital color and sound for only...' the Satellite pitch went. The Cable guy, he pointed out that since we're already past-due on our phone and internet bills to Time Warner, why not be past due on cable as well? It'd only be an extra seven bucks a month or something, a package deal.

And when I say, 'I don't know if I want the eight or nine channels I get now,' I know they're looking at my pickup in the driveway and wondering if there's some Amish sect that's allowed to drive old Fords. Since my truck is a '95, it's approximately horse-and-buggy level here in the sprawling burbs.

So I try to explain, that even when there's something harmless on TV, like, I don't know. Imagine something harmless gets broadcast, I know this is strictly theoretical. During this imaginary ‘harmless’ broadcast, they'll have commercials for 'Desperate Housewives,' for 'I Want to Be a Hilton,' for 'The Simple Life.' And commercials for a men's perfume that's supposed to get him mauled in elevators by Victoria's Secret models, or maybe even get him dragged by the neck into the next aisle of the grocery store, I think to have sex with a stranger. Oh, and there's the Victoria's Secret commercials, though they're pretty tame compared to previews for apocalypitic TV movies where guys get sucked out the side of skyscrapers.

I'm really not a prude, I have to tell these guys. And it's true, I'm not. These things don't offend me. Well, maybe the cologne commercials just because I don't like being treated like such an idiot. And the Hiltons, they fall short of basic criteria for being human, much less being held up as being something you'd aspire to be.

And here's the thing, I have kids, and it's a double edged sword because while they can learn lots of stuff from ‘educational’ shows and videos, they can also learn some fucked up values from even the commercials on TV. You have to constantly be pointing out to them that drinking low-carb beer will not make you glamorous or sexy or athletic. Cable just means more channels of crap you have to either try and filter or explain.

So anyway, how do you explain to the cable or dish salesman that you're comfortable with your inner Ignatius Reilly?

Plus, I can get sucked into watching four hours of the History Channel or those chopper guys. There’s a million things on TV, cable or not, I can get lost in. And four hours later, I’ve accomplished...nothing. It’s worse than heroin, at least a junkie develops a tolerance and can function, more or less. Rush Limbaugh sounded about the same stoned as he does sober. And even if you don’t like his show, he’s engaged in an activity more productive than watching TV for those three hours...